Don't You Feel It Too?

Something I believe, though I’m shy to say:
life is art.

Something I believe, but am not afraid to say loudly:
we need new artistic practices to move through this time of heartbreak and upheaval. 

We need practices that begin with our bodies, our breath, and our everyday behavior. That’s where behavioral art emerges. Behavioral art — or lived practice as art — teaches us we are all worldmakers to create hope, connection, and belonging within and around us.

Next year, I collaborate with Thea Lauren Pineda, Kristin Johnstad, and New Branches — home to five diverse, faith-based communities and a high school in the Nokomis neighborhood. We will develop Living As Art, a new contemplative practice that blends installation, performance, ritual, mindfulness retreat, and living and learning together.

Kristin Johnstad leads a moment of prayer and reflection at the Christine Center. Retreatants have their eyes closed in deep contemplation. Yellow text reads: Begin with our bodies, our breath. • Image by Kristin Johnstad

For four days, we share this work with the public. We will sing, dance, teach, eat mindful meals, breathe, and rest together. We will explore what it means to live artfully — integrating spirit, creativity, and daily life into one continuous practice. We will remind ourselves that though suffering exists, we have what we need to face these days with grace, resilience, and spiritual defiance.

You can support this intergenerational, multiracial project to create a new artistic practice. With your help, we will invite artists and facilitators to co-create Living As Art. We will demonstrate that life itself is art — and that art has always been our pathway to healing.

Retreatants at the Christine Center laugh as they share a collective meal. White text reads: We are all worldmakers. • Image by Kristin Johnstad

Consider donating:

• $10 — help a participant join this creative endeavor of behavioral art
• $50 — support a mindful meal for many participants
• $100 — support a leader to teach their life-art workshop
• $200 — help prepare the mindful sanctuary space for the public engagement
• $300 — evaluate this work so that it can serve more people
• $1 - $500 — give freely what you can and trust

With hands on heart,

thank you,

Marcus Young

Marcus Young and other DYFIT practitioners dance their inner selves. Yellow text reads: Art has always been our pathway to healing. • Image by Sharolyn Hagen

Biographies

Marcus Young 楊墨 (he/any) is a behavioral artist working within mindfulness and learning communities, as well as for the stage, museums, government agencies, and the public realm.

Kristin Johnstad (she/her), community artist, song carrier, and network weaver in social change and faith-based networks including New Branches. She uses embodied practice to foster joy, liberation, and collective resilience, often within affinity groups responding to racial injustice.

Thea Lauren Pineda (she/they) is a Filipino lesbian contemporary drawing and collage artist whose practice focuses on unapologetic queer intimacy in a place thousands of miles away from their ancestral home.

New Branches is a collaboration across traditions between five faith-based groups and a public high school including: Living Table United Church of Christ, Lake Nokomis Lutheran Church, Spirit Catholic Community, Blooming Heart Sangha, God’s Revelation Missionary Baptist Church, and Augsburg Fair Academy.

Don’t You Feel It Too? is a 17-year public movement and liberation practice, part of a repertoire of participatory, whole-self, behavioral experiences created to re-awaken life in artful ways. 

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Website: dyfit.org
Instagram: dontyoufeelittoo
Contact: programs@dyfit.org