A bunch of people, chiefly Esther Neff from what I can gather, decided to get together and make something happen. We like that. The first BROOKLYN INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL (BIPAF) runs JULY 4-28, 2013.

It is a self-curated, self-organized, self-produced festival. It is self-described as “a singular, durational, live, collaborative performance entitled THE BROOKLYN INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL (BIPAF) IN WHICH 200+ ARTISTS AND ORGANIZERS PERFORM A FESTIVAL OF PERFORMANCE ACROSS 11 SPACES EVERY DAY JULY 4-28, 2013”

This is a grand name for a grand event that is both wonderful and daunting in its openness and scope.My experience of this kind of thing is that you should expect the unexpected and that quality will vary wildly. That being said, one man’s donut hole is another man’s universe, so the definition of quality & value is up to you. I’m sure there’s something for everybody here and if you don’t like it, you can just bail.

Here follows an abridged and annotated schedule for the festival, based solely on Culturebot’s existing knowledge of the participants.

Friday the 5th:

4pm-6pm @ Glasshouse
Soup with the festival organizers and roundtable/ organizational reflection

We’re thinking it will be really interesting to talk to the organizers and hang out with other people who are thoughtful about alternative structures for festivals and performance.

7pm-8pm @ CAVE
Evaporation Study #1
Performance inside Collectif Experiencia’s MACHINE

I don’t really know Raul Zbengheci but he’s been doing good stuff with the good folks at CAVE so I’m curious to find out about this project. It sounds super cool:

MACHINE is a 4-channel video and audio installation envisioned as a staging ground for upload to the digital heavens.  By using motion sensing technologies, video, audio, and water elements, MACHINE enables a pre-upload body/mind “work-out”.  Evaporation Study #1 exhibits the body in transition, its spirit in evaporation, and a liminal state of being, blissfully caught between an individual body and the multiplicity of the digital cloud.

9pm-1am @Grace Exhibition Space
Climate Change: La Pocha Nostra
“CORPO INSURRECTO (From the series Psycho-Magic Actions For A World Gone Wrong)” “What do you get when you sample from the following performance personas: A Brazilian faceless she/bull, an aging
deviant shaman, a neo-Aztec priest making tableaux vivants with a goat, a Mexican Bhutto/vato mariachi, a flamenco drag king and an Oil Spill Madonna?”

La Pocha Nostra is a Latino performance art troupe consisting of Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Roberto Sifuentes and Erica Mott. I worked with Roberto a bunch of years back when I was at PS122. Definitely interesting stuff from some interesting folks.

Sunday the 7th:

9pm-12am @ Grace Exhibition Space

Post-Dance
Kathinka Walter (UK), Zen-go (Megumi Kamimura, Shinichi Takashima) (Japan).The Post-Dance curatorial platform presents its international artists in a split bill. Kathinka Walter of the UK shows a new work developed from her investigations of the “visible choreographer,” and The Japanese duo Zen-go push the body to the limits of its articulation. $20 suggested.

Tuesday the 9th:

4pm-8pm @Glasshouse
Framing BIPAF Exhibition: HOMEBASE
4pm-5pm performance by Sarah Butler
5pm-6pm Glasshouse: Neo-Domesticities. Artists spaces, studios, and homemakers roundtable and soup with Glasshouse founders Lital Dotan and Eyal Perry, Brooklyn Spaces founder Oriana Berg, artist Marni Kotak, and others.
6:15-7pm performance by Marni Kotak
7pm-8pm Sarah Hill and Hayley Morgenstern, Hysterical Fits

I like neo-domesticies and independent art spaces.

Friday the 12th:

9pm-1am @Grace Exhibition Space

Climate Change: Language Action Poetry Facilitators – From Asia With Love. Tonight we present artists from the other side of our globe, with differing perspectives, but cohesive in their understanding. These artists are rarely seen in NYC and it is with great esteem that we present their work. Gim Gwang Cheol (SKorea), Arai Shin-Ichi (Japan]) Yuenjie Maru (Hong Kong), W. Christiawan and Mimi Fadmi (Indonesia), Miao Jiaxin (Shanghai) $20 donation

Saturday the 13th:

8pm-12am @ JACK

The Georges (NYC), Sabotanic Garden (Finland), Jaamil Olawale Kosoko (NYC) with Post-Dance-curated artists Antibody Corporation [Adam Rose,José Hernandez, Andrew Braddock] (Chicago) $10 door.

JACK is awesome. Jaamil is awesome. And Ann Liv Young was just added to this evening’s bill. So, you know, do this.

