{"id":35032,"date":"2020-06-26T03:54:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T10:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=35032"},"modified":"2020-06-24T11:22:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T18:22:08","slug":"the-festival-must-go-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/06\/26\/the-festival-must-go-on\/","title":{"rendered":"The festival must go on"},"content":{"rendered":"

SD Holman, artistic and executive director of the Queer Arts Festival, which takes place July 16-26. (photo from QAF)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSince the very beginning, I said not doing the festival was not an option … because my belief is that they [the arts] are really, really important \u2013 I would say essential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharing their appreciation for the vital work being done by those on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis, SD Holman, artistic and executive director of the Queer Arts Festival, said, \u201cart is really keeping people alive, in different ways than the amazing health workers that are taking care of folks right now. Even people who say they don\u2019t like art \u2013 if you read a book, if you watch Netflix, you take part in the art world.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Queer Arts Festival, which takes place July 16-26, will happen mostly online. This is, of course, not what was initially planned.<\/p>\n

By mid-May, Holman said, \u201cwe had to have a plan. And, right now, we\u2019re still working on how the delivery is going to look because it\u2019s not all digital. One of the things that was really important to us, to me, is that, not all people have computers, not all people have a stable wi-fi access, people can\u2019t go to the libraries [now] if they don\u2019t have computer, so how do people access it? If they\u2019re not privileged enough to have this little box in front of them, how do we deliver a festival?\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the things being considered is billboard art. As well, there is the possibility of using parks as venues.<\/p>\n

The planning of such a festival normally starts a year in advance, not the couple of months that COVID has allowed for a reimagined version. Some elements \u2013 such as the visual arts show \u2013 have been adapted for the new circumstances, while some will have to be postponed, as they do not lend themselves to online viewing, because they are interactive on some level, or the artists can\u2019t make it to Vancouver.<\/p>\n

When asked about the process for choosing festival artists, Holman said, \u201cI talk a lot to people, I try and keep abreast of what\u2019s going on. I always want to support local artists and also bring in folks from away, so that there are great conversations that happen of what\u2019s going on in the world, as well as what\u2019s happening here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The festival programmer does research and people can also apply to be part of the festival. As well, Holman said, \u201cThere\u2019ll be people that talk to me about wanting to do something, and that usually percolates for two or three years before anything ever happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holman has been with the festival since its beginnings as a volunteer collective in 1998. \u201cTwo-spirit artist Robbie Hong, black artist Jeffrey Gibson were the main founders of Pride in Art [Society],\u201d they explained. \u201cI was an artist and then I became involved in the collective in 2005, when Robbie was wanting to step away … and I called in Dr. Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa because she had approached me about something and I said, \u2018Come and join me on this.\u2019 And we spearheaded making it professional, making it a festival\u2026. It was a community visual art show up until that point…. As an artist myself, I wanted to pay artists \u2013 too often artists are expected to do stuff for free, and that\u2019s impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the festival website, PiA became a not-for-profit in 2006, mounted its first festival in 2008 and rebranded to become the Queer Arts Festival in 2010, obtaining charitable status in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cRachel has finally managed to extricate herself,\u201d said Holman, \u201cbecause we also both have our own arts practices and it\u2019s very hard to run this organization and also have an arts practice; it might have fallen a bit by the wayside, but Rachel is a concert pianist. [She\u2019s] no longer staff with us, [but] she\u2019s still doing some contract work with us and passing over her organizational knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Holman is a photo-based artist, the festival remains their focus. It is the belief that \u201cart changes people and people change the world\u201d that motivates them, \u201cbecause it\u2019s important work\u201d \u2013 \u201cwhen a country is taken over, the first people they suppress are the artists.\u2026 You take over the media and you get rid of the artists because people can be completely destroyed \u2013 the first thing they start doing [to recover] is making art, whether it\u2019s in a mud puddle, making a mud pie, they start, that is, expression; that\u2019s what brings them back.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt reaches you on a visceral level,\u201d Holman continued. \u201cThere\u2019s this thing called confirmation bias, so we take in more what we already agree with, but art can get you in a way that can transform our ways of thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Holman, being queer and Jewish are parts of their larger identity. Holman has self-described, for example, as \u201ca queer pagan Jew\u201d and \u201ca Jewish, butch, bearded dyke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from L.A.,\u201d they told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cI was born and raised in L.A., and I have had several Jewish friends be, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re too much for Vancouver.\u2019 And I\u2019ve been here for a long time \u2026 [but] people are, \u2018Why aren\u2019t you in New York, why aren\u2019t you in L.A.? Why aren\u2019t you where you can be more?\u2019 I always get this feeling here \u2026 that people are always trying to be, \u2018Shh, could you just be a little bit quieter, could you just be not quite so much?\u2019 There\u2019s this too-muchness about Jews. And there\u2019s kind of this too-muchness about queers, too. There\u2019s this assimilation. My family assimilated \u2013 I got, from my bubbie and my great-aunt, I would get Christmas cards. We\u2019re Jewish! But we assimilated because that was what was safe for us. And so there\u2019s all this assimilation and erasure that happens with queers and Jews, because, also, many of us can pass; we can pass as straight, we can pass as not Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite skepticism about the possibility of Jews being fully accepted \u2013 the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville a couple of years ago featured chants of \u201cJews will not replace us,\u201d for example \u2013 Holman is completely out there in her Jewishness and queerness, in a seemingly fearless way.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh no, I\u2019m afraid of everything, that\u2019s why I do it,\u201d they said. \u201cAlthough, that\u2019s not true anymore. Since my wife died [in 2009], I don\u2019t fear anything because the worst thing has already happened to me. But I used to be, I was quite fearful.\u2026 [However] I\u2019ve never been able to be in the closet about anything really. And, I guess, for me, that\u2019s kind of Jewishness, [being] more emotive and not afraid to debate, not always trying to please people. For me, it comes from my Jewish heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the many accolades for their art and for their work with the Queer Arts Festival, including the 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award in Arts and Culture, Holman said, \u201cI have been a failure all my life.\u201d Among their reasons for that description, Holman said they are dyslexic. They added, \u201cI\u2019m butch, so that\u2019s a failure as a woman; feminists were called failures as women.\u201d But, they said, they are working with that in their art and, on the positive side, being a failure \u201cfrees you up to make your own rules, so make your own rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

