Emily:
Age: 19
Program: A double major in Women’s Studies and SASAH with a minor in Creative Writing.
Hometown: Caledon, Ontario.
Emma
Age: 19
Program: Creative Writing, Media and Visual Culture through Scholar’s Electives with SASAH as a second major.
Hometown: Waterloo, Ontario.
How did you decide to start Iconoclast?
Emily: I think most of what we wanted was to be immersed in culture and art the way we might have been in a school in a larger city. I originally wanted to attend McGill or the University of Toronto for my undergrad because of their respective cities, but chose Western because it has the program I wanted. The campus culture is so cool and has it’s own merit in that it’s this ultra-specific city that serves its own purpose, but doesn’t have the same feeling as being in a campus in the middle of the city with a million things happening every week. Instead of resenting what we had, we decided to create our own arts scene in an obviously humble way. We just wanted a place to express ourselves and connect with the school in ways that weren’t currently available to us.
Emma: Emily and I were roommates in first year, and we had so much in common – especially the kinds of art and culture we’re into. We were dying to be a part of an ultra condensed, fleshed out arts community, but like we say in the editor’s letter to our zine that’s released in September, we found that there was a dispersion of art at Western. We really wanted to be a part of a community of all sorts of artists that is continuous throughout the year, and link [all the artists] together.
What is Iconoclast? What do you look for in your submissions?
Emily: Iconoclast is a student arts collective that publishes a journal of students’ work twice a year. What we hope to receive in submissions is teeth-cutting honesty and fearlessness. The main desire I have for a space like Iconoclast is for its contributors to be able to showcase the insides of their brain no matter how weird, wild, or wonderful. I am particularly interested in personal narrative that examines identity, oppression, art/culture, as well as poems about the pain of being a body.
Emma: I also am really interested in forming an inclusive, crazy-passionate community of people working in all different mediums who love doing cool work together and lift each other up.
Have you learned any major lessons from starting a zine at Western?
Emily: Most of what I have learned thus far is that there will always be obstacles to prevent you from bringing your vision to life, whether they’re people, logistics, or a sheer lack of time. The most rewarding experience has been receiving such a tremendous amount of positive support, especially after during the initial stages; it seemed like lots of people were salivating for the opportunity to tear us down. The emails, Facebook likes, and retweets we have received so far have made weathering the strife so, so worth it.
Emma: Well, we’re still in the early stages so I’m sure there are many more lessons to come, but one of the hardest things about this has been piecing together the logistics, which can feel so dreary, and trying to make sure everyone’s on board – institutionally, on the team, the readers, everyone. But there’s an uncanny momentum that’s building up and when you get a glimpse of it, when we can see it swinging our way, it totally pays off.
What is your favourite thing to do in London?
Emily: My favourite thing to do in London so far has been to hang out at the Early Bird for hours on end drinking Mexican Cokes and shopping at Filthy Rebena (both of which I do with Emma nine times out of ten!). The Early Bird has this crazy cool charm and the best tacos you could ever imagine. I have recently become a complete vintage fiend, and whenever I want to splurge a little bit–which for me is dropping $30 on a dress–I visit Filthy Rebena to peruse their perfectly curated racks of previously-loved clothing.
Emma: Besides these, I’m a big fan of DNA Artspace bookshop which sells zines and cultural books. Hyland Theatre plays great mostly independent films and reminds my of one of my favourite places in Waterloo, Princess Cinemas. I saw two of my favourite movies at Hyland last year, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (where we freaked because the author of the book the film was based on, Phoebe Gloeckner, was there doing a Q & A) and Mustang, which has been christened the Turkish Virgin Suicides.
What did you do this summer?
Emily: This summer I hung out with my girlfriend, turned 19 (I’m a Leo!!!), worked a kind-of-crappy-but-also-kind-of-awesome job at Canada’s Wonderland, started writing stuff for Rookie Magazine (http://www.rookiemag.com/author/emilyaw/), drank a lot of iced coffee, and visited Toronto as often as possible to feel like I’m not living a completely culture-less life in farm country, and spent countless hours in thrift stores trying to achieve pastel witch looks. It was awesome and awful all at once.
