บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ First annual Pulchrum Conference seeks to reclaim beauty in community

David Fung: Yeah, really quickly, easily. Pulchrum is the first annual beauty conference here at Biola University. Its goal is to connect artists together to pursue beauty and to do it to the point of excellence. That's kind of the heart of what this conference is. And kind of the main reason this conference exists is because we've witnessed a decline of the love of beauty, the love of art. In the West, we have watched us going from building Notre Dame and the Sistine Chapel and writing incredible music and literary art pieces like Divine Comedy to where we are now, where when you talk about the best films in the world, you talk about Oppenheimer and you talk about Game of Thrones recently, luckily, praise the Lord The Chosen has come onto the scene as a major art piece. But like until The Chosen, there was nothing really to be proud of as Christians in the film world. And that goes with music. When you talk about the number one top music artists, we get so excited when elevation, worship somehow gets in the top 100 but why are we so lacking when it's like, man, we should really be not just a number in the top 100 we should be the top 100 because we are the beautiful ones. We know the one who is beauty itself. So why are we losing this to a secular world? Now it's kind of the heart behind the conference. We wanted the conference to inspire Christians to go out and make beautiful things again, like they used to do, and not be so timid and afraid, like, oh, I need to actually join a secular industry. No, actually, the secular industry should be seeking to join us, because we have a direct and more intimate source of what beauty is like, because we have a relationship with God. And so that kind of is what Pulchrum is, that's the heart behind Pulchrum and how it kind of, like, got birthed as an idea. Izah DeFigh: So this is the first year that this conference is being put on. Can you talk a little bit about the process and how this idea came about? David Fung: Yeah, as many of you know, when you first start off doing something, it's a lot of work. Building the foundations for a building is often more time-consuming than the actual construction of the building itself. And that's what it's felt like a lot this year. It all started with actually, our founder, George Khoury, he came to our men's Bible study and was like, Hey, guys, like, I feel like the world is lacking for true beauty. Christians are not making beautiful things, and so it's lacking in the world. And we were like, Oh, that's a great little pitch. Like, yeah, we kind of agree. He's like, Well, I want to do something about it. And he says, let's do this conference. And we're like, okay, let's do this. And that was about two and a half months ago, three months ago, and ever since then, it's been this process that we thought was gonna be small and easy into this long, time-consuming organization. We have a staff team of 15 people. It's this giant thing now, but it's grown because we've realized this problem is so much bigger and deeper than anything that we've witnessed. We kind of are just realizing we scratch the surface to actually not just a scab on the Christian body, but actually a cancer that exists within the Christian body. And so it's no longer like, oh, we just need to, like, put some ointment on it. It's like, no, actually, we need to do chemo for the next six months. We need to actually dig deep, keep the body healthy, keep it strong, but really work hard and what it means to, to find beauty again in the church and support our artists and encourage everyone of every field to actually pursue beauty. Like, yeah, you the accountant, yeah, you need to be pursuing beauty in what you're doing. Yeah, you the math major. You need to pursue beauty or the person who's making dental wear, or the person who's just driving a car because you're an Amazon driver. How do you find beauty in the work you're doing? And invite people into this awe inspiring nature of what beauty is, and so that's kind of how it started, and kind of what it's been. It's been an interesting process here at Biola. Biola has been super supportive. There's a lot of red tape here at Biola, which is a loss, but also, like, good for them, because you need to have red tape at Biola. You need to have a system and process in place so that you actually make sure that everything that's going on at Biola is good and healthy. And so we've had to go through a lot of that. It weighs a little bit slow. It took a lot of energy from us to get through that, but that was the first month and a half. But after that, we were set to go. Everyone has been so supportive since then, everyone in Metzger. SGA actually is funding, $1,500 worth of funding right now for this to get food, we're providing a free dinner. So they're paying for the free dinner for all our students. We've gotten so much support from the, Talbot is sponsoring it, and the art department sponsoring it. We've gotten so much support from them, from borrowing