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Tag: creativity

Dance as an act of solidarity

Dance as an act of solidarity

Iraqis in Pajamas’ new album is a tribute to the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre.

In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis…. And the celebrations that followed worldwide – glorifying the raping, burning and decapitating of my people…. 

And the subsequent mass destruction of posters raising awareness of Israeli hostages being tortured in captivity by Hamas…. 

And the simultaneous call for a violent uprising against Jews worldwide…. 

And the astronomical spike in hate crimes against Jews – among other things, leading to incessant harassment, assaults and death threats of students at my alma mater, Columbia University, and additionally leading to the murder of a kind Jewish man I knew in Los Angeles….

And the international mob chants of “From the river to the sea,” harkening back to the harrowing cries my father heard on Arabic radio stations as a child in Iraq, “We will throw the Jews into the sea.”…

And the palpable terror I then felt as a Jew, whose family had seen this before, had fled this before, in a pro-Nazi uprising in Baghdad, where a similar massacre had taken place during my father’s childhood….

And the deafening silence in the wake of all this – not even one word of care or kindness from the vast majority of non-Jewish people I had loved, had lived with, had broken bread with….

And I felt as if I had died.

I stopped journaling, stopped writing poetry, stopped writing music, stopped singing, stopped playing bass, stopped dancing. I got sick repeatedly and continuously over the course of two months, even ended up in the emergency room with symptoms of a possible stroke at 2 a.m. one night – this, after years and years of never getting sick, not once, not even when my ex got COVID and I nursed him back to health. 

I couldn’t sleep, had nightmares, woke up in the middle of the night, lying awake for hours, my mind circling around and around, imagining the horror and terror the hostages must be suffering through. I was haunted by the video image I accidentally had seen of a young Jewish woman who was naked and chained, publicly being dragged around by Hamas, as they filmed her – one of the many Jewish women they gang raped and mutilated that day, often next to the dead bodies of these women’s friends – filming that violence, too, in something akin to snuff porn. 

I could feel it in my body.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t move.

Despite the impact on me, I felt that, somehow, by energetically experiencing and, by extension, by physically experiencing the pain that my people were enduring, I was communicating a telepathic message to them: I will not forsake you, I will not forget you. 

No, I will not frolic on the beach beneath the misty grey soothing skies. No, I will not enjoy the quiet, peace and comfort of the vast rainforest just outside my door. No, I will not detach myself from something “happening on the other side of the world,” as a non-

Jewish acquaintance kindly advised, because there is no “other side of the world” when it comes to Jews. You are me, and I am you, and we are connected. I cannot control the world’s response, but I can control mine. I will face, see, hear and feel your pain, until it is gone.

But wait…. That’s exactly what Hamas wants, isn’t it? To demoralize and destroy Jews. To suffocate us, hijack our imagination. To strip us of our dignity, safety, peace and, perhaps most of all, joy.

So, to reclaim my joy is, in fact, a radical act of Jewish power and solidarity. To flip imagination on its head – instead of visualizing all the horrors and shrinking in my body, to instead expand in my body and visualize all the hostages, injured people and 

grieving families as resilient, grounded, surrounded by love, and the dead as soaring freely and peacefully, wrapping their loved ones in comfort.

Nothing is black and white, but this is an article, not a book, so I’m trying to keep it short and sweet. Suffice it to say, I actively and repeatedly attempted to turn the images around over the course of two months – to send white light, to bless the hostages, to emit some kind of protective energetic shield, but it kept seeming silly, foolish, without actual impact, perhaps just making myself feel better, like a hollow New Ager. My prayers would not stop a psychopathic Hamas gunman with absolute control over a hostage, I reasoned, because G-d gave humans both the gift and curse of free will. 

But then….

But then I went to a concert of Yemen Blues, which was more of a primal howl of freedom than a “performance,” and which featured an Israeli woman dancing with a defiant, raw ferocity that brought back to life the sanctity, dignity and power of the Jewish female body – and, with that, permission to dance.

And, after that, I started dancing again. And, after that, I started singing again. And, after that, I started frolicking with my beautiful dog beneath the misty grey, soothing skies on the beach, and through the vast rainforest just outside my door.

And I came back to life.

In this very difficult but transformative journey, I learned that life begets life begets life, and artistic self-expression is not an indulgence, but rather, a superpower. 

