The McGill Daily (MD): Can you speak a little about your goal of transforming the environment in which music is experienced?

Juan Sebastian (JS): Within the history of classical music, audiences have been expected to follow a certain protocol. We know how we are supposed to behave, and we aren’t supposed to talk. One of the first things I want to do is challenge those conventions. These parameters affect the way in which the audience interacts with the musician. When you invite people to a concert in an unconventional space, they start to wonder what it will be like. It becomes a whole experience from the moment people show up and bring a bottle of wine, to when they start meeting new people and interacting with the musician in this intimate space. Finding unconventional spaces is about challenging the tradition of conventional concert spaces and their use, while still keeping the high quality of music.
The feedback we received from the first “Mira” concert was incredibly positive. From professional musicians to younger listeners, it was a great way to reach different audiences and different people. It’s always a nice evening, and it’s enhanced by the intimate connection with the music, which can be hard to find in more traditional spaces.

MD: There can be a false sense of intimacy in listening to music because of YouTube or Spotify. Nowadays, it’s harder to find actual intimacy within a musical environment. How does “Mira” work to change this?

JS: In the past, music was enjoyed and performed in small salons, with few people. The only way to experience music was to have live performances, and we didn’t have large auditoriums. With “Mira,” we are not presenting something new – within the context of this century it is different, but it connects with the roots of how music has been historically experienced. I think people respond so well because you have a performer presenting a contemporary piece, and they are right in front of you in such a friendly environment, and that allows people to appreciate something that perhaps could be intimidating to them in a different setting. When music is formalized by an institution, it can alienate a lot of audiences.

“Mira’s” aim is to make the spaces in which music is consumed more accessible. Classical music, specifically, has historically been a classist, Eurocentric, and exclusionary art form.

MD: When you were first thinking of hosting these events, were you aiming to target new audiences, allowing music to reach people who wouldn’t necessarily approach it on their own?

JS: Absolutely, that is one of our main goals. Even as a performer, with my duo, we dress a bit differently and play music that is aimed to resonate with younger audiences. As a young professional, I want to play for people my age, and usually, with the classical music I perform, the audience members are 60 or older. There’s nothing wrong with that, but music should be accessible for everyone. This depends on how we present it and bring it to people – that’s a key aspect.
Fundamentally, people are engaged in the experience and not in the concert series. It’s not like we say, “we have this performer, and he is famous because he won these completions or has these awards.” It goes beyond that, we try to welcome performers of different musical backgrounds and social statuses.

Within the history of classical music, audiences have been expected to follow a certain protocol. We know how we are supposed to behave, and we aren’t supposed to talk. One of the first things I want to do is challenge those conventions.

MD: Classical music is often regarded as something for older people that should be played and consumed in a very conservative way. How do you fight against this perception?

JS: I keep this in mind always – how can I make the art accessible and interesting without losing its value? There is a fine line that can be crossed – I mean you could do a cover of “Despacito” with a cello and get 34 million views. That’s fine, but that’s not what I want to do. I want to offer a product that has some value, and on top of that I want to have my own voice as a performer.
First, having unconventional spaces and finding people to play for is already a step forward in connecting in a meaningful way with your audience. In terms of performing, we are often not able to choose what we play. Many times I’m told what the repertoire is, and we have to make a living. However, when I have the opportunity to play with friends, for example, with my duo, we try to portray a younger image, even if we play classical music. I wear a baseball cap and a t-shirt, but I play Bach. I’m trying to make the music less intimidating and exclusive to people who can’t identify with the conservative, exclusionary image that classical music often has. I also don’t want to wear a suit and bow-tie in all black, I don’t connect with that image either – I would like to play for people my age. So, with my duo, we select a repertoire based on our own musical tastes and interests. We find a balance, without losing a sense of where we come from as classical musicians. As a result, we can perform mixtures of classical and contemporary composers and present it in ways that are more appealing. It’s not only with our image, like me wearing sneakers, but also with regards to the refreshing musical content of what we play. It’s interesting and provides the audience with a sense of us going forward, but also telling them where we are coming from.

