Yes, A Queer Ranch Festival Exists. Here Is What It’s Like. | GO Magazine

Festival-goers, who’d originate from Montreal and Amsterdam, Cape city and London, walked along a dirty lake road, the starlight shining on slim stalks of bamboo, casting shadows on road ahead of time. Electric beats expanded louder with every action, as the Saturday night crescendo of Ohana’s Queer Ranch Festival increased closer.  Usually the nocturnal rhythms on these components are kepted for frogs and crickets, but this weekend, many best queer DJs from capitals across Europe had been playing from a booth manufactured from bamboo over a dancefloor made of straw. Baselines frequently heard in sweaty basement groups in Berlin drifted over the valleys of Lesvos until beginning out of cash, switching the zaffre skies pale blue.

The three-day festival – initial of its type regarding island – had been the creation of Ohana Collective, in collaboration with Anaïs Carayon, creator of Paris’


Brain Magazine


and manufacturer Audrey Saint-Pe. Ohana is actually a Lesvos-based collective of (mostly) queer women that stuffed their unique handbags three-years before, making town life behind, to be able to live with each other, in community, in the open.

Though increasing and contracting sizes, the Collective’s founding people are Samra Kurtovic from Serbia, Michelle Greeff from South Africa, Jen Schweda and Emrah Polywka, both from Germany. “Ohana means family,” Samra says to GO over a mango lassi by ocean following Ohana Queer Ranch Festival. “It’s a Hawaiian phrase, indicating large, lengthy family members. In life we had been produced into a family, but as queer people, we could and quite often must select where and who our house tend to be.”


Through the summer months the Collective live on a slice of secure in Skala Eressos – Ohana Ranch – where they will have used eight cats, three goats, two ponies and anyone who demands an enjoying community to contact house. Within the cold weather they reside in


Ohana Rooms


, a women-only resort, a rock’s place from water.

“We concerned inhabit the character, since it is simpler to connect with one another inside planet. In capitalist programs from inside the city, you are neglecting yourself, who you are, the best thing. Out in nature, you are reminded that people’re here to connect to each other, to master from both – people and creatures identical,” Samra states .

For the event, Ohana’s ponies and goats were chilling out in a neighbouring field, while queer fashionistas from virtually and far put inside Ranch. PVC harnesses danced alongside Hawaiian t-shirts, program boots stomped next to flip-flops. “it absolutely was certainly my favorite reasons for the festival,” states Samra, “observe these city seems on within untamed character.”

Samra sips the woman mango lassi highlighting throughout the festival, looking off to the horizon. She actually is giving prophetic sage-by-the-sea. “here is the future,” she says, “even before the pandemic, you can see in Berlin and London, people getting out of this town. Then of course, the pandemic made men and women go further. You’ll find nothing outside when you look at the character for queers, queer is definitely from inside the area, in the nightclub, that’s where we feel safe. Queer ranches include potential for queer folks once they get outside their town.”

Obviously, a farm festival can not be everything about nightlife – the bluish cloudless skies, sandy coastlines, and cool Mediterranean wind, call your hungover butt to activity no real matter what you imbibed the night time prior to. Throughout Ohana’s festival, people liberated their bodies and brains in yoga and reflection classes. There were volleyball competitions, women’s sectors, and self-defense courses – all led by neighborhood instructors, queer women that survive the area year round. One sunset, the supremely talented Athenian musical organization somebody who actually myself (S.W.I.M.) took to the stage, providing their own indelible indie-electro-pop melodies. Legendary London


pull king extraordinaire, Don One


opened the event, with a silky smooth performance at lesbian coastline bar


Flamingo


. “personally i think in the home,” Don informs GO as they mosey around a bar, “i have never been here before but I believe residence, it’s very odd.”

Though around numerous queer women today call Skala Eressos house (for all or a portion of the year), the event brought a shot of young people towards community. Regarding the hundred queer women who reside here, three tend to be under the age of thirty (I am one of those!). The community has been some thing of a Mecca for queer females considering that the 1970s, as they traced the actions of Sappho, the


probably queer


poetess who offered lesbianism its name. Every Sep there’s an


International Eressos Ladies’ Festival


, which again appeals to 100s, perhaps several thousand queer ladies, though once more, generally of a specific get older.

“I happened to be concerned for this spot,” says Samra, “it’s these an unique, distinctive and historical area and unless a younger, queer generation are available, it’s going to perish.” Numerous who happen to live right here share this anxiety; the decades roll by, the queer elders grow older therefore the queer childhood are not landing here. “I absolutely desired the event to connect the difference between your generations, because I appreciate most of the generations,” says Samra, who’s within her 40s. “The older generation fought for people, we could not be queer without them, in addition they keep so much discomfort from all of these years of combating to thrive.

“the fresh generation,” Samra goes on, “with brand-new design, music, language, identities, they might be concerned from the earlier generation, and it is equivalent additional method around. So I constantly inform my younger queer buddies, without any elders you can not end up being you. And that I say to my personal to older gay or lesbian friends, that minus the young people, continuing to progress, the job you spend shall be for absolutely nothing.”

The event attracted some 150 out-of-islanders. Queerness, throughout its wonderful kinds (though queer women certainly ruled the Ohana roost), an amalgamation of years and sex identities, combined regarding the dancefloor, in yoga class at the coastline bar.

For nine decades, since Samra initial arrived from the area, she actually is wished to deliver something renewable and queer here. “Ohana being trusting and working about it within our quietness over time: through getting the land, planning the ranch, obtaining the lodge ready. And energetically distributing the word, speaing frankly about queerness, appealing folks from around the globe, making sure protection and neighborhood.”

As far as festival-prep goes, Ohana’s was actually extremely impulsive. “Anaïs and I also had one talk in our kitchen about at some point producing a festival right here,” states Samra, “but Anaïs really is a person that implies exactly what she states.” During the period of 90 days the team rapidly prepared the ranch –  building, mowing, welcoming, organising, volunteering. “You work so hard when it comes to those 90 days,” claims Samra. “there is no break.

“immediately after which, unexpectedly it’s the event, its happening. Sitting on the dancefloor, I experienced this moment, whenever I appeared around and thought, it is genuine, is in reality real and it is remarkable. To consider I found myself keeping this for nine many years, considering this and hoping for this and for the reason that time, it absolutely was a real possibility, we together manifested all this.”

Samra wasn’t alone grabbing by herself regarding the Ranch that night. Most of us which moved right here have – for the moment in any event – exchanged the hustle and bustle, the design and style and lifestyle regarding the big city, become here in utopia, in neighborhood, in the wild, because of the sea. This evening, there was clearly no trade-off; the metropolis and all the woman power and seems found us. Eyes closed, we were in


Berghain


, dropping our very own body-mind into thumping beat of techno. Sight open, we had been surrounded by our gorgeous society, looking doing the performers, on an island drifting for the Aegean water.

The next




Queer Ranch Festival




is actually *hopefully* early summertime 2023. Keep an eye on their




socials




to stay in the cycle (and also to see photos of baby goats leaping in the sun).