As I danced on the beach with my dog over a couple of days, a vision emerged – a global movement of Jews and our allies taking videos of ourselves dancing joyfully, and sending those videos to the people wounded in the Oct. 7 massacre, the families of those who died, the families of those taken hostage, and the young women and men on the frontlines defending Israel from further attack – turning “we will dance again” into “we will dance for you until you can dance again” – sharing whatever strength, freedom and joy we have to uplift those who are in the thick of it, struggling and suffering.

Having snapped out of an emotional coma of sorts, I then picked up my bass, and out poured both the melody and lyrics of a new song, “’Til You Can Dance Again.” That same day, I finally finished the song I had started a few weeks after Oct. 7, “Dear Hostages.” Not having touched my bass for the better part of three months, I played until my fingers were blistered and almost bleeding. Over the next 24 hours, I wrote two additional songs, and then worked with my band on developing a full album, ’Til You Can Dance Again, offering both my journey and my joy as a catalyst for healing and transformation.

It is through song, dance, story, prayer and food that Jews historically have not only overcome tragedy, but have taken that very experience and transmuted it into an vehicle for joy – the ultimate “f*** you” to those who have tried to destroy us. For this reason, my band released our new album on March 23, at the start of Purim, a holiday marking one of many historical traumas that the Jewish people have turned on its head and morphed into a cause for celebration. My heartfelt prayer for this album is that, as broken as we may feel right now, we shall once again rise up, sing and dance ourselves back to wholeness, and honour the victims of Oct. 7 not only through our grief and pain, but also through our fierce and irrepressible Jewish joy – emerging, once again, like that unstoppable phoenix, soaring up and out from the ashes. 

Loolwa Khazzoom (khazzoom.com) is the frontwoman for the band Iraqis in Pajamas and editor of The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage (theflyingcamelbook.com). She has been a pioneering Jewish multicultural educator since 1990, and her writing has been featured in the Washington Post, Marie Claire, Rolling Stone and other top media worldwide. This article was originally published in the Times of Israel.

More about the album

On March 23, Iraqis in Pajamas released the album ‘Til You Can Dance Again, as a tribute to the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre.

Its creation served as a vehicle for Khazzoom’s processing and healing, and the tone of the songs evolved as Khazzoom herself evolved from feeling despair to outrage to core power.

“Dear Hostages” is a love song to those held in captivity, in which Khazzoom pledges, I will not forsake you, I will not forget you, as she explores what it means to act in solidarity from afar. 

“’Til You Can Dance Again” is a spin on the Israeli promise, “We will dance again” – vowing to spread the life energy of dance, to help uplift the spirits of those who were shattered by the massacre. 

“Bataween” draws from a conversation with an Iraqi Muslim friend, exemplifying the healing imperative of Arab Muslims recognizing and caring about the history of indigenous Middle Eastern Jews, including the experience of Arab Muslim oppression. 

“Kids from the Sandbox” builds on that imperative, holding out a vision for Arabs and Jews to embrace the complexity of shared history, using art to express love and hate in healthy ways, effectively co-creating a new reality. 

“I’m a F***-You Jew” fuses ancient and contemporary stories of Jewish defiance and soul power in an unabashed expression of Jewish pride and strength amid an onslaught of global accusation and condemnation. 

“These Boots” is a campy spin on “never again,” calling out the left’s hypocrisy and betrayal in the wake of Oct. 7, and refusing to contribute Jewish energy and resources to those who do not offer the same in turn. 

“Bloody Cross” is a scathing critique of the Red Cross’s racism and hypocrisy in its failure and refusal to properly care for the Israeli hostages in Gaza.

For the full press release, and to listen to the recordings, visit khazzoom.com/blog and click on ’Til You Can Dance Again – New Album Release.

– Courtesy Iraqis in Pajamas

Format ImagePosted on April 12, 2024April 10, 2024Author Loolwa KhazzoomCategories MusicTags creativity, Iraqis in Pajamas, Israel, mourning, Oct. 7, terror attacks
What is life’s purpose?

What is life’s purpose?

In her graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, Amy Kurzweil tackles many existential questions, framed around her father’s quest to resurrect his father using artificial intelligence. Kurzweil participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 12.

The purpose of life, of art, what it means to be human, to love and be loved, the value of relationships, our mortality. In a very personal story, cartoonist and writer Amy Kurzweil explores not just universal questions but the biggest of questions in her new book, Artificial: A Love Story.