This interview has been translated from Spanish and edited for length and clarity.

Check Stick & Bow’s website for information on their upcoming shows: stickandbow.com.

The post Making Music More Accessible appeared first on The McGill Daily.

After interviewing Laura Bari, The McGill Daily had the opportunity to meet and spend time with the women from the documentary. Our conversation revolved around their take on feminism, healing, and female sexuality.

The McGill Daily (MD): What role did feminism and becoming activists play in your healing processes?

Aldana Bari (AB): Feminism is an important avenue for changing the way we view abuse. Feminism is about rebuilding survivors, and it allows us to destroy a lot of concepts about ourselves that have been socially ingrained. It helps us to start reconstructing ourselves after a traumatic experience. It is ingrained in us to believe that female sexuality is a taboo: no one talks about about female masturbation, for example. Women, and especially women of colour, have been programmed, in a sense, to forget about their body and to not acknowledge it. However, we should be able to think about our sexuality free from shame or fear.

Rocio Alvarez (RA): I dove into feminist activism when I began working on Primas. Feminism negates the idea of victimization and allows us to get rid of the guilt and shame that comes with abuse and assault. Women carry a lot of weight imposed by patriarchal systems of power on their shoulders. This weight is intergenerational. It shuts us up and tells us that being raped was our fault, for the skirt we wore. No! It was the fucking rapist’s fault for committing such an awful crime. Understanding that it is never the victim’s fault, no matter where they are, what state they are in, or what they might be wearing, is difficult for society to understand. It’s crucial to create spaces for women to express themselves and to understand that we have always been oppressed, because oppression is institutional. When looking to place blame, society’s finger points at the victim. So much shame is put onto survivors that it makes us believe we are there for the taking. It terrifies me to think that anything could happen to my body because it didn’t belong to me in the first place, as if I was somehow designed for someone else’s enjoyment. Challenging the notions society has created for women and all survivors, and the ways we think about abuse, are integral parts of feminism to me. As a survivor, my sexuality, my body, and my everyday life were affected by the trauma. Speaking against sexual violence is very important to me, and it’s important to let other survivors know that our sexuality matters.

“I didn’t choose for this to happen, but I will carry my body with pride. It represents my battle scars and if I don’t carry it well, no one will.” – Rocio Alvarez

AB: After my assault, it was very hard for me to rediscover my body. But to find your own body after a traumatic experience is crucial.

RA: As feminists and protagonists of Primas, we have met a lot of sexual abuse survivors. Many of them carry trauma that stops them from expressing their sexuality freely, and this is something that needs to be talked about more. I was very fortunate not to struggle with my sexuality after my assault, but I am aware that many survivors can’t enjoy their sexuality, sometimes indefinitely. Feminism is about becoming aware and deconstructing all the social weight that has been imparted on us. We also have to understand that not all feminists are the same, and we all push for different aspects of the movement and have different ideas. But feminism has allowed me to fight alongside many wonderful people.

“Women, and especially women of colour, have been programmed, in a sense, to forget about their body and to not acknowledge it. However, we should be able to think about our sexuality free from shame or fear.” – Aldana Bari

MD: What has the process of rediscovering your bodies through art been like for you?

RA: I began doing a lot of aerial acrobatics and it allowed me to start expressing my emotions physically. I worked very hard to feel comfortable in my skin again. I used art and physical expression to rediscover my body. I explored body painting, which I thought I would never do, as a way to perceive myself as a canvas. In a way, it helped me remake myself. I was able to say, “I didn’t choose for this to happen, but I will carry my body with pride. It represents my battle scars and if I don’t carry it well, no one will.” Through art, I was able to find myself again.

AB: For me, I felt like after my assault, I neglected my body for a long time. Theatre helped me regain awareness of myself and my physicality. I started with the most minimal ways of self-expression – just focusing on my sense of touch. After that, I began to listen to what my body wants, and after ignoring it for so long, it has now become my guide.

