You are most cordially invited to an intimate preview benefit on Saturday, March 23 at Glasshouse Projects (246 Union Ave, Brooklyn) featuring a lecture by Dr. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, an excerpt of G. Douglas Barrett‘s Hence Where Labor performed by Fahad Siadat and  Robert Ashley‘s Public Opinion Descends Upon the Demonstrators, performed by Varispeed. As part of this extraordinary evening, we invite you to contribute your written reactions, impressions, and notes from the lecture and performance to be sold at our silent auction at the end of the evening, allowing the ideas and events of the evening to circulate past the walls of the gallery.

This night benefits the production of Theorems, Proofs, Rebuttals, and Propositions: A Conference of Theoretical Theater, a conference framed-as-performance that will culminate in September, 2013 in NYC. This experimental conference theorizes that performance is not just an artistic medium, it is also a vast and complex conceptual structure reaching into every atom of society.  We will be raising funds to facilitate the development of performance projects by four “plenary” artist-theorists, Kikuko Tanaka (Japan/USA), Amapola Prada (Peru), Mike Taylor(NYC), and Reality Research Center (Finland).

For tickets click HERE

NO WAVE PERFORMANCE TASK FORCE and KATE ZAMBRENO present

HEROINES I

March 21st

7:30 PM

Dixon Place Mainstage
161A Chrystie St. New York, NY
(Between Rivington & Delancey, F to 2^nd Ave, 6 to Spring)

Tickets: $12 (advance), $15 / $10 stu/sen & TDF (door) 212.219.0736

http://www.nowavetaskforce.org/

The No Wave Performance Task Force collaborates with writer Kate Zambreno, the author of the provocative critical memoir Heroines.

HEROINES is a social structure and literary reading that explores fangirlism, female partnership, mutual respect, authorship, persona, female vision, forms of de-hierarchization, and feminist leadership. “Kate Zambreno” will read and each of the core members will perform a tribute to a Heroine.

Kate Zambreno is the author of the novels O Fallen Angel  and Green Girl. Her critical memoir Heroines, revolving around an obsession with the wives and myths of modernism, was published by Semiotext(e). Her anti-memoir Book of Mutter will be published by Counterpath Press in March 2014.

No Wave Performance Task Force (NWPTF) is a collective that enables performative social sculpture, practicing Feminist construction rather than reacting solely to existing conditions of

patriarchy, gender, sexuality, and “Other” vs. “Us” dichotomies. The No Wave Performance Task Force is a moniker for collaborative projects and alternatively-formed performance exhibitions organized by core members Ivy Castellanos, Christen Clifford, Lindsey Drury and Esther Neff. We use the title NWPTF to frame our constructive and formal

realizations of feminist ethics in performance. 50+ women artists have made work as part of the NWPTF, the collective is open and boundless, a concept rather than an organization. Past exhibitions, events, and projects have taken place at Gibney Dance, IV Soldiers Gallery, Panoply Lab, Vaudeville Park, Fitness Center for Arts and Tactics, and in public.

3,291 crayons, small paraffin candles, and other blocks and chunks of scrap wax are melted down and cast into globes, bowls, and used to build an installation and series of sculptures at Glasshouse Gallery during <aftermath> Williamsburg Armory After Hours, 03/08-09/2013

March 8-9 (Friday through Saturday) I am doing a 24hr performance resulting in an installation, with Ivy Castellanos…

Glasshouse Projects Presents:

<aftermath> 24-Hour Performances
Friday, March 8, 6pm- Saturday, March 9, 6pm

<aftermath> Exhibition
Saturday, March 9, 7pm-11pm

Glasshouse
246 Union Avenue Brooklyn, NY
(G to Broadway, M to Lorimer, or L/G to Metropolitan-Lorimer)

www.glasshouseproject.org       www.glasshouse247.tumblr.com

Glasshouse presents live art, performance forensics, and multileveled multimedia installation as part of Williamsburg After Hours, the Williamsburg arm of this year’s Armory Show.

For <aftermath> curators Lital Dotan and Eyal Perry expose process and purpose in the construction of installation, painting, and video: for 24 hours, artists Quinn Dukes, Esther Neff, and others TBA perform live. Visitors to the gallery the following evening during Williamsburg After Hours find beautiful wreckage, the indices of fury and focus, and freshly made objects still warm from the friction.