Kurzweil participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 12 in two separate sessions: one about the choice of the comic form to tell a story, the other titled Art & Artificial Intelligence.

In Artificial, readers are invited into another part of Kurzweil’s world. Her debut graphic memoir, Flying Couch, was also family-focused, centring around her maternal grandmother’s story. As she writes on her website, “At 13 years old, Bubbe (as I call her) escaped the Warsaw Ghetto alone, by disguising herself as a gentile. My mother taught me: our memories and our families shape who we become. What does it mean to be part of a family, and how does each generation bear the imprint of the past, its traumas and its gifts? Flying Couch is my answer to these questions, the documentation of my quest for identity and understanding.”

image - Artificial: A Love Story, by Amy Kurzweil, page 21
Artificial: A Love Story, by Amy Kurzweil, page 21.

Kurzweil continues to grapple with these questions in Artificial, this time from the paternal side. Her father, Ray, an inventor and futurist, is building an AI tool that will allow him, basically, to resurrect his father, who died of a heart attack in 1970, at the age of 57. Ray has saved letters, articles, music and other material relating to his father, Frederic, a pianist and conductor, who fled Austria in 1938, a month before Kristallnacht, to the United States, saved by a chance encounter. Amy is helping her father sort through boxes upon boxes of material and computerize the information. She even chats with “her grandfather,” as the AI program is being developed.

“My father taught me … that, someday, robots would be made of memory,” writes Kurzweil. Of course, the creation of a Fredbot has functional, ethical, emotional and other challenges, and Kurzweil – in words and images – presents them with sensitivity, intelligence and creativity. Each page of Artificial is attention-grabbing and the level of detail on some pages is remarkable. Kurzweil meticulously re-creates correspondence, typed and handwritten, newspaper articles and other documents, emails and texts, but she also captures, for example, the doubt on her father’s face during a conversation and the concern she has for her partner when he’s undergoing some medical tests. Readers learn about the people asking the questions, not just the questions themselves.

As for the answers? There are multiple ones. Of her father’s project, his quest to conquer mortality using technology, Kurzweil writes that her father’s definition of infinity is, “Computers become so small and dense that they become intelligence itself. Humans who do not grow up or grow old and seal our stories. Our stories wake up and keep writing themselves. This future sounds like liberation from the sadness of a story’s end. But it also sounds terrifying.”

That Kurzweil isn’t completely convinced of the merits of her father’s project, even though she loves him dearly and is helping him try and accomplish it, makes Artificial a satisfyingly complex and relatable story. It is a love story on many levels, and one well worth reading. 

The Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival runs Feb. 10-15. For the program guide and to purchase event tickets, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival.

Format ImagePosted on January 12, 2024January 11, 2024Author Cynthia RamsayCategories BooksTags AI, Amy Kurzweil, artificial intelligence, creativity, Frederic Kurzweil, graphic memoir, identity, Jewish Book Festival, Ray Kurzweil
Culture Crawl starts Nov. 16

Culture Crawl starts Nov. 16

Suzy Birstein is one of the many Jewish community artists taking part in this year’s Eastside Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design & Craft Festival, which runs Nov. 16-19. (photo by Britt Kwasney)

The 27th annual Eastside Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design & Craft Festival takes place Nov. 16-19 and features almost 450 artists, including many from the Jewish community. Among the community members opening their studios to visitors are Suzy Birstein, Olga Campbell, Hope Forstenzer, penny eisenberg, Robert Friedman, Lori Goldberg, Lynna Goldhar Smith, Ideet Sharon, Stacey Lederman, Shevy Levy, Lauren Morris and Esther Rausenberg.

“We welcome the public to dive back into the Culture Crawl this fall to experience and be inspired by our artists’ growth and discovery. [The pandemic] has been a time of change for many of us and I believe art is a conduit for moving forward together,” says Rausenberg in the event’s press release. Rausenberg is a photo artist, as well as artistic and executive director of the Eastside Arts Society, which puts on the Crawl.

The Independent spoke with a few of the participating Jewish artists about what visitors to their studios can expect to see, and whether creativity is a place of refuge or if it is harder for them to create in times of conflict, including but not limited to the Israel-Hamas war and the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Visitors to Birstein’s studio will see her “figures from fired clay infused with aged and lustred surfaces, which inspire paintings in oil, cold wax and collage.”

The artist is currently working on two series, which will merge into the solo retrospective at Il Museo Gallery, curated by Dr. Angela Clarke for 2025.