MD: How do you feel now that you are travelling the world with Primas, and your stories have been seen all-over?

AB: At first, it didn’t really sink in that rooms full of people would witness my story. After seeing the audience’s reaction at the first screening, I realized that the film was creating a space for others to share their experiences and to help them heal, too. I know that I’m not the only one that something like this has happened to, so I share my story. When we do the panels after the film screenings, we get to connect with others who see themselves in our experiences. This connection allows us to heal together.

RA: The audience completes the artistic process of the film. My story is very personal, but being able to share it with others is what really completes the journey for me. It’s incredible to see Primas through the viewer’s’ perspective. The first time we saw it, we cried the whole way through. I didn’t know what to expect from the audience, but when the film ended, a man came up to me, crying and hugging me. It was fulfilling to see that he was touched by our stories. Witnessing the relationship between our film and its audience, and the effects we mutually have on each other, was incredible.

Primas will be screened at Ciné-Campus Université de Montréal on November 13.

The film Primas works closely with Mouvement Contre le Viol et l’Inceste (514-278-9383) mcvi@contreleviol.org

This interview has been translated from Spanish and edited for clarity.

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Primas goes far beyond telling the story of what happened to Roccio and Aldana. It is not a story of merely what happened, but of who they are, who they want to be, and the journey they must take in order to grow. The film’s central themes are resilience and imagination as therapy. When I spoke to Bari, she explained how she strived to create a space of autonomy and safety to avoid re-victimizing the characters. In the official statement on the film, Bari explains that “[The girls and I] worked together on this project: a project of self-expression for these two young women, and the construction of a film for me. They introduced me to their worlds, and I in turn exposed them to a multitude of stimuli. I designed and proposed imagined situations, creating a mise-en-abyme for them to explore and play. They turned their reality into dreams, in order to dream up a new reality tomorrow.”

Primas possesses an astounding ability to dive into stories that have caused immense pain only to showcase resilience.

“I would not use the word healing to describe the filmmaking process, but it is transformative. It is as if Roccio and Aldana are little onions, and we are slowly pulling back layers. As we peel them, they get to embark on the adventure of exploring themselves. This is the experimental part of the film, as we jumped into it without knowing where it will take us. But it began as a project where we wanted their bodies to tell a story their mouths couldn’t. They knew it was a process through which they would experience many things, but despite the fear, they thrived, and it was marvelous.

“The film is a form of therapy, in the sense that Roccio and Aldana found themselves in it. When thinking about how to tell the girls’ story, I thought about ethics. For me, ethics and aesthetics go hand in hand. When I heard Roccio’s story, and when I found my characters, I asked them about their dreams, which led them to think about what they imagine for themselves. Our work together was always evoking the imaginary. The girls would tell me about their dreams, and in Roccio’s case, I told her, ‘what if you are a crocodile girl – your skin would be incredible. You would have planets and galaxies all over your skin.’ I would look at her skin and say ‘you have moons and constellations.’ She would just laugh in reply, and I would tell her, ‘what if you’re a teenage crocodile girl who goes to Paris every night and comes back to tell us what she has seen.’

“These conversations helped us to establish a sense of trust, a partnership. After that, we could create a film. Roccio expressed herself through art; she used sounds and images to tell her story. I showed her how the mics on the set worked, and I would schedule times for her to tell me her story. This way, I could create a mosaic of Roccio’s narrative, and avoid re-victimizing her. Of course, there has to be moments where we show the reality of her trauma; its impact had to be shown, but the challenge was to achieve that without voyeurism. There is a scene where Roccio says ‘I thought he was killing me,’ and later on we see just how young she was when this happened. In these moments we see how crucial it is for us to know the truth. We need to not only remember this instance, but also think of everyone this has happened to, including the ones that stayed quiet, and the ones who never made it to police stations.

