Page 33 - Vo Vo | FIX MY HEAD #6: QTPOC PUNK ARTISTS

I don’t fact check everything people say on
the podcast, usually they are just speak-
ing from their experience anyway, but if
they start making generalizations that seem
problematic, I might cut those. Someone once
said that indigenous men are more sensitive
and less sexist than non-indigenous men, and
I thought that was a huge generalization, so
I think I cut that. Someone else said non-
asked them to explain it further. Usually if
you can get people to pin down what they
actually mean, instead of making broad
generalizations, it makes a fair amount of
sense and leads to a better conversation
than if you had just left something like
that unchallenged. I don’t think I’ve ever
censored anyone for disagreeing with me,
but I have cut out things people said that
I thought made them sound ill-informed. I
think I used to do that more, but
increasingly I feel like it is the artist’s
responsibility to stand behind their words
rather than my responsibility to help the
listener extract what they mean from what
they’ve actually said.
With the podcast, I try to get a good
cross-section of artists who are “well-
known” within the QTPOC community and
exposure. My hope is to use the big names
to get people to click or to listen, and
then get them hooked so they’ll want to
learn more about the smaller names.
We have talked about this before a little bit:
How do you deal with ethical differences
between you and your interviewees? Especially
you are recording/on air?
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ethical
differences. You mean, like how do I deal with
it when someone says something offensive, or
I haven’t CONSCIOUSLY given priority to
artists that make work about identity,
but it is a podcast about political art,
so usually the artists I talk to are mak-
ing work with the intent to empower their
communities, and who people think of as
“their” communities is often based on
identity. I try not to ask identity-based
questions, like “What is it like being x
or y?” I think a lot of mainstream inter-
viewers and journalists fall into that
trap and I hate it. I think it others the
interviewee, and is also just a stupid,
make any sense. I try to keep my questions
focused on the artists’ work, rather than
who they are, but if the work is about who
they are then identity is bound to come
up.
Yeah, both. Or that you politically don’t
agree with...
In terms of interviewing people I
disagree with, guests are obviously al-
lowed to disagree with me. If they say
something I think is kind of oppressive
I’ll usually push them to explain it
more, or explain it better until it makes
sense. In terms of editing, the only
stuff I cut out (besides ums, and uhs,
and coughs) is if we go on a tangent that
-
teresting, if the podcast starts to feel
kind of shit-talky or the guest accuses
people of things and names names, or if
out wrong, as in factually inaccurate and
ill-informed.