SUPPORT THE BROOKLYN INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL HERE ON INDIEGOGO - every little bit counts!
BIPAF is a mass performance. Performance artists, curators, critics,
gallery directors, cultural organizers, and many others are working
together to perform a festival, framing the organization and the
festival itself as a work of constructive institutional critique.
Over 200 individuals are participating in this festival.
Performance art is social research, relational practice, and
political assembly. Performance artists are not creating luxury objects,
performance artists work with human Being, create alternative social
situations, and operating across class, race, nationality, gender
identity and sexual orientation, envisioning and then actualizing
cultural gatherings and actions.
Right now, BIPAF participants are donating time, materials, and
pooling all of their resources to make this festival happen. We see
BIPAF as an epic culmination of our community's ability to pull together
in absolute destitution, and to combine our practices for maximum
impact. Performance art has long existed on the margins of arts
industries, largely unsupported and critically neglected. As such,
performance art-making, or organizing for the discipline, is not a
paying job.
For International participants, BIPAF's formal no-budget structure
means paying for plane tickets out-of-pocket, even for local artists
this means paying for materials, transportation, and donating time. For
the organizers, this means 40+ unpaid hours per week, all while we each
work day jobs and/or produce our own practices. None of the spaces are
rented, all are donated. The incredible generosity of artists, spaces,
and curators is already demonstrably historic. We all believe so
strongly in performance art as a social tool that we are compelled to
work, no matter if we must do so outside of capitalist structures for
reward and punishment.
To an extent, this no-budget approach is intentional, we exist via
mutualism, collaboration, and simple sharing. However, we need to make a
website and catalog at the very least, to make it possible for
audiences to even attend the festival.
$26,000 is a bare minumum amount for making the BIPAF website,
festival catalog, purchase adspace, and provide supplemental funds to
the spaces for light bulbs, toilet paper, and other functional
neccesities for the public. Beyond this amount, we will split funding
evenly between all participants.
Grace Exhibition Space (Jill McDermid and Erik Hokanson), Panoply
Performance Laboratory (Esther Neff, Brian McCorkle, Valerie Kuehne),
The Woods Co-Operative (Lindsey Drury), Gowanus Ballroom, Matthew
Silver, CAVE Art Space (Raul Zbengheci), No Collective, Glasshouse
Projects (Lital Dotan and Eyal Perry), IV Soldiers (Ivy Castellanos),
Kathinka Walters, 109 Gallery (Ryan Krause), Fitness Center for Arts and
Tactics (Miles Pflanz and Laura Bluer), Teena Lange, PERFORMEANDO/Nexus
Sur Nexus (Hector Canonge), Goodbye Blue Monday, JACK (Alec Duffy), and
the No Wave Performance Task Force, are just a few of the current
spaces, individuals/curators, and organizing entities. If you have a
space, are an organizer/curator, or have other cultural
resources/skills/needs, get involved! We are always open to ideas,
criticism, and collaboration.
Other Ways You Can Help
Some people just can’t contribute money, but that doesn’t mean they
can’t help:To volunteer time, materials, resources, housing (couch?
floor?) for International artists, to get involved as a performer, visit
the wiki atwww.bipaf.net/bipafwiki and e-mail bipafbipaf@gmail.com
If you would like to make a major gift, you can recieve a tax-deduction by donating through one of our fiscal sponsors. E-mail bipafbipaf@gmail.com
All contributors will be acknowledged in the festival catalogue.