Emma: This summer I lived in Toronto in a grungy house in the Annex that was full of students, working a government job. I ate and danced my way through the city (as well as one can on a student budget), spent a lot of time on public transit and shaky balconies, and the occasional escape to the beaches. I also worked a lot on projects (probably too many projects), eternally searched for the perfect cafe to work in. Every hour not working, squeezed in as much time with friends as possible, met a lot of new people and tried to soak up the hotness of the city.
Do you have any mottos that you live by?
Emily: In this interview with Rookie Magazine, Girlpool’s Harmony Tividad talks about advice her mom gave her: , “You can’t create if you’re judging yourself.” I wrote this in huge block letters in my journal when I first read the interview and it has stuck with me ever since. One of my largest issues as a creative person is letting my work get ahead of me to a stage where it’s already being judged by these horrible, fake people in my head before it’s even finished. I’m still trying to learn to separate my self worth from perceptions of my art.
Emma: In an interview with one of my favourite photographers, Olivia Bee, she says, “Aspirational compromise is for pussies”– an aggressive form of encouragement in the pursuit of your goals. As someone who is pursuing a career in line of arts and culture, it doesn’t take any effort to find someone who will try to convince you to give up your ambitions. I find this motto as a kind of punch in the gut for toughening up, swallowing hard and getting things done. I’m also a big fan of the line that is a song title from Sleater-Kinney and then Carrie Brownstein’s memoir title, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl. A lot of the time I feel really overwhelmed by the hunger I have for so many things:to produce work, consume work, live, etc. This quip feels like a reassurance that this kind of hunger is okay.
Do you have any guilty pleasures?
Emily: The Bachelor/Bachelorette is the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. As a queer feminist, the show goes against nearly all my moral/lifestyle tendencies and I think that’s why it’s just so stupidly fascinating to me. The voyeuristic element of watching all these people try to form one singular, heteronormative connection feels to me like a nightmare I can’t look away from. The contrived way that they bend over backwards for each other pulling out tired cliché after cliché is enthralling for me. My girlfriend got me into it this summer and I haven’t been able to stop watching since.
Emma: I have become really obsessed with podcasts this year. I’m constantly trying to write some kind of guide to life for myself, pieced together from interviews from my heros, so listening to podcasts all the time is great content for this attempt to figure out how to be a person. Also, though I don’t believe in all of it really, I love cosmic and astrological practices like palm reading, horoscopes, tarot cards etc. I got my palm read for the first time this summer and I loved the delicate mystical (even if phony) process of it. My best friend loves to read tarot cards, and I always feel very calm and in touch with the soul–whatever that means–while she does it.
What’s your favourite thing to do in your spare time?
Emily: My favourite thing to do in my spare time is to probably sit alone in my bed, put on Sharon Van Etten, and read/journal. I don’t do it often because once I start listening to the way she croons with such pain and intensity I almost immediately start crying. It’s this weird ritual I could never do in front of anyone that feels like a sacred activity that I upkeep. I just cry for a melodramatic hour as I write about my feelings and listen to Love More and basically almost combust. This sounds really weird, antisocial, and maybe even a little scary… I just have a lot of feelings that I can’t feel when I’m busy with my daily life, so I compartmentalize them. I have never admitted this to anyone.
Emma: For me there’s three versions of the way I use my spare time: in a creatively productive way where I read a lot, watch movies that my friends with great movie taste have been recommending to me for ages, write, and consume a socially productive way going out for dinner, concerts, drives, coffee, catch ups, hangouts, parties, meeting new people etc. and the just plain unproductive, ie watching dumb sitcoms and wallowing.
Where is the best/last place you travelled to?
Emily: This is a really unorthodox answer, but Paris . I first went during the summer I turned ten and for months afterwards every time I caught any glimpse of the Eiffel Tower this huge, fluttery feeling would well up in my chest like what I had experienced in that city wasn’t even real, but had been just some wonderful dream. I have travelled there two times since that first visit and have found myself just as dazzled and taken with the sheer coolness and distinct romance and idealism of it all.
