“Honestly… the first time that I went, it kind of changed my life,” says Lauren Yap of OUTsider Fest, Austin’s long-running queer transmedia arts festival. Yap has moved up the festival’s ranks quickly; they were a first-time attendee two years ago, a volunteer last year, and this year they’re the associate artistic director.
“I've been in Austin since 2016,” Yap says. “I came here to go to UT and everything and I just felt like there was kind of a lacking in the queer art scene, or I had just didn't know where to find it. And then I went to my first year at OUTsider and I realized like oh this has been here this whole time. It's been here for 10 years and I had no idea, you know? And I think it's really amazing how it started – very grassroots and punk and DIY.”
Molly Routt, OUTsider’s vice president of the board, also started as a volunteer, but she was there at the very beginning. Or pretty close to the beginning – she’s not 100% sure. “I started with OUTsider, not the very first – maybe it was the first one – just as a volunteer. And so as I've moved further into the organization, I think there was always this feeling of like, yeah, this is cool, we hope it lasts a really long time. But also each year we're like, are we gonna do it again? I mean everyone wants to, and there is always the questions of funding and people power and all that stuff for small festivals, and especially small queer festivals. But it does feel good to be this far along for sure.”
Routt says that, as the festival continues and becomes more established in Austin, staying true to those early DIY principles remains a focus. “As far as trying to grow OUTsider and also keep it very close to those like grassroots and punk and DIY [origins]… I feel like that is just a constant conversation that we're in with each other as the board and as the organizers,” she says. “And I feel like we're striking a good balance with that. One of our goals has been to grow the festival, not necessarily in size, as in bigger is better, but grow it in ways to make it feel more sustainable for people to attend, more sustainable for us as organizers to make it happen, while also keeping it very much focused on the art and what inspires people when they come.”
“The theme for 2025 is ‘Monstrosity and the Obscene/Off-Scene’ and it is kind of, you know, a call back to how queers have historically been equated to and labeled as freaks and monsters [and] villains in dominant society,” Yap says, “and kind of reclaiming those labels to celebrate just our outsiderness and just… our refusal to conform.”
“As is often the case,” Routt adds, “queers and trans people are reclaiming a lot of the stuff that a dominant normie culture would try to say is bad in some way.”
The political climate in the USA and Texas hasn’t been kind to the LGBTQIA+ community in recent times, and Routt says that fact isn’t easy to ignore. “There are times where I think, for our own sanity, we have to kind of just be like, I need to rest a little bit,” she says. “And also, I do believe that OUTsider has always been politically minded and very much focused on wrapping in whatever is the cultural or political climate into what we're doing. Because of course it's real and it has a gigantic impact on us as an organization but also on our people. So we talk about it and we encourage people talking about it and encourage people gathering, and I think the community aspect of the OUTsider festival is really important for that, so that people don't feel isolated and alone. And you can come and see art that is very political at times and stirs something in a good way.”
“We're trying to center and spotlight bi voices, immigrant voices, disabled voices,” Yap says. “And I think that as we continue – or as the state of the world continues – it's going to be more and more important to be able to have a space like this exist.”
OUTsider Fest returns to the VORTEX this weekend.
(note — OUTsider's website, like the festival, is for adults)
