Third Space of The Week: Artists for People: Humanity Benefit Concert Supporting Gaza and Houston Immigrant Communities

In a time of increasing social conflict, political uproar, and class unrest, Houston’s own Violet Moon is collaborating to make room for collective feeling and fundraising right here in our own city. Their first festival, Artists for People: Humanity Benefit Concert Supporting Gaza and Houston Immigrant Communities, fiscally funded by Fractured Atlas, is sure to impact communities near and far. If there is anything an artist knows, it’s the strength and power of their community and its potential to reach minds and hearts around the globe. A benefit aid concert is no new strategy for bringing together artists for a common cause. However, what I will argue, especially in this era of self obsession, social media influencers, and general media overwhelm and desensitization, is that Violet Moon is making what was once old new again. Through good old fashioned word of mouth, handmade posters, networking and community organizing, Moon has utilized the pros of social media to create an event as authentic in its roots as it is in its presentation. 

The two-day festival will be held at the MATCH Box 1 on December 8th and 9th at 7:30 pm. Each show is approximately 75 minutes long. Monday evening features a lineup of local artists including Flamenco artist Andrea “La Flor” González, singer/songwriter Chrisbel, choreographer Jai Alexander, student collective Los Gateros de Segundo Barrio, NMLY.dance, songwriter and musician Sara Van Buskirk, and The TerraForm(ed) Collective. Tuesday evening features a separate local lineup: artistic edGe, Free Radicals, Jewelz Melody, Riddles Three, SOMOSIS, Soren Rivera & Isabel Villegas, Kathak dancer Tarika Nath, and musician/composer Yo, Stroud!. 

Tickets are sold on a sliding scale between $20 and $40 in $5 increments. In addition to ticket purchases, all guests are invited to make a donation using the provided QR code, which can also be found here. All ticket sales and donations will be equally divided and sent to Gaza Sunbirds, a “para-cycling team of amputee athletes in Gaza using sport, community, and advocacy to survive and resist ongoing violence” and Houston Immigrant Legal Services Collaborative, HILSC, a “local coalition providing legal and direct services to immigrants and families targeted by ICE raids and unjust detainment.” The receipts of donations and transactions will be made available to the public via the festival website and Moon’s instagram on December 22nd. 

Bivens: Can you tell me about your artistic process and how the idea behind the festival came about? 

Moon: When I slow down enough in stillness to kind of process all of the things that I observe, take in, and hear…in that moment of digesting, a combination of grief and powerlessness, and that having been a shared thing, but also anger and desire for action, this was just kind of a possible route forward through all of those feelings. I have the resources to make this happen even if I don’t have the skills yet…I have access to the people who could show me. I spend a lot of time listening and talking to people…it felt like a natural manifestation of everything. I have to let things come to me…creativity is like a conduit, so it’s hard to feel like “this is mine”. It’s more like I am expressing whatever needs to be. I wanted people who make art to be able to do something, and I wanted people who didn’t make art to be able to do something, and I wanted people who are behind the scenes and art adjacent to be able to do something, and it all kind of came together.

Bivens: Is there a personal investment or association you have to the atrocities happening in Gaza and with ICE? Why you, specifically?

Moon: I am not Palestinian, and I am not not-white, which I think is the primary target for ICE detentions, but in both cases I think I felt my life isn’t separate, and there is a privilege that comes from the choice of not engaging, and I think I am in a position where I have access to people and resources and knowledge, so it feels a little bit more like not why would I do it, but why wouldn’t I? It’s kind of like all the things you read or hear, like almost exclusively by black activists, that what impacts one person impacts all of us. I could give a bunch of statistics about Houston being diverse, but I think that the reason I’m doing it is because I can. I feel deeply connected to people and life and am emotionally driven, so I think that when people hurt, I hurt…This project is really an extension of my own creative practice, which concerns trauma, mindfulness, and it’s honest, present, expressive storytelling about lived experience. So instead of it being about my own experiences and my own emotional expression and processing, this feels like an expression of it, just outside of myself. So it’s more collective but all in the same vein.

Bivens: How did you go about selecting artists?