When we hear about terrible crimes, it is easy to think about victims as just that, without realizing that in doing so, we dehumanize and rob them of their identity.

“The family and our concept of it can also be problematic, many children who suffer abuse, be it physical, psychological, or sexual, are coerced into never broaching the subject, because it would hurt their loved ones if they knew. There is this sense that it would destroy the ones that made them; it’s quite perverse.”

Set between Argentina and Montreal, Primas intertwines the girls’ imagination with the reality of their stories, allowing Roccio and Aldana to redefine their lives and narratives through art. The film not only speaks about the community that women can create for one another, but also about the communities that we as humans can make. It is within us to create, to live surrounded by love and the people that allow us to believe in the potential of our dreams.

The stories of the two girls are by no means easy to hear. Primas possesses an astounding ability to dive into stories that have caused immense pain only to showcase resilience. The crux of the documentary is in depicting the girls as they are: teenagers living in rural Argentina, trying to figure out how to share what cannot be said, and struggling to create a narrative that belongs to them. The awe we feel when we witness the autonomy and growth of Roccio and Aldana towers above any initial sympathy we might have for their pain.

Primas not only challenges, but completely obliterates the notion that a victim is only their scars.

“It is a challenge as a director to navigate my way through such delicate topics, but respect to me is the fundamental base. I make film like I breathe – I can’t stop – and when I do it, I know it is a process of transformation for both the crew and the characters. In the case of Primas, the girls are teenagers, which is already such a complicated time. The transformation of the body is hard at this age, and there are many responsibilities. Thus, when I film, I create a space where we feel safe, and dive into these complexities with trust in each other.”

When we hear about terrible crimes, it is easy to think about victims as just that, without realizing that in doing so, we dehumanize and rob them of their identity. We replace the person with a hollow story of trauma. Primas not only challenges, but completely obliterates the notion that a victim is only their scars. In no way is this a story about victims. It is a story about survivors, and girls who forge life out of pain; girls who were not the authors of their past, but who are now the authors of their future.

Cinema is transcendent. In just a few hours, it has the power to transform an audience, be it through the stories it tells or the ideas it relays. Bari reflects that “the documentary spans 3 years of the girls’ lives; that’s the amount of time we needed to really showcase their transformation. Then, we had to wrap it into 1.5 hours! In that sense, we barely have 2 hours to get into a person’s mind and to also transform them.”

Primas will be screened from September 28 to October 1 in several locations around Montreal. You can follow the event page “Ciné-rencontres avec l’équipe – Primas” on Facebook for more information about screenings.

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I reached out to Reed to speak to her about the challenges that come with running a startup, why she later decided to leave her brand, and to gain insight into her recent podcast called “Self-Care Sundays.” The latter is exclusively a space for women to share their stories and to talk openly about mental health and entrepreneurship.

The McGill Daily (MD): What drove you to start Wear Your Own Label at such a young age, and what was the inspiration behind it?

Kayley Reed (KR): When I was 20, I was in my last year at the University of New Brunswick, and I was struggling with my own mental health. Actually, I had been in a bad place for a while. It was something I didn’t talk about with anybody in my life. I had always been a perfectionist, and I thought that struggling with mental illness was something that I couldn’t share, because I didn’t want others to look at me differently. So, I struggled in silence for two or three years. Since then, I have seen a massive shift in things, from initiatives like BELL’s “Let’s Talk.” However, at the time, my mental health still felt difficult to talk about. I didn’t even tell my parents or my closest friends. In my last year of university, I started volunteering at a mental health organization, and that was also when I started receiving more treatment and help for my eating disorder. Those two things combined was how I came to realize that this is a much more common issue than I had previously thought. At that point, I started to ask myself why more people weren’t talking about it. Why is it still so hard to talk about something that affects so many of us? So, my co-founder and I started Wear Your Own Label as a side project in school for a social enterprise class. We just wanted to create a clothing campaign with positive messages and give money back to the mental health organization we were working with, and from that idea we were accepted into a business accelerator program. This side project turned into a business organically.