“Both series evoke my art/travel adventures to Europe, Mexico and Cambodia,” said Birstein.

“‘Ladies-Not-Waiting’ reference the gazed-upon women by old master painters – Velasquez, Fouquet and Manet – alongside self-portraits painted by masterful female artists, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini,” she said, while Tsipora (her Hebrew name, meaning Bird) is a series of loose self-portraits, which “embrace an exotic earthiness living within my poetic imagination.”

Both bodies of work, she said, “speak to nesting and transcendence, the mirror and reflection and celebrate the individual and universal.”

For Birstein, in times of conflict, “be it COVID, warfare, personal challenges – the only thing that centres me, coming directly from within me, is the creative refuge of my studio and making art. As I say this, I must stress that the love and compassion I feel for and receive from my family, friends, students and peers is the other half of that equation. I can’t imagine one without the other and I am extremely grateful.”

Friedman describes himself as “a muralist-styled stained glass artist.” He has worked in stained glass for more than 40 years and has recently added a blown glass dimension to his work, according to his website, which is also a recent addition.

“My studio is a great place and haven for creative thought and output,” he told the Independent. “[T]hese troubled times just [add] more impetus for me to have it reflected even more so in my artwork.”

Goldberg also finds herself more driven.

“My work is about vitality, life, vibration forging connections and bringing two opposing energies together as a way to find potential for resolution,” she said. “I have a responsibility as an artist to respond. I am more motivated. Expressing ‘Heaven on Earth’ is one way I respond to pain and suffering.”

Goldberg had a three-month residency on the North Shore, which she spent painting the forest – work that studio visitors will see.

“I was recently reading the book Speak for the Trees by Diana Beresford-Kroger about how the roots of the trees, the mycelium and plants and trees talk to each other,” said Goldberg. “By painting in the forest, I learnt how to listen, experience the tranquility, vitality and interconnectedness of the forest and to myself.”

Since the spring, Goldhar Smith has been “creating minimal colour-field style landscapes based on the idea of the shape of light and the colour of shadows,” she said. “The paintings are rendered in soft blues and pastels or deeper mysterious tones and suggest memories of places real and imagined.”

She acknowledged, “The conflict in Israel has, of course, been enormously upsetting and I find myself in despair for both sides of the conflict. My paintings do not yet reflect these emotions, but they will in coming months. I don’t yet know what I will be painting but I will be exploring more difficult terrain.”

For Forstenzer – a glass artist and director of the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery – creativity can be a place of refuge, but also more challenging in times of conflict.

“Making work when I’m feeling the stress of all that’s going on personally and globally is truly healing,” she explained, “but when I’m feeling overrun with those things, it can be a lot harder to fully concentrate at times.”

Lately, Forstenzer has been making glass clocks, something she describes as “incredibly fun.”

“I can experiment with colour and pattern in the glass, and I’ve learned a lot about clockwork mechanisms, which is also an exciting thing to dive into – I’ve been down many rabbit holes online about clockmakers,” she said. “I’ll have a bunch of clocks on display and for sale at the Crawl.

“I also have spent a lot of the last year generally playing with colour and pattern,” she added. “I’ve made vessels – vases, bowls, cups – that experiment with a particular colour or look or pattern or stripe in glass. Once I have a colour process in place, I often go on to use those colours, patterns and processes in sculptural pieces. Since I’ve done so much experimenting this year, there will be a lot of pieces on display and for sale at the Crawl as well.”

In addition to opening their studios, Forstenzer and Birstein are part of the Crawl’s juried exhibition, which has the theme “Out of Control.”

“At a time when we start to celebrate our freedom from pandemic restrictions, it’s an opportunity to reclaim experiences that were denied for so long, a chance to think outside of the box and just let go,” says Rausenberg in the press release.

The exhibition features the work of 80-plus Eastside artists and takes place at multiple venues: Alternative Creations Gallery and Strange Fellows Gallery (both until Nov. 19), the Pendulum Gallery (until Nov. 24) and the Cultch (until Nov. 25).

For more information, visit culturecrawl.ca.

