In Conversation with Erin Reznick
Self-identifiers: Publisher, curator, creative director, organizer, connector, cultural producer; Currently working on: MVS Thesis, various other cool things
Let’s have a conversation!
Facilitated by Claire Allen, SHIFT* Writing Director
Image originally published in PHILE Issue 04: Predicaments and sourced from PHILE Website. Republished with the permission of the artist.
Image Description: Portrait of individual with white latex suit and mask gazing at viewer. Face is gripped by another pair of black latex hands holding a pair of eyelash curlers.
So, you saw the questions I sent you–cool. I was thinking we could start from there, and just get a conversation going, talk about you, your practice, and anything else you think is interesting or worth mentioning. Sound good?
Sure.
Great.
Q: How would you define your practice, since the time you started creating, to now? How has it been informed by other aspects of your life, and how has it shaped you in turn, if at all?
I mean, it’s kind of a hard question to answer these days, because being creative requires you to wear very different hats. By taking different jobs that require different skills, I’ve been led down multiple paths to where I am today. I guess I would say I’m a cultural producer, which entails a lot of things–whether it’s publishing, curating, or video producing, just using administrative and organizational skills to help bring creative ideas or research to life in various ways. That’s kind of been a throughline in my career, is being a producer–whether that’s helping to produce artist’s work or producing my own ideas.
– On learning to be administratively adept
I started in performance, with an interest in music and acting. I was quite young when I started doing that. As with any artist in any field, you kind of have to make your own opportunities. Being an actor, I was constantly encouraged to change myself to fit the role or the production—I kind of wanted to perform of my own accord, so I started organizing my own events and productions and that kind of led me to helping other people organize theirs.
I got a degree at UTSC for Arts Management, which taught me how to do the more practical things like marketing, public relations, exhibition coordinating and stuff like that. And then I kind of went from there–project to project, city to city, kind of bouncing around–and that eventually led to me making my own project, PHILE.”
Q: On PHILE–what inspired you to create a journal that explores sex and fetish in a more academic and analytic way? Was that something that you felt was lacking?
Yeah, I guess so. In terms of art and culture magazines, there’s a lot out there–they don't necessarily differ from one another. It’s also something that I’m interested in knowing–it's like, why do these things exist and how, what’s influencing them, and what are the sociological/anthropological issues behind it? It's something that I knew I wanted to explore. And of course just wanting to make it as high quality as possible. I think also that PHILE is of a political nature and wanting to be respectful–we wanted to avoid this kind of voyeurism/shock journalism, that’s not what we were interested in. We wanted to hear from people who are part of these communities and make it accessible for people to understand. It’s easy for people to sort of dismiss some of these non-normative sexual expressions because they look super provocative and scary, but the more you investigate it, the more you realize that there are elements to each sexual expression that are innate to each and every one of us. That was kind of the main mission of PHILE–to approach it from a more scholarly lens kind of helped to explain those points of view.
Q: What would you say the value is of having a published platform where artists can share their work, and maybe share something that is not entirely accepted in other realms of the art world–especially in an increasingly digital age?
Well, if we’re talking about publishing and print culture in particular, there’s a lot of value to independent publishing. Something that we came up against a lot with PHILE was online censorship, because the ways in which we interact with each other today are mediated by these corporations that deem what is morally acceptable in their “community guidelines”–so any kind of queer or sexual content, even if it wasn’t explicit, was removed. And so the only place, and the safest place that we could disseminate our messaging was through print, because obviously, it’s not being regulated. I think there’s also some irony there–because the publications that we were originally inspired by and were modeling PHILE after were magazines from the 1960s and 1970s that were constantly censored due to their “obscene” content. And with the dawn of the internet, people kind of assumed that it would be a more egalitarian and democratic place in sharing these kinds of messaging. But as we’ve seen over the past couple decades, there’s been a huge flip, and now everything that we post online is being regulated. The only free space is in print.
– On becoming interested in print publishing
I think for me, personally, I’m kind of an organizer and a connector–so a project like publishing was interesting to me because I enjoy assembling and managing a team of people, and getting the right people to work with each other to make something amazing. So a publication, it kind of seemed like the right realm for that. Mike Feswick (PHILE co-creator) also had some experience in publishing–he created his own queer zine that also inspired the direction for PHILE. So the two of us were just kind of aching for some kind of project, and for a long time, we didn’t know what it was going to be–and so when we came up with this idea, it just made sense for us. We pounced on it.
Q: With PHILE being one of your most well-known endeavors, have you ever faced challenges because of people’s preconceived notions of sex as a subject? Was that ever difficult for you to overcome?