Sunday the 14th:

2pm-6pm @ The Invisible Dog Art Center
The Brooklyn Commune Bastille Day ShareBQ
In 1839 the French Socialist Louis Blanc coined the phrase “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The Brooklyn Commune celebrates Bastille Day and the values of community, reciprocity & generosity with the first-ever Bastille Day ShareBQ. What is your ability, what is your need? Bring a skill, a song, a dance some food, drink or dessert. Kick some knowledge to the crowd or just donate some capital to the cause. But bring yourself and your friends to The Brooklyn Commune at The Invisible Dog, because change starts with you.

Um. Hello?? Of course you will join us!!!

6pm-1am @ Gowanus Ballroom
Collective Spectacle
18 performance artists perform, sometimes simultaneously, in the massive ballroom and surrounding outdoor spaces by the Gowanus Canal. Rob Andrews, Sherry Aliberti/CocoonNYC, Dhira Rauch,Whitney V. Hunter, Caridad Sola, Miao Jiaxin and Heeran Lee, Geraldo Mercado, Courtney Leigh Novak, Ivy Castellanos, Maria Hupfield, Katya Grokhovsky, Hilary Sand, Sylva Dean, Sophia Cleary, Felix Morelo, Genevieve White, Matthew Silver, Hiroshi Shafer. Initially curated by Matthew Silver. $10 door.

Wednesday the 17th:

10pm-12am @ The Silent Barn
It Self-Destructs at Midnight
Experimental multimedia installations, performance art, sound art, musicians and thevisitor create this one-night-only Happening. The Cocoon Project collaborates with eight video artists from around the world and Brooklyn to loosely choreograph and perform the Cocoon with their projected videos. Performance artists create new pieces touching on destructive beauty and the Sublime. During the night, seamless, entropic energy builds into a massive, devastatingly beautiful final collaborative piece created by All the Artists. Greater than the sum of our parts, we are so beautiful it hurts. Like looking at the sun. Like spontaneously combusting. Interdisciplinary collaborative performance pieces involve CocoonNYC with video projections and/or soundscapes by Rob Cerrato, Mary Lattimore & Jeff Zeigler, Jonathan Phelps, WashMachine, Geraldo Mercado, Hiroshi Shafer, Jennifer Nieves, WILD TORUS. Performances by Valerie Kuehne, Sickles, Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, Sindy Butz, Jon Konkol, Felix Morelo, Courtney Leigh Novak, Matthew Silver, Lorraine D. Glover, Sylva Dean & Me, Myk Henry, Da-Yeon Kim, and Shir Lieberman. Organized by Sherry Aliberti, Mila Matveeva, Theresa Buchheister.

I love what’s happening at Silent Barn and Theresa Buchheister is a freakin’ rock star.

Thursday the 18th:

6pm-8pm @ Glasshouse
Body Art: A Long Table Discussion
Body-based performance art, or Body Art, often uses the performer’s own flesh as a site for dealing with agency, human rights, identity, and human being itself. As a current of performance art running throughout the Americas as developed by artists such as Artur Barrio, Ana Mendieta, Rocío Boliver/La Congelada de Uva, and Ron Athey (the latter two joining us for this Long Table) and many others, We ask, how do these relations—often threatening, testing, and fetishizing the body’s material flesh—also threaten power paradigms or enable other transformations? How do artists find their own lives transformed by their practices? What tales do their scars tell, and why? Join us for this special discussion in the format of a Long Table—a performance format conceived by Lois Weaver that experiments with participation and public engagement by reappropriating a dinner table atmosphere as a public forum, and encouraging informal conversations on serious topics. This event is co-sponsored by the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. hemisphericinstitute.org

8pm-11pm @ IV Soldiers
No Wave Performance Task Force: Feminist ReVolution #2
Chloë Bass, Ivy Castellanos, Christen Clifford, Lindsey Drury, Kaia Gilje, Valerie Kuehne, Esther Neff, Courtney Leigh Novak. Curated/structured by Ivy Castellanos.

Friday the 19th:

4pm-8:30pm@ Glasshouse
Archiving the Now
A 4.5-hour research office open to the public, with research/performances by Mari Novotny-Jones, Teena Lange, Lital Dotan, Anya Liftig, Dave Ruder, Nicole Brydson, Chloë Bass, and others.

9pm-1am @ Grace Exhibition Space
Incorruptible Flesh: “Messianic Remains” (Ron Athey) and Time Goes by
and I Cannot Forget you: “Between Menopause and Old Age” (La Congelada de Uva). Tonight, Grace Exhibition Space welcomes artists whose work explores the darker, yet healthy, parts of our psyches. “Ron Athey’s work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality, and traumatic experience. Many of his works include aspects of S&M in order to confront preconceived ideas about the  body in relation to masculinity and religious iconography” (wikipedia). “In this pasteurized society, I prefer to cause disgust, hatred, rejection, confusion, weariness, anxiety, hostility, fear … to further promote mental asepsis.” (Rocío Boliver) Ron Athey, Rocío Boliver, Peter Dobill. $20 donation. 21+ only!

