By Sammy Ginsberg
Excited to introduce you to the art of Sammy Ginsberg!! (Aka meee!!)
BIO
Sammy is an organizer, teacher, and writer based between London & Los Angeles. She believes her purpose while alive is to play a role in nurturing the infrastructure of support for writers and teachers of writing. In alignment with this mission, she is the co-director of the Los Feliz Writers Festival and the co-director of the CSUN Writing Project. She also edits two zines, The Feminist Toilet & TrashLit just for funsies, and writes blooks!
Q&A
LP: How would you describe your art?
I would describe my art as a bit performance art, and a bit activism and a lot of my personality. If I had to pick a genre, I would identify as auto-fiction or creative non-fiction or blogger? but I mostly write poetry! I try to keep it funny and light, but also touch on some motifs that are important to me like friendship, family, love, authenticity, health, and joy!
LP: When did you start performing?
I first performed in high school. My first open mic was when I was 17 at a creative writing summer camp in Scotland! When I came back my senior year, I played a sexy granny who dances on a table in the school play and then later performed again at a Hollywood Fringe Fest open mic. Reading my poems and being listened to, really listened to was a type of magic that I sought out ever after.
LP: Who are your influences?
I have tooo many influences!! Allen Ginsberg (he’s my spiritual grandfather hence the last name :P) AND Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anais Nin, Barbara Kingsolver, Chris Kraus, Joanne Kyger, Mina Loy, Katherine Mansfield, Eve Babitz, Cookie Mueller, Eileen Myles, CA Conrad, Michelle Obama, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anne Waldman, Jacqueline Saphra, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Clive Matson, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Faith G. Harper, and Dolores Huerta! These are just the ones that I am not friends with.
I am deeply influenced by my friends’ art!! I’d name their names, but I want to ask for permission first and I don’t have time right now.
LP: If you were given $1,000 dollars for an art project, what would you do?
If I had $1,000 dollars for an art project, I’d organize a launch party for The Feminist Toilet. We’ve already had two with ZERO budget which were pretty amazing, but ID DO IT BIGGER.
FIRST,I’d get a director to help me stage my one-woman piece that’s 20 minutes in a toilet called On The Toilet, My Thoughts! I’d print and prepare toilet themed art everywhere, and organize a toilet writing workshop.
I’d get my co-editor Brian Sonia-Wallace to perform as well as come up with some crazy performance art thang! WE are already in talks to design TOILET DOORS that have POEMS on them that are ART PIECES where we invite people to write poems on them. We are specifically imagining poems by trans and nonbinary writers, because bathrooms are SOO BINARY!!
We have been discussing for years! Doing a special issue about gendered toilets, this history of gendered toilets (My friend who works in as an Aerospace Engineer worked at a company that just didn’t have a women’s restroom because NO WOMEN WORKED THERE until she arrived!!! WHAT?!?! And that was 2010).
We also want to showcase spaces that have inclusive bathroom spaces- those who are leading the way in applying SCIENCE to BATHROOMS AKA that GENDER is a SPECTRUM and SEX is not BINARY!
To go into it a bit, first all of us have different amounts of estrogen and testosterone! All of us have different preferences based on nature and nurture! GENDER is a performance, is cultural (paraphrasing Maggie Nelson who is probably paraphrasing an ancestry of gender theorists).
Second, Intersex people exist! They make up 1.7% of the population (National Institute of Health), while people who are Jewish make up .02% of the population! As a Jewish person who grew up in LA, I too was surprised to realize how few Jewish people there are on the planet and how many more people are biologically identified as intersex.
Yet, we hardly talk about what people who are intersex experience. We’d love to really focus on these issues and how they apply to public infrastructure that serves a critical public health issue! FECES getting into drinking water supplies causes millions of people to die every year!!
It is our toilet and trash systems/infrastructure that makes us a first world country, not our cultural norms and societal values!!
We also imagined partnering up with SELAH or another org that supports people who are unhoused because accessing toilets is SUPER IMPORTANT WORK for public health in LA!
And investing in these toilets for ALL people because all of us have been on a hike and wanted to use the restroom. Many of us (mostly those with lengthy appendages) have probably relieved themselves in the park because they didn’t want to wait to get back to their car and drive home or to a gas station!
As well as making sure all bathrooms are handicap accessible! My grandma couldn’t go to lunch because she was nervous she wouldn’t be able to get to the bathroom and fit her walker in! Or even use the wheel chair to get in!
She didn’t have a disability until she was older, but now she does and the world wasn’t built for her to get older! WE will all get OLDER!!
Many people who have disabilities are literally segregated from society because of these tiny design features that HELP EVERYONE!
DId you know that 16% of the world has a DISABILITY?!? (World Health OrganizatioN)
This is what The Feminist Toilet is all about, and this is what I’d use the $1,000 to organize an art project about.
The money would be used to print the zines, pay the artists (although I don’t think $1,000 would be enough to pay all the artists what they deserve!), build bathrooms and decorate them, have a toilet scavenger hunt!!!, and organize an edu-tainment hands-on workshop/ meets a party meets a ritual!!
If you are interested in donating to make this happen or want to get involved, please get in touch!!
LP: What do you think the function of art is in the 21st century?
I think the function of art in the 21st century is as a vital tool for managing our mental health!! It’s a space to play, express ourselves safely and authentically, to connect and communicate and experiment!!
It’s a way to process the world and all it’s COmPLEXityyy in a way that can truly be archived!! Not this Instagram/ REddit diarrhea that future historians will be like what IS this JUNKKKK.
THis doesn’t need to be stored online in hard drives that are USING SOO much ENERGY and WATER that are like LITERALLY DESTROYing the planet!!!!
DELETE IT!! No ONE CARES. MAKE ART not CONTENT!!!
LP: Why did you sign up to perform at PorchFest 2025?
I signed up to perform because I think the director Hélène is a bad bitch!! Also because ART needs to be ACCESSIBLE. It needs to be every where for every one by EVERYONE.
Let’s do more street art!! Let’s turn side-walks into performance spaces! LA has artists coming out of everyyyyyyy orificieee and yet it is so hard to accesssss!! So Cliquey!! Expensive!! Gatekeepers!! pay to play!!
The creative arts industry is headquartered here, and yet – you’d only know it if you have MONEYYYYYYY. Thing is, most artists don’t have money because the price of their SOUL is MORE than CAPITALISM can PAY for!!
This fest is in alignment with my valuesssss, and that’s why I signed up and why I’m volunteering!!
CHECK OUT THEIR ART
Sammy Ginsberg will be organizing the the Los Feliz Writers Fest Porch on November 2nd from 11am to 5pm at 5000 Franklin AVE!
COME BY and SAY HI!!
If you want to reach out, you can find her on Instagram at LiteraryPixie or email her at seeliterarypixie@gmail.com.
Leave a Reply