Moon: It started with a general call. I designed a flyer and put them up all over the city and then told everybody that I knew, “I’m putting on this concert! Do you want to be in it? Do you want to be in it?” I think because I have been in so many different productions, I have made a lot of different meaningful connections with people that practice so many different styles, that it’s one of those things where everyone is talking about it without talking about it, so I was kind of like okay, I’m putting on a concert. Do you want to be in it? I think that’s what made it so beautifully collaborative. I feel like there are so many different styles in it too, like there’s solos and groups and I think the thing that was most surprising is that I don’t have a lot of musician connections, so the fact that it resonated with so many people beyond my expectations…it exploded in a way where, “I don’t know you but of course you can be in it. I don’t know how to do this but I am going to figure it out, so of course you can be in it!” So it’s been very progressive in terms of “I don’t know how to do that but I’m going to learn. I will find the person I need to make this happen”. And it’s been that way for the past five months. So, since April/May.

Bivens: Do you view this thing we call art, and making, as something that is more living and breathing, versus something that we each individually make as completely our own? I don’t mean to necessarily set that up as such a black and white question, but for me, I believe that it is this thing, I really believe that dance and art-making and music is a language that we speak. We had been communicating in these ways even before we had our own spoken recorded languages, and that it was and is a means of expressivity that we depend on way more than I think we even understand that we do. It is something that we share and we hold and we pass back and forth and that we make an imprint on, because to me, to view it on the other end of the spectrum, is, I feel like its such a capitalist production thing, something to be consumed and commented on, when so much of the time I feel like art is really meant to be experienced more than anything. So I was curious if you felt similarly?

Moon: I agree! I think there is something, and I don’t know that this is really for the article, but I am not religious, depending on how you define it, but I think the thing that I devote my heart and purpose and life meaning to is creation. I think it’s so inherent to who we are, and like it just gives us meaning in a way that is so profound and there is no reason for it besides what it is, you just do it because you do…I hold it with a lot of reverence.

Bivens: You believe in its power, and I think that’s why people respond to it. Hopefully. I think that is all of our hope.

Moon: I worked as a therapist briefly, and studied a lot of expressive arts therapy, and a theory I really subscribe to is this concept called the creative connection where one art form impacts and expands another. So even if we’re not dancing and are just cooking, or writing a love letter to our best friend, or drawing in the sand, just having access and being able to tap into creativity, it heals, mends and inspires all other modalities. I don’t think that they are separate. Creativity is just creativity. And I like that you think about it as a language, yeah, it feels like this inherent power. I don’t even know that it’s goodness, it’s just like a thing that brings meaning. Whatever brings you meaning, whatever brings me meaning, this is the thread between the light in you and the light in me…the rawest expression of who someone is, and it feels like that’s me too. And I think that is where the interconnectedness comes from.

Bivens: Beautiful. Yeah! In art there is this strange, maybe not even strange, just this access that you get, in this intimate way that doesn’t exist in other places I think outside maybe our relationships and such. A presence I could go on and on all day.

Moon: Yeah I know! Me too!

Bivens: What is it you are hoping participants get out of the experience, whether it’s the artists themselves or the people that are in attendance?

Moon: I think I want and hope that people feel empowered. I want artists to feel empowered in their creative practices, that there is a method for using art for collective change and social responsibility. For attendees, that people know community is closer than it feels…It’s so hard to face the fear that has been instilled in us since we were small, fear of your neighbor, and because we drive everywhere it’s dehumanizing the people on the road, and we all work from home, and there’s no third spaces and we don’t walk anywhere, so it’s really easy to think that the entire world is terrifying and that the only things that are happening are violence, and because the more isolated you are the more that expands. There is a reason you take your little mental health walk. There are squirrels and dogs and birds. I really like birds. And you see kids playing on swings and old people holding hands, and you’re like wait, maybe not all of life is evil. And I hope that the people who are in attendance, even for just a moment, get to experience that there is benefit and impact of community, that we can collectively share a common good. I hope that for the performers and artists too. You can do something with your art that feels empowering.

Bivens: Is there any part of you that in putting on this festival, is hoping to bridge the divide or start conversations between people? Specifically those who are in denial, or unsupportive of your vision and of the work the festival is trying to do?

Moon: I think I’ve taken the stance or belief that I can’t make people do anything. I can just care, and be kind. And I think if I present the opportunity for kindness, people that resonate with it will support it. In terms of, like, everyone else, I wouldn’t even know how to begin to unpack what it means to or how you get to fascist hate. And I think there are probably people who know how to bridge that gap. I did some de-escalating training for this event, just in case something happened, in case I was in a scenario where it was necessary.

Bivens: When you mentioned de-escalation training, I think that really ties into what you were saying before, that you can just care and be kind and present the opportunity. To me, that seems to be a proactive type of kindness and care, and it’s also realistic to expect resistance and pushback, because it exists, because it is already harmful and terrifying. To me, it shows a devotion to what you’re doing, and what you’re doing with your team, in being that thorough. Does that make sense?