Of course, you know, wanting to involve certain people or organizations and kind of showing them our pitch–maybe it would have been too provocative for them and their brand, so they wouldn't want to get involved. But honestly, we didn't experience too much of that because the people we would be approaching, we knew would be interested and we weren't interested in people who weren’t interested in us. And actually, we were really surprised at the amount of support that we got from the beginning. People were very interested in the subject matter and the project, and everyone kind of volunteered to work for free, especially for the first issue. Wwe got some big name contributors for the first issue without having anything to show. But people were interested and galvanized by the idea, and so everyone was quite excited to work on it. We were very grateful for that.
Q: Of everything you’ve ever done, artistically or otherwise, is there anything that stands out, or is particularly important, to you?
I mean, it's hard to pinpoint one thing, but I think the entire project of PHILE was one of the most rewarding things I've done. Because again, working with an amazing team of people, and having something to say, was really moving. And being galvanized to have a point of view and to share stories, or to really create a platform for other people to share their stories, where they normally wouldn't have one. And working with amazing people from all around the world was quite a rewarding experience. The whole project of making a physical book is also really lovely– it’s a great experience to make a physical artefact. So yeah. It’s hard to say what my favourite thing is–everything I’ve done has value in my life. But PHILE was very rewarding for me.
“We weren't interested in people who weren’t interested in us.”
– On her other work and being in the MVS program
It’s interesting–I never considered myself a formal curator, but the nature of that role is not so different from that of a producer, or a publisher, or a creative director. All those responsibilities and roles are quite blurry, it just depends on which realm of the art world you’re in. I have had experience in helping organize and curate more formal exhibitions, but as a collaborative team–I was on the board of directors at 8/11, which was a project space in Toronto that closed a few years ago, and living in Berlin, I was also on the board of Berlin Art Prize, which was an annual juried art prize that ended in a group exhibition and event. My main speciality is events–I'm very well-versed in organizing large scale events, whether they be exhibitions, or concerts, or raves. But whether it’s events or publishing or working in a gallery, it’s more about the relationships you have with people–working with artists and designers and different teams to make sure everybody's voices are heard, everybody is valued and working together to make the best end product possible.
– On being drawn to Daniels
I guess being from Toronto, I know the faculty, I knew a lot of people who graduated from the program. And it’s so small–it’s very individualized. Also knowing that I didn't come from a traditional curatorial or art historical background. I was really looking to explore the space between these defined roles of publisher/creative director/curator and wanting to see what happens if I experiment with these roles and these spaces, and knowing that the individualized nature of the program would be well suited to that kind of experimentation.
– On what’s next
I mean, it’s very hard to tell. I don’t know, I’ve gotten this far by just looking at projects and research that interest me, asking myself different questions, and allowing those questions to inform my action. Whether that be making a publication, or an exhibition, or starting a company or changing the field completely, I don’t know. I’m kind of here to figure that out.
Right now, I’m researching and investigating how we, as a society, express grief on social media. How we grieve together, collectively or individually through these platforms, and the relationship between individual and communal grief, and how those meet through these digital mediations. Looking at grief, it’s such a big emotion–I’m investigating what happens to that emotion when we start to frame it and control how it’s represented, visually and textually through these platforms. That’s kind of where I’m at.
Nice. That sounds really interesting.
Thank you.
– On recommendations for people who want to create something innovative, new, exciting
Having a clear idea of who your audience is going to be is going to help inform your project–how you’re going to design it, market it, cater to it. Also understanding, “why is this important, why is it important to me, what questions am I trying to answer? Who is this project for, really?” I think that's going to kind of inform the point of view of the project. And I think just don’t be afraid to do it. I know a lot of people who come to me with so many plans and marketing plans and branding plans before they even start to make the project, and I’m like, “you just have to make it. Just try.” Things are gonna change–you’re gonna see what works and see what doesn’t work, and you can shift and go from there. It doesn't have to be a fully realized, perfect idea from the beginning. Just start, dive in and see where it goes.
Q: Is this where you saw yourself when you got started in theatre school? Are you where you expected to end up?
>laughter
No. Definitely not. You know, your life is just made up by the choices you make in your day to day. That’s going to inform where you go. I mean of course, having some kind of long, linear plan is great, but there’s no way to really control that. And starting from theatre school– which is like, a part of me that I really don't relate to anymore–I would have never expected to end up here. I knew nothing about art–really, nothing at all, and I kind of just learned by observing the people around me and teaching myself. I didn't have a traditional curatorial or art historical background. I really taught myself everything that I know, by just working, and keeping my eyes and ears open and looking for opportunities and trying to seize those opportunities. It’s led me to so many different places, and I’m sure it’s going to keep leading me to places that I don’t expect.