easels to registering and reserving rooms and all these different stuff. And so we've just had this overwhelming support from Biola self. It makes me as an internal, the internal director, like man, I want to do it back here at Biola again. It's made my life easier. I know their system, but we don't know where we're doing it next year. So stay tuned for that. But it has been such a joy. And so I encourage you, anyone that sees a need here at Biola, or the world feel willing to do it at Biola, they want to do this, especially if it's to help the Christian body, the Church, the capital C church as a collective. And so I just want to say thank you Biola, thank you Talbot, thank you the art department, and thank you SGA for all the support you guys have given us with this process. Izah DeFigh: You What do you hope that people who attend the conference will take away from it? David Fung: Yeah,our mission statement is pursuing beauty in community to the point of

excellence, and that really is our three major hit points. We first want to pursue beauty, and that means both talking about beauty and making beauty. And so that's our main goal for all our attendees. And we want you all to be on fire for beauty. I feel like you need to chase beauty that like, beauty is not something that's compromisable, like, yeah, goodness, truth, justice, all these things are really important, but beauty itself is not compromisable. We can't cast beauty to the side. We can't forget about beauty. Beauty is something that we need to pursue out of necessity, because God himself is beauty. And so that's the first thing. That's the reason you're coming to the conference, is the draw. The second big thing is, we want you to do it in community. God has us walking in this faithful commitment with the church. We are a part of the church, and you need to be doing it in community. And that what that means, specifically for our art conference, is you need to be connected with other art mediums. We don't want you to be isolated and alone and only think about your form of art. We want you to think about, Okay, wow. How can I get connected with music? How can I get connected with film? How can I get connected with photography? How can I get connected with writing, poetry and storytelling? How can I get connected with maybe just like the local dentist that's trying to pursue beauty in his craft? We want you to meet and talk about that, because as Christians, you're pursuing God in community to find the beauty. The last thing is, we want to pursue it to the point of excellence. And we don't just want to pursue beauty for the sake of pursuing beauty, but God Himself is the most beautiful thing. And so when we're chasing after beauty, we want to be making the most beautiful thing possible. We want to be growing in what it means to know and understand beauty. And so that's the big thing. So we hope out of all our attendees, you're going to pursue beauty, you're going to feel inspired to do it in community. And lastly, you're going to do it to the point of excellence, to the point of that it's mind blowing and changing your field. And so we hope that that is what they feel like it. They feel inspired to do so. And go out and make a project. We want this to be at the end of the conference. So not just be like, I talked about beauty, but we wanted to be like, No, now you're gonna go out and do it. You're gonna, with people you're eating dinner with, you're actually gonna go make a project. You're gonna make something beautiful. And so that’s kind of the heart of it. Izah DeFigh: If people want to learn more about this or get involved, how can they do that? David Fung: Yeah, the easiest way to get information about this is go to our website. It's gonna be pulchrumconference.com so it's P, U, L, C, H, R, U, M, conference.com that's a great way to get connected. On there, you're gonna find the schedule, you're gonna find a way to register, you're gonna find different pieces, you're gonna find our YouTube channel. We're also gonna find our Instagram. Our Instagram's our second biggest way to get connected. We post there regularly, local artists, art pieces, ways to get connected, just fun reels, some different cool stuff. But our Instagram is probably the next biggest way to get connected, probably our biggest way, honestly. But right now, go to our website. It's gonna have all the main key information, because that's our hub, you could say. Izah DeFigh: Well that's great. Thanks so much for your time. David, Reagan Glidewell: Thanks for listening! As always, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review and share it with a friend or a roommate. For more stories from The Chimes, see our show notes, or head over to our website at ChimesNewspaper.com. This episode was produced and hosted by Reagan Glidewell, with headlines written by me, Thomas Rahkola, Izah DeFigh and Hope Li. This episode was engineered by Jason Lee. Our theme music is from Warner Chappell Productions. Our executive producer is Hope Li. I’m Reagan Glidewell, and we’ll see you all next week for our last episode of season 3.