The description of this video simply reads: “Experiment conducted by Not Blood Paint, 2/24/11. Result: Failure.” Brooklyn-based band/performance group Not Blood Paint are playing the launch party for SITE Fest this Friday at Brooklyn Fire Proof. SITE Fest, organized by Arts in Bushwick, runs Saturday and Sunday, March 5 and 6, and features 75 performances at a half-dozen hub venues throughout Bushwick, each for only $5. Visit the website for more info and a full line up. (Special thanks to Facebook tipper Jean Ann Douglas! Be sure to follow us to take part in the conversation.)

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On June 13 at 7:30PM the CHEZ BUSHWICK series CAKE will feature an “anti-panel” on “interdisciplinarity” called BALKANIZATION. Organized by “theory monster” Andrea Liu the anti-panelists include:

• Chase Granoff:
Dancer/Curator at Chocolate Factory and DTW Lobby Talks
• Matthew Lyons:
Curator at the Kitchen
• Bosko Blagojevic: Artist/Writer, Founder of Platform for Pedagogy
• Peter Dobill:Actionist, Franklin Furnace performance artist
• Moriah Evans, choreographer (w/dancer Shaun Boyle)

Ms. Liu has written an extensive essay on the subject that is available here. We are hoping to foster a discussion on Culturebot.org that will precede the anti-panel, so download the essay in its entirety, read it, and discuss in the comments of this post.

In brief, Ms. Liu says:

Interdisciplinarity—that is, forms of art that seek to combine two or more art forms (visual art, dance, theater, film, literature, music) is rare. In a highly specialized, career-oriented capitalist society, different art fields become highly balkanized, such that the norm is that an artist in one field would have no knowledge, curiosity, or even respect of an art field other than their own. Dance and visual art have different relations to capital, different genealogies of the body, different relations to verbal discourse, different relations to and definitions of modernism, different gender power differentials; different ideologies of temporality, ephemerality, embodiment, spectatorship, preservation, commodification, distribution, and mimesis.

BALKANIZATION is an Artists’ Laboratory that examines the superficiality with which the term “interdisciplinary” is thrown around to describe a host of practices that merely place different disciplines side by side in a salad bowl situation, without those fields interpenetrating, cross-pollinating or in any way challenging the division between those disciplines.

We will look at the distinction between the terms Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary, Cross-disciplinary, Post-disciplinary, Anti-disciplinary, the politics of the “interdisciplinary” residency, dada performance, butoh, performance art, dance installation, Performance Studies, dynamics of center/periphery, marginalization and experimentalism, and institutional education’s role.

THIS IS NOT A PANEL DISCUSSION, and there is no hierarchy between presenters and listeners. The audience will sit in a circle and are asked to bring notes, mini-presentations, ephemera, or any reactions in response to the essay.

This is the opening of Andrea Liu’s essay The Elusive Chimera: Interdisciplinarity –

Working at the cusp of two fields, as both a visual art and dance critic, I am made pretty aware on a daily basis of how rare, if not seemingly impossible, true “interdisciplinarity” between different art fields is actually fostered. Interdisciplinarity is often championed or marketed with a watery feel-good kum bah yah spirit by different venues or organizations, eliding the serious impediments to actually fostering real interdisciplinarity between art fields. If we define “interdisciplinarity” as merely the edges of fields touching, such as a choreographer using a visual artist to do scenery, or different disciplines being placed side by side one another in a “salad bowl” mix, such as a multi-disciplinary performance space, then perhaps “interdisciplinarity” is not rare. However, if we define “interdisciplinarity” as the historical trajectory and the canons of different art fields interpenetrating and cross pollinating, sharing affinities in their conceptual or aesthetic predilections, if not their notions of form, intermixing the texture of their social communities, then interdisciplinarity it seems to me is rare. If I took all my dance friends to one visual art event a week and all my visual art friends to one dance event a week, it wouldn’t change any thing. It’s a mentality, a tribalist, perhaps even territorialist identity that coagulates and exercise a centrifugal pull on its members. It’s an internal motivation problem as well: it takes alot of time to learn about another discipline, and it doesn’t benefit your career or fortify your ego in any way to do so, and you have to endure the humiliation of being a novice or beginner for awhile. As such most artists don’t bother.

download the rest here and please respond in the comments section.