Moon: Yes I think so, and thank you. If I do anything, in all things, it’s always with intentionality, and immersion. If I am doing it, all of me is in it. Of course there will be things I miss, like things my lived experience blinds me from, or I’m ignorant to through any assortment of stuff..I think that is why I did the training, because I knew that if I was in a situation, I wouldn’t know what to do.

Bivens: Is there a specific event in history that you have either experienced or been inspired by that you have modeled this event after? I ask because one of the first questions I wanted to ask you when I received this assignment was about a hand-drawn promo flyer for this event that I saw on instagram, and it just reminded me of ones I’d seen and read about growing up and it definitely evoked a familiar feeling in me.

Moon: I think with all the Palestinian campus sit-ins, and the overnight protests, and having that be so close in terms of just a decade, thinking about history in general, thinking about having these so close to the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests and the rise in civil rights and unrest, and then Trump being elected multiple times, it just feels like there is this flux in pain and tension that reminded me a lot of 60s and 70s civil rights and so that’s where the poster design came from. It’s like an ode or an echo to that history, where art was also really political, music was so good, painting was so good. I have a crush on Jimi Hendrix. That general aesthetic felt aligned with what I wanted to do. In terms of the actual production, to answer your first question, that’s where the design came from, but I think I have been doing a lot of accidental research, like I would get really curious because something would come up and I would open four tabs about it…about riots and protest history, like the 90s with the mothers in Argentina, and Stonewall, and I learned a lot about house music being a thing, and waacking, different art forms, or capoeira in Brazil, just like all of them being deeply political in nature and forms of resistance, and just seeing how oppressed people are so brave in what they choose to do in the face of intentionally propagandized powerlessness, like people taking your children…I felt really inspired by queer trans artists and black trans artists, and mothers. Everybody that creates…found something in them worth fighting for, I think. I really look up to them.

Bivens: Is there any story in particular you want to mention here?

Moon: I think I wish in general that I could amplify black artists more, especially historically. I think so much of what we rely on culturally and for art in general comes off of the spirit of people that we will never know. And I think that makes me really sad, how much was stolen. I wish I had specific names of all the people who had things taken from them.

Bivens: For me that continues to be the source of the deepest anger and heartbreak, because of knowing that it has happened, and that it is actively happening and it is a powerlessness that I feel.

Moon: Exactly. Why would I do it? It just feels like how could I not? How could I not, for everyone who has given so much? People ask me how I am doing, and I am really tired and really burnt out. It’s a lot of work but I was never not going to do it.

Bivens: In your own words, how are you hoping people will be able to access the event? You have word of mouth and social media, and then this preview. Is there anything else?

Moon: I think it’s an extension of the word of mouth. This past week, the show flyer, I made a black and white easy handout, easy-to-be printed thing. I had a lot of the artists from the show…I wanted them to have an opportunity to all meet each other, and then get to color or design the black and white flyers, so it was kind of this multilayered ‘lets get together and chit chat with other people in the show’ and we get to do a creative craft thing and also a flyer distribution. So it took care of a lot of things I needed to do anyway, but it’s a medium that’s super natural for everyone in the production. So people painted and doodled and did little oil pastels. They’re very cute and some of them are really terrible but its very funny and I think if you find one around town, you’re just going to be like, “wtf is that?”, but it gets people engaged because it feels really human, each one is unique and I just kind of loved it and it felt representative of the show.

Bivens: I like that a lot. That’s really interesting, too, because when I think about festivals, I suppose on any scale, if they didn’t already know each other beforehand, they probably wouldn’t have met until the week or day of anyway. So the fact that there was a thought behind creating a community within the artists beforehand, I love that.

Moon: So aligned with the show.

Bivens: Tell me about the donations and the organizations.

Moon: I got fiscally sponsored for the project so that people could make tax-deductible donations. Donations are in addition to ticket purchases. All of the proceeds from everything go to either the Gaza Sunbirds, which are a para-cycling team in Gaza that deliver aid throughout the city, and equally to Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative, HILSC.

Bivens: How did you decide on those two, and were there any others you were considering?

Moon: Yes, I made a really big list. For Gaza, it was the intersection of delivering aid for everyone, because there are organizations that are for families or for children or for medical supplies or for housing, and this was a group that collected and distributed a lot of different supplies to everyone. I think for HILSC, I did a lot of research there too. There were a couple of different services that were either state wide or super broad or a hotline, and obviously all those are needed, but in this particular one, they offered a lot of different kinds of services and it felt localized enough to the city that it was a neighbor to neighbor direct impact.

