Lam Zigbuo is introducing his forthcoming project PURE in a way that resists immediate understanding. The early visual episodes do not arrive as explanations or announcements. Instead, they surface as fragments — moments that feel lived-in and unresolved, inviting interpretation rather than instruction. As an audience, we are not told what we are entering. We simply find ourselves inside it, sensing that something personal is being shaped without being fully revealed.
What makes this moment compelling is the tension between how Lam speaks about the work and how it appears in the world. In conversation, he is clear that PURE marks a shift in how he relates to his own expression. “This was the first time I intentionally decided to open those locked boxes I’d been keeping inside,” he said. “Whatever came out, I let it come out.” That decision anchors the project. Yet visually, he does not center himself. In the early episodes, Lam remains behind the lens, directing and editing scenes that feel intimate without being autobiographical. As he put it, the standard he holds the work to is internal: “I’m thinking about whether it feels raw and whether it feels true.” The honesty is present, but it arrives indirectly.
That indirectness feels intentional. Rather than narrating his own story, Lam appears to be externalizing emotional states he has lived through, allowing them to move through other bodies, spaces, and moments. “If it doesn’t feel honest, it doesn’t feel like me,” he said, returning often to transparency as his internal measure. The visuals hover between memory and projection — familiar without being fixed — suggesting that truth does not always require personal visibility to be felt.
One of the first visual entries, Pure Frustration, gestures toward that idea without spelling it out. Set on a subway platform, the episode captures a fleeting moment of missed timing and release — movement emerging where control is absent. Lam has spoken about letting emotion exist before it is refined or explained, and the scene reflects that instinct: expression surfacing quietly, without narrative insistence, allowing viewers to locate their own meaning inside it. In this early moment, Lam’s music enters the scene rather than leading it, becoming felt only as the lead character begins to respond.
Philadelphia offers important context for this approach. Growing up around Southwest Philly, Lam described being surrounded by people whose effort was visible and embodied. “Philadelphia showed me what self-effort can actually look like,” he said. “The people who embody that here don’t feel unreachable. They’re in the same rooms.” In an environment where progress feels tangible rather than theoretical, patience becomes a practice rather than a delay. That grounding helps explain why PURE is unfolding slowly, without forced clarity. As Lam reflected, once he allowed himself to reach this level of honesty, fear stopped guiding his decisions. “If I can be that honest,” he said, “I don’t really have anything left to be afraid of.” What’s taking shape is not a rollout, but a quiet act of trust — in the work, in the audience, and in time itself.