Posted on November 10, 2023November 9, 2023Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Visual ArtsTags creativity, David Friedman, Eastside Culture Crawl, glass, Hope Forstenzer, Lori Goldberg, Lynna Goldhar Smith, painting, sculpture, stained glass, Suzy Birstein
How to be radically creative

How to be radically creative

Linda Dayan Frimer speaks about her new book, Luminous, at the Waldman Library on Nov. 27. (photo from Linda Dayan Frimer)

Linda Dayan Frimer’s new coffee table book, Luminous: An Artist’s Story as a Guide to Radical Creativity, takes the reader from Frimer’s early years in rural British Columbia through to the present, mixing her own story with encouraging the reader to jump-start their inner artist. Along the way, the multifaceted memoir also incorporates art history, spirituality and Judaism.

For Frimer, who was raised in the Cariboo District town of Wells, where hers was the only Jewish family in the community, making art is something she has done since early childhood.

“Painting was the same as experiencing wonder and awe within creation, where everything – the trees, their trunks and the big starry sky – led to a sense of a creation unified through colour. Just as it was for Chagall, colour from early childhood was love for me,” Frimer told the Independent in a recent interview.

As she grew and learned more of her own cultural suffering, and empathized with the suffering of the First Nations peoples in the Cariboo region, she longed to express this love for creation by unifying and healing in her own way, however she could.

“Art-making was my remarkable tool and the colourful, light-filled forests surrounding my home was my first inspiration,” she said. “I then learned the power of stories and how to tell them visually using photographs. This led to sharing reverence with other cultural groups, particularly in a group show called Kaleidoscope, where I met Cree artist George Littlechild. And our work on sharing cultural reverence through art – and our great and soulful friendship – began.”

A later example of the power of stories occurred when child Holocaust survivor Renia Perel showed Frimer a letter that was written 50 years after the death of Perel’s mother. Frimer created visual tribute in which Perel was able to write the letter into the artwork.

Exploring book’s subtitle

According to Frimer, radical creativity is an intense action that has the potential to occur each time we bring something new into creation. “It impacts upon the fundamental way we see and experience the world at a particular time, which can lead to each of us to having an inward moral experience. To be radically creative is to not only express what is most deeply felt but to hold an intense connection and longing to heal, and to unify this creation and ourselves within it,” she said.

“This calls upon and leads each of us to think deeply and imagine more. Bold and courageous radical creativity is ours each time our heightened emotional selves seeks a creative means to both respond to and enlighten the darkness of uncertain political and societal times.”

Citing various modern artists, Frimer noted that Picasso painted “Guernica” in only black, grey and white in response and protest to the impact and suffering caused by the Spanish Civil War on the Basque town of Guernica. American artist Adolph Gottlieb released the creative potential of the unconscious mind by painting the opposite polarities in existence as dots on a spectrum, where, with only one change, one dot could become the other, she said. And Czech painter Alphonse Mucha wrote that the purpose of art is never to destroy but always to create, to construct bridges.

In an era fraught with loss of species and forests through global warming, the war in Ukraine and other conflicts, economic suffering, the pandemic, among other issues, Frimer said, “We, like the aforementioned spiritual visionaries, greatly need to be people of true feeling with the creative purpose of constructing bridges.”

Radical creativity driven by one’s inner core self, she said, takes colours and forms and, often intuitively, paints an open emotional response to what urgently will need expression in our own time.

“To be radically creative is to be amazed by creation,” she said. “I paint from my heart all that I feel and all that comes through me as my receptive and creative art becomes more abstract. I am open to the source of this inspiration and grateful.”

Source of inspiration

Throughout her book, Frimer delves into the history and significance of colour. She includes dozens of exercises for aspiring artists of all levels, and highlights the role of creativity as a positive force between humanity and nature.

In Frimer’s words, “All creativity begins with a dot, in our imagination and on paper. In that movement of the first spark, everything and everyone is equal, and all of us equally creative.”

She hopes the reader will “take a journey to their own essence, their inner child who was created without memory and was free from fear of appearances and outside judgment – and also to look and to see more deeply and to be more aware of the energy of the colours in their midst daily. And to use these colours in their own expression of radical creativity.”

Colours are symbols and tools that can offer personal and universal meaning and lead to deepening understanding and caretaking of both nature and culture, she said.

“I’m hoping the art history shared and the stories of great artists, who, as seers in their time were radically creative, can enlighten and inspire individual pathways ahead,” she said.

Luminous is available through Chapters, Amazon, area bookstores and the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. Frimer will speak at the Waldman Library on Nov. 27, at 3 p.m.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Format ImagePosted on November 11, 2022November 9, 2022Author Sam MargolisCategories BooksTags art, creativity, Luminous, Waldman Library
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