Perform Williamsburg

URBAN ART PROJECTS is pleased to present the premiere edition of PERFORM WILLIAMSBURG, a multi-disciplinary festival celebrating alternative performing arts in New York. In advance of this year’s performance art biennial, Performa, Williamsburg-based Urban Art Projects (UAP) will host a day of performances by urban poets, emerging artists from Brooklyn, established New York performers, and an outstanding roster of international artists. PERFORM WILLIAMSBURG will commence in the beautiful setting of the East River State Park, overlooking the East RIver, Manhattan, and the burgeoning Williamsburg waterfront skyline. Later in the day, the festival will move into the nearby UAP gallery for more performances and a one-hour video program, featuring work by performance artists.

Highlights of PERFORM WILLIAMSBURG will include: Norwegian performer Marthe Ramm Fortun‘s “Ghost Baby,” which will commence with a parade down Kent Avenue to East River State Park, where a ritual celebration will seek to mimic and exercise the sardonic ethos especially prevalent in the younger generation of Williamsburgers. Lydia Bell‘s “Work for Pay,” which has received critical praise in New York this summer, employs out-of-work artists in choreographed movements that are designed to showcase the artists’ marketable skills as both a comment on the economic struggle of artists during recession times and a vehicle for finding them employment. Andras Borocz, who began his performance career in communist Hungary of the 1970s and 80s, presents a reinterpretation of his “Bread Head Fables,” which derive from actions performed in Budapest. Borocz’s multimedia performance — consisting of a three-channel projection and bread-based sculptures —  riffs on a number of rote human institutions and embodies the zeitgeist of communities that band together in times of duress. Damaris Drummond‘s “365 Faces” project assumes the guise of an auction in order to question the valuation of art on a personal level. Each day for a year, Drummond captured short clips of her facial expressions and posted them online where users could view, rate, and comment on them. Based on this feedback, Drummond will auction select videos and provide her insights and user comments as a method of arriving at a price for the works. In the video program, Jennie Hagevik Bringaker, who will be fresh off an early September showing of her short film “Alle Fugler (Still Birds)” at the 2009 Venice Biennale, will screen her video “Den Andre (The Other),” which plays off of elements of Scandinavian folklore to create a narrative of dream-like sexual violence. In addition to performance art and video, there will be a program of urban poetry featuring Narubi Saleh, who was ranked the 11th poet in the nation in 2001 for her poem Goodie Goodie.

PERFORM WILLIAMSBURG
Sunday, September 13, 2009

FREE

1-5 pm Live performances in East River State Park (at Kent Ave. and North 8th in Williamsburg)

6-9 pm Live performances and video program at Urban Art Projects (136 Wythe Ave. between North 8th & 9th in Williamsburg)

Featuring work by: 

Urban Voices United (D-Black, D-Cross, Jamica, and Narubi Selah), Marthe Ramm Fortun, Lydia Bell, Amelia Saul, Genevieve White, Jason Martin, Karen Azouley, Andras Borocz, Damaris Drummond, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Monika Weiss, Jennie Hagevik Bringaker, Nadja Verena Marcin, and Amber Hawk Swanson.

Curated by Matthew Teti, Gillian S. Wilson, Kaia Hemming, and Derick Cross.

About Urban Art Projects:

Urban Art Projects, Inc. is a non-profit corporation registered in New York State for charitable educational purposes. Urban Art Projects, Inc. provides the organizational framework for public art exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.

PERFORM WILLIAMSBURG is sponsored by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation;Mikey’s Hookup Brooklyn; and Boaz Vaadia Studio. In addition, this event is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. In Kings County the Decentralization Program is administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc. (BAC). This event has also received funding from a New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation FY2008 Initiative Grant, and the Sponsoring Member of the local legislative initiative pursuant to which this Contract is funded is Assemblyman Joseph Lentol.