Emma: This May I went to visit one of my best friends who was au pairing in the South of France, and by some stroke of magnificent luck, two of our other friends were in Europe at the same time. I spent three weeks with them drop-jawed in Paris and sun-baked in Nice. It was pure magic–probably the most blissful I’ll ever feel.
Do you write for any other publications/have your own blog?
Emily: I also write for Rookie, Shameless, and Plasma Dolphin , which are all super important and publish amazing content for and created by teens and young people. Otherwise I just write for the sake of writing and sometimes submit stuff to local literary mags and do readings of my poems on campus. I’ve recently started writing plays, and that has been so stressful but also great for me; I can think of my work as being real and influential in a different way than I would if I was just writing for an audience I am completely detached from. I’m hoping to start making some of my own personal zines and to start freelancing for more publications this year, as well as obviously contributing to Iconoclast myself.
Emma: In addition to Icon, I’m the co-editor and founder of an arts and culture publication called Plasma Dolphin with my friend Sonja Katanic. We’re going through a huge revamp right now and have some really exciting changes brewing: a new website design, a new way of releasing, launch parties, print issues and merch – so keep your eyes peeled for it! Plasma has been my baby for the past two years, and has pretty much altered my fate:creatively I’ve expanded so much,learned the logistics of running a publication, editing, and curating, and it’s thickened my skin by proving to myself that I actually can have a career and make a dent in the world of culture. On a personal level, I’ve met so many radically cool people through it, including Emily and my boyfriend. I’m also starting up a personal writing website, but that’s still in the works.
What is your favorite art form? (photography, drawing, writing, painting, etc)
Emily: I think it’s nearly impossible for me to think of any art form as my favourite. There are ones that challenge me more than others and that I have to grapple with and take more time unravelling, but I’m always intrigued by and open to all different mediums. One in particular I’m fascinated with is illustration and comic-style art just because I love drawings of people and their mundane, everyday surroundings. I just bought a film camera from this tiny thrift store up in Prince Edward County and have already asked my girlfriend if she would object to being my model while I figure photography out (she said yes). Photography has always been interesting to me, particularly when it’s curated into a cohesive series that portray a certain situation or moment. I also will always love poetry, even though it takes everything in me to read because it conjures up so! Many! Feelings! I just love emotions and art that portrays emotions, so basically everything.
Emma: I’ve been going through a huge internal crisis about medium and art forms this summer, but it’s safe to say that writing is my favourite medium to create in; also because it’s the one I practice the most. I’ve been oscillating and struggling lately with wanting to be able to throw all my words up and compact and render them into a smacking, simple, gorgeously visual medium. I love to gorge myself on tangible, visible mediums – painting, photography, films. I’ve been having tremendous envy of visual mediums, so I’m going to try to worm my way more into the world of visual work. But for now (and probably predominantly forever) writing is my lifeline.
What is your goal this year for Iconoclast?
Emily: If we can create one thing, event, podcast or essay that is meaningful to someone within the Western community then that is all I could ever ask for. I hope we can get to a place where we can run multiple events and release more and more while still being detail-oriented and doing a better-than-average job that would be ideal. I basically hope that we draw enough interest and support that we fulfill our goal of being an active community to foster our school’s untapped talent.
Emma: Honestly, what isn’t our goal? Emily and I have been so giddy about starting Icon that we haven’t really allowed ourselves to consider any limitations – we’re just going to take all our gusto and throw it into this project. I want Icon to reverberate through Western, for artists to find home and community and be so inspired they’re tingling. I want people to produce impeccable work. We are a collective which will be pinned down by two print issues, but we also have our sights set on creating podcasts, a video channel, student-prof panels, workshops, zines, pop up shops and music performances. Anything the geniuses of Western can dream up, we’re here for it.
Check out Iconoclast Collective on campus!