Glasshouse is an art-life-lab that aims to promote artistic experiences based on participatory, performance and time-based art in the domestic sphere, under the motto that “Art Should Be Experienced in a Place that Allows Staying.” The newly opened Glasshouse in Williamsburg hosts performances, screenings and a residency program all dedicated to promote the hosting of artistic discourse. Alongside these public activities the unique nature of the place allows us to engage in a deeper research of the nature of performance and explore themes such as unannounced performances, long durational activities, one-on-one performances, dedicated spaces for accumulating performances and creating a taxonomy of performative experiences. This activity as a whole is being interweaved with/by the daily practice and life of founding artists Lital Dotan & Eyal Perry.

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ESTHER NEFF, APPLIED PERFORMANCE

Applied Performance discusses how the construction of institutions can operate as critical performance. The core example is the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF), which is currently being performed online through networked organizing, one-on-one meetings, and live group gatherings to conclude in a month of public events in July 2013. BIPAF, as an Impossible Project, will implicate all individuals who attend this presentation in its own design and realization.

From the REVERSE website:

The Impossible Project will present and discuss the conceptions of creative minds in a casual, open forum. We believe that a public presentation of any project can be an influential part of the creative process and can act as an opportunity for these ideas to grow.

The Impossible Project talk series seeks to promote dialogue, exchange, and interaction between artists and general public. We encourage everyone to particpate and bring their ideas into the table.

On successive Wednesdays: February 13, 20 and 27 at 7:30pm we will be presenting the projects of different artists at REVERSE art space on 28 Frost Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

I will be performing in this 2-Thursday night exhibition with some incredible artists, Rob Andrews, Hector Canonge, Lindsey Drury/Drearysomebody, Jessica Kaire, and Birgit Larson. Curated by Ivy Castellanos. IV Soldiers is located at 184 Noll Street by the Morgan L stop in Bushwick. Performances start at 8pm and use the gallery, front plaza, and rooftop. Free and open to the public both days.

Artists: Hiroshi Shafer, Esther Neff, Brian McCorkle, Valerie Kuehne, Lindsey Drury, Ivy Castellanos,

January 17th 8pm opening reception and performances
January 24th 8pm performances
January 31st 8pm closing reception and performances

For Video of January 24, click HERE

You’re a Big Boy Now OR Rauschenberg ist Tödlich: A Diner



Fitness Center for Arts and Tactics

1196 Myrtle Avenue
Brooklyn New York 11221



PPL serves up a menu of edible and inedible performances as ordered by audience members during their public diner open from 1pm to 1am on Monday, December 10, 2012. Including music, text, actions, images, and interactive sequences,  frameworks for improvisation, functioning as a “book” for the opera, evolved from improvisational and object-based performances done collaboratively by Valerie Kuehne, Brian McCorkle, and Esther Neff over 8 days’ time in bowling alleys, public libraries, gallery, bar, art fair, house, confusing themselves with 1.) the “content” that regurgitates the combine between art and life even when attempts to repress “meaning” and totally objectify the meal are practiced 2.) the mouth between almost daily participation in diner situations/the state of our bodies on such a diet/etc and internal, subjective narration of “performance,” 3.) intersubjective exchanges (conversations, etc) performed both while perceived as either “performing” or “not performing” and as readily as digestion. 

Anyone can come and sit in the diner (admission to the gallery is free), ordering the time-based items is encouraged ($1-$5/ea).

How do cultural practices defecate experience? does late capitalism really erode interpretation of meaning or does it simply formalize interpretive processes? How are syntheses of cognitive dissonances performed? How is combination platter performed, why is rauschenberg still smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk, what is that grey stuff in the corner?

Documentation video HERE

Photo Documentation by Eyal Perry:

HOMAGE PERFORMANCE PROGRAM at Glasshouse Projects and the Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL) present:

Any Size Mirror is a Dictator: Homage to Allan Kaprow 
Friday, October 26
7-11 pm

Glasshouse Projects
246 Union Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11206
(M to Lorimer, G to Broadway, L/G to Met-Lorimer)

Thursday night, October 25th, 8pm
Thursday night, November 1st, 8pm
Thursday night, November 15th, 8pm

IV Soldiers
184 Noll Street
Brooklyn, NY
(L to Morgan or J/M/Z to Myrtle-Broadway)

All exhibition nights include performances by and in collaboration between:

Elinor Thompson
Ivy Castellanos
Lindsey Drury
Esther Neff

Curator/project organizer and IV Soldiers director Ivy Castellanos says simply: An Evolution of performance.

Photo Documentation of the first performance (improvisational, collaborative construction) below:

This festival will be a collaborative performance.