I was mentally drained. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t talk openly about the struggles of entrepreneurship, or about how taxing it is on your physical and mental health.

MD: What was the process of leaving Wear Your Own Label and starting something new?

KR: I did Wear Your Own Label full-time for 3 years and grew an awesome team. Things I could only dream of, and that I never expected to happen, were all of a sudden a reality. We were selling internationally and we got to debut at New York Fashion Week. But what happened after 3 years of full-time startup grinding was that I became physically and financially exhausted. Perhaps even more importantly, I was mentally drained. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t talk openly about the struggles of entrepreneurship, or about how taxing it is on your physical and mental health. You work 14 hour days, followed by restless, anxious nights. Ironically, I had built this startup to raise awareness about mental health and self-care without realizing or acknowledging my own struggles. The brand was motivating me while I was recovering from my eating disorder; however, with time, my mental health started to decline again. That was a hard realization, because I was really attached to the startup. Being a mental health advocate defined me in a lot of ways. Equally, mental health advocacy in general is hard, because it’s very personal, so sharing your story and hearing those of other people over and over in front of crowds and on social media can take a toll on you. Ultimately, burning out in my startup is what led me to leave Wear Your Own Label after three years and start a new chapter.
MD: What was the motivation for your podcast “Self-Care Sundays”?

KR: After leaving my startup, I needed to focus on my own self-care. A lot of the time, I find conversations with my female friends or with women mentors in my life to be immensely therapeutic. The podcast emerged as an idea from the discussions we were having. Significantly, I wanted to keep it an all-female circle. There are a million and one podcasts out there that are hosted by men, but I felt like there weren’t many platforms for women, so I wanted to create something to fill that gap. I saw “Self-Care Sundays” as my passion project, and I secured a couple of sponsors for it. It’s pretty simple: an episode every Sunday. I usually interview a woman I find inspiring and go behind the scenes of entrepreneurship to see it intersect with mental health. Otherwise, I do a solo episode where I reflect on self-care and mental health in some way. I have found the podcast to be a form of self-care for me, and I will keep doing it as long as it continues to give me that. If there ever comes a time where I feel I am forcing myself to do it, I’ll stop.

MD: As an influencer who works with other influencers, what are some barriers and stigmas within social media you feel are still difficult to break?

KR: I think the biggest question and source of hardship on social media is the idea of “authenticity.” Everyone strives for it, as we all know that “being authentic” is key to connecting with followers. Of course, that in itself poses a problem, as we can’t be truly authentic if we are actively seeking authenticity. Even when authentic, we are still choosing which authentic moments to post. For example, I could open up about my eating disorder, but I would still be choosing what parts of my story to share. I also choose the when and how, so it remains a curated story. There is a constant struggle and balance between wanting to use Instagram as a tool for good and recognizing that it also perpetuates a lot of these negative stereotypes and stigmas. Sometimes, we contribute to the problem just by virtue of being consumers. It’s a fine line, but I nonetheless love working with influencers, because there’s so many ways to tell powerful and important stories.

There are a million and one podcasts out there that are hosted by men, but I felt like there weren’t many platforms for women, so I wanted to create something to fill that gap.

MD: Working hand in hand with startups, what business trends do you see developing?

KR: I see startups becoming a trend in themselves. With the rise of Instagram and Shopify, we are in an age where anyone with $30 can create a startup (the price of a Shopify store). But because there is a low entry barrier, the space is very competitive and over-saturated. Startup influencers have been telling us how easy it is to launch a startup, and that anybody can do it and become successful. The problem now is that it is too accessible. Instagram influencers also struggle in that way, in the sense that if everybody can be an influencer, is anybody really? This over-saturation, particularly of lifestyle brands, has been a trend, and we might see things taper off as more people try and fail. The general trend is that everyone will be an entrepreneur, and everyone will have a side-hustle, if they don’t already, but the meaning of entrepreneurship will drastically change.

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