By Josh Watkins
Given the current state of our country, it is more important than ever that we embrace our queerness with ferocity. We must continue to challenge conformity and be as visible as possible.
On February 20–24, OUTsider Fest, Austin’s annual queer transmedia festival, returns with this motive in mind. This year’s festival is appropriately themed “Unlock the Cabinet of QUEERIOSITIES,” and promises to be “a queer take on the cabinet of curiosities and its peculiar oddities.” Through this lens, OUTsider calls on the eccentric and strange intersections of art by recalibrating the relationship between “queeriosities” and the “forces of colonization, capitalist accumulation, entitlement, and the ‘exotic.'”
OUTsider was first launched in 2013, the brainchild of a small group of queer artist friends who recognized the need for an exploratory artistic space in Austin to match the city’s burgeoning and unparalleled queer scene. The fest, which meshes all creative disciplines for a provocative, out-of-the-box experience, aims to spotlight the most overlooked and unrepresented LGBTQ voices. OUTsider is intentional in allowing the most marginalized voices to take center stage, challenging the everyday erasures and oppressions the queer community faces.
Now in its fifth year, it seems as though the festival only gets better with age. Here’s what we’re most excited for in this year’s impeccably curated lineup:
Trans* Poptronic Princess Ah-Mer-Ah-Sur kicks off OUTsider on Wednesday, February 20.
- OUTsider kicks off Wednesday, February 20, with an opening night party to “unlock the cabinets of your minds and unleash those queeriosities,” featuring Trans* Poptronic Princess Ah-Mer-Ah-Sur and hip-hop activists Krudxs Cubensi.
- Thursday features “Hot Bits,” a traveling queer erotic film festival (curated exclusively for OUTsider 2019) that “celebrates and elevates alternative representations of pleasure, empowerment, and self-love made by and for marginalized people.”
- Friday’s highlights include home., a dance-poetry piece that “[delves] into daily realities as a Black, lesbian couple living and loving in NYC,” and the annual Legacy Award ceremony, which will be awarded this year to Phranc, the legendary singer, songwriter, and merger of the intersections of DIY punk rock, feminism, and “butch lesbian swagger.”
- Spend Saturday at (Un)Documents, the first full-length solo show of award-winning actor and poet Jesus I. Valles, in which he, “journeys across both sides of a river with two names, moving between languages to find his place as a son, a lover, a teacher, and a brother in a nation that demands sacrifice at the altar of citizenship,” as well as OUTsider’s first official “Spoken Word Spectacular,” a show five years in the making.
- Wrap up Sunday with the “Gay Ballet,” an all-inclusive beginner ballet class; Still or I’ve been Choreographed, a performance from Kevin Williamson that merges dance, light design, and Williamson’s admiration for Janet Jackson; and the OUTsider 2019 closing night party, featuring performances from Dorian Wood and Felix and the Future!
Thursday features “Hot Bits,” a traveling queer erotic film festival (curated exclusively for OUTsider 2019) that “celebrates and elevates alternative representations of pleasure, empowerment, and self-love made by and for marginalized people.”
This year’s festival is turning the tricks and pulling out all the stops, so don’t miss it! Take yourself out to a show or two (or the entire weekend!), and support your local queer artists, movers, and shakers by celebrating their fierce visibility and defiance of the status quo.
What: OUTsider Fest 2019
When: February 20–24, 2019
Where: The VORTEX, 2307 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78722
Details: outsiderfest.org