Bivens: When you say you are fiscally sponsored, who is that through?

Moon: Fractured Atlas. So you apply with a project or a program and through the duration of that program you are sponsored, so for us, through December. I am planning on posting receipts of those donations along with where all the money went, how much we made, what it all went to and the total sum divided on the website and on the social media page. If I’m going to donate I want to know! And that will be posted on Dec. 22nd.

Bivens: Was there anyone you had to get approval from in any way throughout the process, creatively or fiscally?

Moon: So the donations from Fractured Atlas can’t go to another organization, but I can do whatever I want with that money, so basically the loophole for that, that they communicated with me, is that I am raising funds for the production, and all of those funds go to Violet Moon, and then Violet takes those funds, the tax deductible funds for the benefit concert festival, and then I take them and divide them and send them to the two separate orgs, which is why writing a check or Venmo/Zelle is also okay, because it is all a part of the general sum that gets donated, along with all ticket sales. Which is why I wanted to do the full transparency, because it’s like everyone is just funding Violet until Violet sends those funds over. That was important.

Bivens: Is there anyone you would like to mention in terms of acknowledgment or support in the process so far?

Moon: Yeah! Everyone that has volunteered. Caroline Duble (she/her), Brian Buck (he/him), Eduardo Zavala (he/him), Daisy Su (she/her), Liz (she/her/they), Em (they/them/he), Mollie Miller (she/her), in addition to all the performers. I couldn’t have done this without them. I don’t know if Mollie wants to be
included, but she was the first person I talked to and she gave me all the information about how to do a festival. Mollie was a catalyst, without her I wouldn’t have known how to do the foundational set up.

Bivens: Is there is anything you haven’t spoken to or about that you’d like to share?

Moon: I hope people come! I feel really grateful for everybody that has contributed so much to it already. I can’t believe that it’s coming together and that it’s happening. I couldn’t actually have done it by myself, even if I’m the talking head. With any work of art there is the person that does it that is the face, but so many people had to come together for that thing to happen that we never think about. So it’s just a community thing.

Bivens: Can you speak to the power of community in general and in the arts and how it connects to impact?

Moon: I think the different scenes in art are not isolated from behavior. Things are really hyper individualistic and we kind of see the manifestation of that in the city…and western culture. I don’t know if it’s phone culture too, where like everything is made to be seen, and everything is made to be perceived, and consumed, and it creates this ‘it doesn’t matter what it feels like, it matters what it looks like’, and the way we make art now is different and it can get really detached from who we are, because it’s what we want to be or how at the very least we want other people to see it, and I think that it’s a combination of stuff I believe in and lived experience and stuff I’ve studied, but impact internally happens from that connection back to self. So it almost feels, like, defiant in its own nature to make art that is from feeling, even if it’s ugly or cliche or the worst thing you’ve ever made to be perceived. But in that authenticity is where we also find connection. And if we are not all fighting to be perceived, okay cool me too, like I want to be picked, but I feel like the question that is lost is to what end? What are we actually seeking in that? I want to be chosen, but chosen for what? I want to have the most followers but for what? Is it like financial security? Social security…? I feel like the irony that comes around with that is that I want to have friends, I want to be more connected to people, I want to feel loved or accepted, and it’s kind of, like, oh, well ironically doing the most vulnerable work of expressing from who we are is actually the path for that. I find too that I guess I want to note that it’s totally justified. I think there is a reason we are this way, like of course we approach it with so much resistance. I think the thing that I have found helpful for me is tapping into that, what is the thing that I am actually really wanting when that all comes up, it’s like I really like being here and I really want to be accepted and included, I want these people to like me, I want to be their friend. It’s always like a small voice, like they have cool hair or they have a nice laugh…being able to hold myself…I want to be accepted, that’s cool, we can do that together, we can figure that out together, and the community just comes from and through internal work. I think that is the therapy coming out, but I think that it is multi pronged. Community is personal work too, it’s not just everybody trying to cater to everyone else. There is a lot of accountability and responsibility for caring for ourselves, and not everybody has to cater to us for us to be in community.

To me, that sounds like the heart of acceptance. It sounds like the root of why we need festivals like these. Sometimes, the missing third space is the space we create when nothing else makes sense…oftentimes, that space is in art itself. I hope to see you all at Houston’s third space of the week, Artists for People: Humanity Benefit Concert Supporting Gaza & Houston Immigrant Communities, December 8th and 9th at 7:30pm at the MATCH.