The theme of this year\u2019s Queer Arts Festival is \u201cWicked.\u201d The press release quotes Oscar Wilde: \u201cWickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always really multi-layered the theme and then people take different stuff out of it,\u201d said Holman. \u201cSo, there\u2019s also the book Wicked<\/em> \u2026 because Wicked<\/em> is about it\u2019s not easy being green, it\u2019s not easy being different. It\u2019s not easy being a Jew, it\u2019s not easy being queer. It\u2019s not easy being butch, it\u2019s not easy being an activist. It\u2019s all actually about activism, the book Wicked<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, there is, as Holman writes in the press release, the question, \u201cWhat do we lose \u2013 who do we lose \u2013 if we accept induction into the dominant order, and reframe ourselves as a \u2018moral minority\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a double pun,\u201d they explained to the Independent<\/em>. \u201cThe \u2018Moral Majority\u2019 years ago, who were trying to say [what\u2019s acceptable in society], the right-wing, and there\u2019s the \u2018model minority,\u2019\u201d the Asian community, whose perceived greater-than-average success and stereotypical politeness are used to downplay the existence of racism. \u201cIt totally ties in with what I was talking about \u2018too-muchness\u2019 and excess and how we, as queers, work towards justice and inclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

While becoming \u201cmore acceptable,\u201d Holman said, \u201cit\u2019s still, \u2018please don\u2019t scare the horses.\u2019\u2026 So, it\u2019s OK if you want to be gay and lesbian and you want to get married and you want to have kids and you want to buy a house and be part of the whole heteronormative [framework] \u2026 be part of society\u2019s morals, but could you leave the drag queens and the leather dykes at home?… Even with gender stuff. We know now that it\u2019s a real spectrum and people are getting [more accepted], trans are really out in the world [for example] and it\u2019s OK if you want to be a \u2018real woman\u2019 or a \u2018real man,\u2019 whatever that is, but people in between are still, \u2018Come on, could you choose a side?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this whole [feeling like], we\u2019ve given you these things, we\u2019ve given you marriage rights, you can have children, you can affirm your gender, you can do those things, but could you now just be nicer to us? And, I think, we have to be careful of that \u2013 being sanctioned by the state of what\u2019s OK [because] then people get left behind, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing right now \u2026 the more privilege you gain, you have to be really careful of that,\u201d of remembering that not everyone is being treated well.<\/p>\n

The QAF opens on July 16. \u201cAnd we\u2019re going to have a binge\/party at the end, on the 26th, and there\u2019ll be prizes,\u201d said Holman. \u201cWe\u2019re going to play the whole entire festival. I think it\u2019s going to be 12 hours or something \u2013 we\u2019re inviting people to get into their best dress jammies.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is going to be pay-what-you-can, by donation\u2026. Pay as much as you can, please, because we want to support the artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those artists are Jewish community members Avram Finkelstein, from New York, who helps open the festival (see jewishindependent.ca\/political-art-of-living<\/a>) and locally based Noam Gagnon, whose work This Crazy Show<\/em> (July 25-26) is described as \u201ca reflection on the quest for love, through revisiting the worlds of childhood, both real and imagined.\u201d In it, he \u201cchoreographs and performs, pushing himself to his physical limit to explore and expose \u2018the art of artifice\u2019 in a culture obsessed with pretending authenticity. This Crazy Show<\/em> explores just how precarious and ambiguous identity can be, through the evolution of the body and the self, as both are continuously morphing, unfixed and boldly celebrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on the festival, visit queerartsfestival.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SD Holman, artistic and executive director of the Queer Arts Festival, which takes place July 16-26. (photo from QAF) \u201cSince the very beginning, I said not doing the festival was not an option … because my belief is that they [the arts] are really, really important \u2013 I would say essential.\u201d Sharing their appreciation for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[2466,3119,9756,2747,9939,9938,9969],"class_list":["post-35032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-art","tag-dance","tag-lgbtq2s","tag-photography","tag-qaf","tag-queer-arts-festival","tag-sd-holman"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}