Cool. Well, thank you–for answering all my questions.
Thank you for asking me.
Sure.
Great.
Q: How would you define your practice, since the time you started creating, to now? How has it been informed by other aspects of your life, and how has it shaped you in turn, if at all?
I mean, it’s kind of a hard question to answer these days, because being creative requires you to wear very different hats. By taking different jobs that require different skills, I’ve been led down multiple paths to where I am today. I guess I would say I’m a cultural producer, which entails a lot of things–whether it’s publishing, curating, or video producing, just using administrative and organizational skills to help bring creative ideas or research to life in various ways. That’s kind of been a throughline in my career, is being a producer–whether that’s helping to produce artist’s work or producing my own ideas.
– On learning to be administratively adept
I started in performance, with an interest in music and acting. I was quite young when I started doing that. As with any artist in any field, you kind of have to make your own opportunities. Being an actor, I was constantly encouraged to change myself to fit the role or the production—I kind of wanted to perform of my own accord, so I started organizing my own events and productions and that kind of led me to helping other people organize theirs.
I got a degree at UTSC for Arts Management, which taught me how to do the more practical things like marketing, public relations, exhibition coordinating and stuff like that. And then I kind of went from there–project to project, city to city, kind of bouncing around–and that eventually led to me making my own project, PHILE.”
Q: On PHILE–what inspired you to create a journal that explores sex and fetish in a more academic and analytic way? Was that something that you felt was lacking?
Yeah, I guess so. In terms of art and culture magazines, there’s a lot out there–they don't necessarily differ from one another. It’s also something that I’m interested in knowing–it's like, why do these things exist and how, what’s influencing them, and what are the sociological/anthropological issues behind it? It's something that I knew I wanted to explore. And of course just wanting to make it as high quality as possible. I think also that PHILE is of a political nature and wanting to be respectful–we wanted to avoid this kind of voyeurism/shock journalism, that’s not what we were interested in. We wanted to hear from people who are part of these communities and make it accessible for people to understand. It’s easy for people to sort of dismiss some of these non-normative sexual expressions because they look super provocative and scary, but the more you investigate it, the more you realize that there are elements to each sexual expression that are innate to each and every one of us. That was kind of the main mission of PHILE–to approach it from a more scholarly lens kind of helped to explain those points of view.
Q: What would you say the value is of having a published platform where artists can share their work, and maybe share something that is not entirely accepted in other realms of the art world–especially in an increasingly digital age?
Well, if we’re talking about publishing and print culture in particular, there’s a lot of value to independent publishing. Something that we came up against a lot with PHILE was online censorship, because the ways in which we interact with each other today are mediated by these corporations that deem what is morally acceptable in their “community guidelines”–so any kind of queer or sexual content, even if it wasn’t explicit, was removed. And so the only place, and the safest place that we could disseminate our messaging was through print, because obviously, it’s not being regulated. I think there’s also some irony there–because the publications that we were originally inspired by and were modeling PHILE after were magazines from the 1960s and 1970s that were constantly censored due to their “obscene” content. And with the dawn of the internet, people kind of assumed that it would be a more egalitarian and democratic place in sharing these kinds of messaging. But as we’ve seen over the past couple decades, there’s been a huge flip, and now everything that we post online is being regulated. The only free space is in print.
“The only free space is in print.”
– On becoming interested in print publishing
I think for me, personally, I’m kind of an organizer and a connector–so a project like publishing was interesting to me because I enjoy assembling and managing a team of people, and getting the right people to work with each other to make something amazing. So a publication, it kind of seemed like the right realm for that. Mike Feswick (PHILE co-creator) also had some experience in publishing–he created his own queer zine that also inspired the direction for PHILE. So the two of us were just kind of aching for some kind of project, and for a long time, we didn’t know what it was going to be–and so when we came up with this idea, it just made sense for us. We pounced on it.
Q: With PHILE being one of your most well-known endeavors, have you ever faced challenges because of people’s preconceived notions of sex as a subject? Was that ever difficult for you to overcome?