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This looks really cool:

Chez Bushwick  in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council: Folk Arts Program presents

Foot Notes: Folk Feet Meet Modern Feet

A Traditional & Modern Dance Mash-Up

Ballet Folklorico Quetzacoatl, Folk Feet on 5th, 2008. Photo: Amanda Barett

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

7:00pm – 9:00pm

FREE!!!

This traditional and modern dance performance “mash-up” features Brooklyn-based dancers of culturally-specific traditions alongside contemporary dancers.

PERFORMANCES BY

Benito Bravo, Balet Folkrorico Quetzalcoalt

Baraka de Soleil

Ralph “King Uprock” Casanova, with Richie “Break Easy” Santiago

Rebecca Marzalek-Kelly

Sherley St. Fort, La Troupe Zetwal

Thania Acaron and Jessie Flores, Vestiges Dance Collective

FOLLOWED BY Q&A WITH ARTISTS

 @ Chez Bushwick

304 Boerum St. #23, Buzzer #11

Brooklyn, NY 11206

Reservations & Information:

718.418.4405 or 718.625.0800

http://www.chezbushwick.net

http://www.brooklynartscouncil.org

This second annual event, presented as part of the city-wide Immigrant Heritage Week, features Brooklyn-based traditional dancers from culturally-specific immigrant groups alongside contemporary dancers. “Foot Notes” juxtaposes traditional and contemporary dance forms from a variety of genres and communities that make their home in Brooklyn, creating opportunity for dialogue and collaboration at Chez Bushwick, a hub for new dance creation and performance.

Brooklyn Arts Council’s Folk Feet program includes traditional dance forms that have marked Brooklyn’s dance scene from the mid-1960s onwards, featuring dancers representing relatively recent immigrant waves, such as Mexican and Haitian, as well as Puerto Rican-influenced dance forms historic to Bushwick. The dancers featured in “Foot Notes” are Benito Bravo, born in Pueba, Mexico and Director of Sunset Park-based dance company, Balet Folklorico Quetzalcoalt; Sherley St. Fort, Director of the Haitian dance group Les Zetwals, known for their repertoire of Folkloric and social Haitian dance; Ralph “King Uprock” Casanova, Bushwick-bred, advocate and “King” of Brooklyn’s historic street dance, the Rock Dance aka Uprock, and president of The Dynasty Rockers. These performances will be joined by contributions from contemporary choreographers Rebecca Marzalek-Kelly, Baraka de Soleil, and Vestiges Dance Collective/Thania Acaron & Jessie Flores. Folk Feet is made possible, in part, by Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and The New York Community Trust.

BAC programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from New York State Council on the Arts, the Brooklyn Delegations of the New York State Senate and New York State Assembly, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and New York City Council and its Brooklyn Delegation.

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I, unfortunately, have to go to Baltimore this weekend. But if I were in town I would probably be trying to head out to Chez Bushwick for at least one of these programs of work by two Romanian which look fascinating, part of CB’s Force Majeur residency program:

“Hole In One”

By Brynjar Bandlien

Wednesday, August 13

“Preview”

By Manuel Pelmus

Thursday, August 14

“Poarta Sarutului”

Brynjar Bandlien & Manuel Pelmus

Collaboration, Dramaturgy & Text by Stefan Tiron

(North American Premiere)

Friday, August 15th

*All Performances Begin at 8:00pm*

Brancusiology, the study of the life and work of Constantin Brancusi has acquired over the years, especially in his native Romania, the trappings of a cult. It has the elitist dimension, the esoteric vocabulary and convoluted theory making associated with an occult society. The rituals involved in the cult of Brancusi lie at the heart of the tradition of modern art in Romania and abroad. Pledging allegiance and praising the perfection, supremacy and god-like nature of Brancusi and his work is functioning as an initiation ritual for generations of artists, art critics and art historians. Dealing with the heritage of Brancusi, competing for the most epic rendition of his life’s work, involves a lot of energy concerting this ode-producing activity in the right direction. It involved securing the right cultural links, the right connotations and the right spiritual and intellectual hierarchies. There is an orthodoxy of consent at the hub of all these modern rituals involving the work of Brancusi and his personality. One that tries really hard to keep his patriarchate unreachable, untouchable and eternal. Name dropping Constantin Brancusi in the preferred context – acted as a cultural ‘open sesame’, where doors open, recognition and admittance following to the modernist Valhalla.