Although there is a small core team of individuals lighting the big pink match in this room full of gas, this small team is serving primarily as liaisons and facilitators of information sharing. Roles of “curator” “artist” “gallery director” “festival administrator” will be shifted and often obliterated in favor of practical interpersonal organization and skill-based leadership structures.

In order to participate in the festival, please collaborate performatively, starting now. There are no fees to apply, no application or curatorial proposal procedures (though there may be various calls for proposals later on), and no lump wad of institutional funding.

To participate, use the wiki at http://www.bipaf.net/bipafwiki. On Facebook, there is a page, http://www.facebook.com/BrooklynInternationalPerformanceArtFestival. You can also use the e-mail address bipafbipaf@gmail.com, etc to express interest, share ideas, make general proposals and offer resources, also to set up one-on-one meetings with me (the person writing this letter) if you prefer private contact to public forum. Perhaps we are all just getting used to these digitized forms of inter-netted communication, but we have already seen how these performative, online/digital/crowd-sourced forms of organization can operate to enormous political and social effect.
Outside of our online networks, a public meeting to specifically address forms of communication and organization for BIPAF is scheduled for SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2012 at 3pm at 104 Meserole Street, Brooklyn, 11206. This meeting will be on livestream for International participation (chat feature will be on) at: http://www.livestream.com/BIPAF.
BIPAF currently has 6 confirmed spaces (confirmed because they are directed by the instigating individuals) and a network of organizing artists, around 150, from all over the world. This core can comprise a tiny festival if necessary, voila. However, the size and scope of the festival will be up to all of us so that it can live up to its presumptuous title.
Unfortunately, at this time, many social situations experienced by artists, curators, arts administrators, and others involved in the “arts sphere” (including lack of economic safety, absence of emotional and psychological support, constant co-competitively, etc) often produce in us a kind of demented desperation for recognition and opportunity. The emails already received, asking for opportunities to perform, reveal the top-down structures that these types of grassroots festivals usually have. This festival is NOT A BUSINESS-OF-ART “OPPORTUNITY,” it is a collaborative performance; the performance is the organization and realization of the festival. Thus, we suggest the first (and only?) rule of the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival is actually a plea to ALL PARTICIPANTS TO PLEASE PARTICIPATE.
First step is the wiki. Visit it when you have a moment and make a page titled your own name/space/collective/etc; include bio, external links, embed video etc. Feel free to link to other individuals who are part of your current community, and make discussion topics. Please be sure to include what you would like to do as part of this festival/what you need this festival to be. English is the primary language of this festival, but if you need to write in another language, we can use Google Translate or those who are multilingual can offer translations.

Artists, please gather your artist friends whose work you feel relates with yours and propose an exhibition; ask for help if you have never written a curatorial proposal or self-organized before. Ask for help with writing a permit for use of a public space if you have never done that before. Offer your assistance if you have experience with these types of things or anything you feel is helpful. Perhaps you have a couch where an International artist can stay? Or access to zipcar for transport of materials/artists? Do you have gallery representation, work for an arts nonprofit, or have other affiliations with an institution or organization to involve? Start an indiegogo campaign to raise fees for artists and curators if you or your parents have wealthy friends…

Director-curators, space directors, programmers, and cultural organizers, let’s make lists of housing, funding, catalog publication, and other resources, and as we curate let’s include the artists who are participating in the community at large and not treat artists like products for others to obtain and then sell…we will meet many new artists and curate those who have engaged with this project at large.

Let’s try to use this festival context to propose and perform ways of relating within Brooklyn and International communities at large.

This letter is walking a fine line between the attempt to de-hierarchize the festival ‘format’ by involving and implicating all members of “performance art communities” and the attempt to communicate the somewhat firm dictation of an ideological perspective that is currently fueling the festival, including the ethical framework that it hopefully initiates through social, public performance across “levels” and aspects of the festival.
No matter what we end up with, BIPAF will be an explosion of rigorous, exceptional, rapturous Performance Art (Visual Arts Performance? Live Art? Action Art?) in Brooklyn over a time-period of one month, July 2013. During this month, our practices and disciplines will be treated with respect, framed as “valuable” parts of society, be that value demonstrated scientifically, politically, economically, socially, spiritually, and/or otherwise. We must perform our own theories regarding performance art’s public operations.
Thank you for reading this very long letter. We have thus far described BIPAF as “slow,” this often means long letters that take a while to read, so thank you for your patience and commitment already.

Esther Neff (Panoply Performance Laboratory)