Of course, you know, wanting to involve certain people or organizations and kind of showing them our pitch–maybe it would have been too provocative for them and their brand, so they wouldn't want to get involved. But honestly, we didn't experience too much of that because the people we would be approaching, we knew would be interested and we weren't interested in people who weren’t interested in us. And actually, we were really surprised at the amount of support that we got from the beginning. People were very interested in the subject matter and the project, and everyone kind of volunteered to work for free, especially for the first issue. Wwe got some big name contributors for the first issue without having anything to show. But people were interested and galvanized by the idea, and so everyone was quite excited to work on it. We were very grateful for that.
Q: Of everything you’ve ever done, artistically or otherwise, is there anything that stands out, or is particularly important, to you?
I mean, it's hard to pinpoint one thing, but I think the entire project of PHILE was one of the most rewarding things I've done. Because again, working with an amazing team of people, and having something to say, was really moving. And being galvanized to have a point of view and to share stories, or to really create a platform for other people to share their stories, where they normally wouldn't have one. And working with amazing people from all around the world was quite a rewarding experience. The whole project of making a physical book is also really lovely– it’s a great experience to make a physical artefact. So yeah. It’s hard to say what my favourite thing is–everything I’ve done has value in my life. But PHILE was very rewarding for me.
“We weren't interested in people who weren’t interested in us.”
– On her other work and being in the MVS program
It’s interesting–I never considered myself a formal curator, but the nature of that role is not so different from that of a producer, or a publisher, or a creative director. All those responsibilities and roles are quite blurry, it just depends on which realm of the art world you’re in. I have had experience in helping organize and curate more formal exhibitions, but as a collaborative team–I was on the board of directors at 8/11, which was a project space in Toronto that closed a few years ago, and living in Berlin, I was also on the board of Berlin Art Prize, which was an annual juried art prize that ended in a group exhibition and event. My main speciality is events–I'm very well-versed in organizing large scale events, whether they be exhibitions, or concerts, or raves. But whether it’s events or publishing or working in a gallery, it’s more about the relationships you have with people–working with artists and designers and different teams to make sure everybody's voices are heard, everybody is valued and working together to make the best end product possible.
– On being drawn to Daniels
I guess being from Toronto, I know the faculty, I knew a lot of people who graduated from the program. And it’s so small–it’s very individualized. Also knowing that I didn't come from a traditional curatorial or art historical background. I was really looking to explore the space between these defined roles of publisher/creative director/curator and wanting to see what happens if I experiment with these roles and these spaces, and knowing that the individualized nature of the program would be well suited to that kind of experimentation.
– On what’s next
I mean, it’s very hard to tell. I don’t know, I’ve gotten this far by just looking at projects and research that interest me, asking myself different questions, and allowing those questions to inform my action. Whether that be making a publication, or an exhibition, or starting a company or changing the field completely, I don’t know. I’m kind of here to figure that out.
Right now, I’m researching and investigating how we, as a society, express grief on social media. How we grieve together, collectively or individually through these platforms, and the relationship between individual and communal grief, and how those meet through these digital mediations. Looking at grief, it’s such a big emotion–I’m investigating what happens to that emotion when we start to frame it and control how it’s represented, visually and textually through these platforms. That’s kind of where I’m at.
Nice. That sounds really interesting.
Thank you.
– On recommendations for people who want to create something innovative, new, exciting
Having a clear idea of who your audience is going to be is going to help inform your project–how you’re going to design it, market it, cater to it. Also understanding, “why is this important, why is it important to me, what questions am I trying to answer? Who is this project for, really?” I think that's going to kind of inform the point of view of the project. And I think just don’t be afraid to do it. I know a lot of people who come to me with so many plans and marketing plans and branding plans before they even start to make the project, and I’m like, “you just have to make it. Just try.” Things are gonna change–you’re gonna see what works and see what doesn’t work, and you can shift and go from there. It doesn't have to be a fully realized, perfect idea from the beginning. Just start, dive in and see where it goes.
“Just start, dive in and see where it goes.”
Q: Is this where you saw yourself when you got started in theatre school? Are you where you expected to end up?
>laughter
No. Definitely not. You know, your life is just made up by the choices you make in your day to day. That’s going to inform where you go. I mean of course, having some kind of long, linear plan is great, but there’s no way to really control that. And starting from theatre school– which is like, a part of me that I really don't relate to anymore–I would have never expected to end up here. I knew nothing about art–really, nothing at all, and I kind of just learned by observing the people around me and teaching myself. I didn't have a traditional curatorial or art historical background. I really taught myself everything that I know, by just working, and keeping my eyes and ears open and looking for opportunities and trying to seize those opportunities. It’s led me to so many different places, and I’m sure it’s going to keep leading me to places that I don’t expect.
Cool. Well, thank you–for answering all my questions.
Thank you for asking me.