Concept

The tradition described above is actually limiting and obliterating in effect. Instead of being inclusive and overt it acts as a blockade against interpretation. It blocks and expels everything that endangers its supposedly majestic scope. In the same time, with a lot of abuse involved, it makes Constantin Brancusi an instrumental figure in maintaining the cultural, political and social status quo. His works are read as perfect

examples of cultural superiority, of him and the nation that has given rise to such a miracle. “Poarta Sarutului”will unsettle this abusive reading and instrumentation of Brancusi and his work, also allowing and facilitating access to those meanings and aspects of Brancusi’s work that were never at the center of the Brancusiological excess.

Continue Reading

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BAC Folk Arts and Chez Bushwick present:

Foot Notes (Brooklyn, NY)

BAC Folk Arts and Chez Bushwick present: Foot Notes: Folk Feet Meet Modern Feet, featuring dance performances by Yasser Darwish, Meredith Glisson, Katie Key, Kevin “Shock-a-lock” Porter, and Rita Silva as well as a screening of film work by Sebastian Silva.

WHERE: Chez Bushwick, 304 Boerum Street, Buzzer #11, Brooklyn, NY

WHEN: Saturday, June 14, 7pm

Chez Bushwick is a Brooklyn-based organization that has emerged as a new model for the creation, support, and presentation of new dance and performance.

Foot Notes is supported by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Brooklyn Arts Council’s Folk Feet Traditional dance project is made possible, in part, with major support from Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and The New York Community Trust. BAC Folk Arts is sponsored by Con Edison.

For more information, please email info@chezbushwick.net or folkarts@brooklynartscouncil.org, or visit http://www.brooklynartscouncil.org or http://www.chezbushwick.net

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Chez Bushwick Presents

Three Films By Yvonne Rainer

The Lives of Performers (1972)

Wednesday, June 4th

7:30pm

$5

Murder and Murder (1996)

Wednesday, June 11th

7:30pm

$5

Privilege (1990)

Wednesday, June 18th

7:30pm

$5

Three films by acclaimed choreographer, filmmaker, and post-modern pioneer, Yvonne Rainer.

All Screenings Will Take Place At:

• CHEZ BUSHWICK •

304 Boerum St. #23

Brooklyn, NY 11206

• 718.418.4405 • www.chezbushwick.net •

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Chez Bushwick Presents FORCE MAJEURE: Microsystéme

(A Studio Showing Of New Work)

GENOA/US

Microsystéme

Artistic Director: Victor Gauthier-Martin

(Based On Genoa 01 By Fausto Paravidino)

Guests are cordially invited to view the creative process of a staged rehearsal for GENOA / US, as part of the serial project directed by French Director Victor Gaulthier-Martin/Microsystéme, conceived for non-theatrical spaces such as museums, foundations and national parks. This work was developed during a Watermill Center Spring 2008 Residency, and has been staged with American performers.

Location:

Chez Bushwick

304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11

Brooklyn, NY 11206

http://www.chezbushwick.net

Time:

Monday, April 28th @ 7:00pm

Reservations Recommended: info@chezbushwick.net

Admission Is Free

About FORCE MAJEURE:

From September 2007 – May 2008, Chez Bushwick will offer ten residencies to young choreographers from Austria, Belgium, Chile, Croatia, Finland, France, Holland, Norway, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, through an innovative new program called FORCE MAJEURE. These periods of creative development will culminate in FREE public presentations of new performance, while catalyzing international dialogue between the dance communities of NYC and abroad. This program is designed to create discourse about new choreography, while ensuring that future generations of dance artists – and dance viewers – remain active and informed about the global dance community.

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