Saturday the 20th:

1pm-4pm @ Glasshouse
LECTURE AS PERFORMANCE
Jaamil Kosoko & Marjani Forte, babyskinglove(Bailey Nolan), Nathaniel Sullivan and others deliver performative/performance lectures.

4pm-7pm @ TBA on Facebook and www.bipaf.net 
TAB does Post-Dance
curated by Stephanie Browne and Kay Ottinger

8pm-11pm @ JACK
Rebecca Patek, Jenna Horton, Crystal (Stiven Luka,) Geo Wyeth. Curated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. $10 door

Ann Liv Young was supposed to be on the 20th but moved to the 13th. Which I think is actually a good thing because Rebecca Patek & Geo Wyeth should stand on their own. Jenna Horton is coming up from Philly and I don’t know Stiven but I know Jaamil and he’s a serious up-and-comer curator/performer/producer so this should be some good stuff.

Tuesday the 23rd

5:30-7pm @ Glasshouse
From Site-Specific Performance to Hit and Run Interventions in the Public Realm.
Roundtable discussion moderated by Dovrat Meron. This Roundtable brings together New York based artists and professionals in the public art field to discuss the process of privatisation of public spaces in NY Privately-Owned Public Spaces (POPS) – and the controversial regulations restricting performance artists in the public realm in NY. Cara Starke (Creative Time), Christina Ray (Conflux Festival), Dan McKereghan, Geraldo Mercado, Jill McDermid, Maria Hupfield, Matthew Silver, Monica Valenzuela (Staten Island Arts) Molly Schaffner & Nick Cregor, Rafael Sanchez, Samuel Jablon, and members of the No Wave Performance Task Force.

Yeah this is an important discussion. When MoMA does a dance performance in the Atrium and charges $25 to get in and calls it “public space” that’s indicative of a larger confusion about public/private. NYC is surprising in that if you work with Street Activity Permit Office you’d be surprised what you can & can’t do in public legally, and where. But you’d also be surprised what ISN’T actually public and how problematic that is.

Thursday the 25th:

8pm-11pm @ Panoply Performance Laboratory
No Wave Performance Task Force: We Are Scores
Chloë Bass, Ivy Castellanos, Lindsey Drury, Coralina Meyer, Kaia Gilje and Paige Fredlund, Fauziya, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Jolie Pichardo.

Friday the 26th:

5:30-7pm @ Glasshouse
THE FUTURE, A PERFORMANCE DEBATE
Andy Horwitz (Cuturebot) and Chloë Bass (BIPAF) stage a final four debate on the future of performance. All debates are structured around false binaries. The winner shall have prizes.

Well, once again, how can you miss what you’re truly is doing? The last time Chloe and I did something together we made dinner & conversation as part of Culturebot’s “Ephemeral Evidence” exhibit in the Exit Art Gallery’s final group show “Collective/Perfomative”. Come smell the magic!

Andy & Chloe’s “Come Over To Our Place” at Exit Art Gallery

7pm-9pm @ Glasshouse
Framing BIPAF Exhibition CLOSING
Spiked punch, performance/drinking game by Larissa Hayden (The Society for the Advancement of Social Studies, S.A.S.S).

Sunday the 28th:

5pm-6pm @ The Woods

5pm-6pm @ Panoply Performance Laboratory
BIPAF, No Collective
1. This performance takes place in two venues simultaneously. The audience may choose which one to attend. 2. In either one of the venues, this will be a strictly punctual event. Late arrivers to that venue will not
be allowed to enter. 3. BIPAF is a social collective that bases its works around investigating micro-cultures and introducing humorous artwork to a mass of seemingly un-interested viewers. It also makes music performances which explore and problematize both the conceptual and material infrastructures of music and performance. Since its inception circa 2007, members of BIPAF have varied both in quantity and quality according to each works’ objective and situational conditions. By using familiarity and stereotypes, and often games, BIPAF is keen to widen the understanding of contemporary art mediums and open the mind to subjects that are close to home. Most recent works include Concertos No.4 (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2012), a concert piece performed with ball-shaped speakers operated by blind performers in a completely darkened 16,000 square feet performance space, The Culture Show: Episode 4 The Cultural Wasteland Of London (Aired at LUPA 17, London, 2013), a physical performance highlighting cultural dispersion across London and the suburbs, and All Your Canals are Belong to Us (2012), a video piece which critically examines the hidden (political as well as cultural) relationship between the Panama Canal and video games (http://vimeo.com/25555106).4. “BIPAF” above should be read as “No Collective.”

8pm-11pm @ Grace Exhibition Space/Alice Chilton Gallery
Closing Party and Bazaar
Festival CLOSING PARTY and ephemeral bazaar of documentation, props, and other for-sale ephemera.

ARTISTS PEFORMING BIPAF: