Your creativity could use a good stretch—and Riz Ahmed wants to help

Riz Ahmed’s career has been guided by two questions: Does it stretch me? Does it stretch culture? Now he’s posing those questions to you in the latest episode of Fast Company’s podcast ‘Creative Control.’

When Riz Ahmed feels lost in his creative endeavors, he asks two questions: Does it stretch me? Does it stretch culture?

Those questions have guided Ahmed to an Oscar and Emmy-winning acting career (The Long Goodbye; The Night Of, respectively), a boundary-pushing music catalog, and creating stories that have redefined who gets to be seen at the center of the frame. And now, in the latest chapter of his career, he’s posing those two questions to all creatives.

Last year, WePresent, the arts platform of file sharing service WeTransfer, announced Ahmed as their guest curator. It’s a role previously held by the likes of Marina Abramović, Solange Knowles, and Olafur Eliasson. Ahmed is building his guest curator agenda around a manifesto rooted in stretching yourself and culture. But it goes beyond just stepping out of your comfort zone or doing something that scares you. Ahmed’s framework calls for you to surrender your ego and lean into the more mystical side of creativity.

“I almost feel shy talking about it sometimes because it can sound pretentious or insane,” Ahmed says in the latest episode of Fast Company‘s podcast Creative Control. “But the further I go down the road of life, the more I know that life’s most transcendent moments are when you forget yourself. When you’re so present, it’s kind of like your sense of self dissolves into the moment. That’s the heart of creativity. That’s the heart of meaningful connection.”

In this episode of Creative Control, Ahmed explores more of his creative manifesto and his upcoming film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that ties directly into his vision of stretching culture.

Ahmed says that viewing creativity through a more mythical lens requires stretching beyond yourself and past your ego.

“What I find increasingly is that we’ve removed the language of transcendence and the language of mystery from how we think about creativity,” Ahmed says.What he’s calling for now is something of a blend of Taoism and Sufism, i.e. a flow state that places you beyond yourself and closer to something more divine. “What it means to surrender control and be part of something bigger, to invite something bigger,” Ahmed explains.

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