January 21, 2008

Big Bang Theory?

One night I came home to Chez Bushwick, the converted industrial loft and performance space in Brooklyn, and found a throng of people sitting on the floor, attending a party organized by Jeremy Wade and several other experimental performers. It was fantastic. Dozens of people were talking, laughing, arguing, drinking, and watching impromptu performances. Jeremy showed new choreography that he had made that week; Heather Kravas taped on an old man's beard and began a cathartic, durational episode that involved a clip light, my bathroom door, and the transformative powers of her own voice; Loren Dempster delivered one of the most ethereal solos I've ever heard playing the electric cello; and Jack Ferver performed a stand-up routine during which he scolded Jeremy with improvised text. I joined in, too, collecting props for a performance from the neighbors' detritus and the barren, often-surreal landscape of the Bushwick sidewalks, all while people watched from the windows of the loft above.

Something happened that night, and it continues to happen regularly at Chez Bushwick; performers claim a permissive space of possibilities, allowing themselves the chance to experiment free from the societal pressures attached to most performance contexts. That night in the loft, no one imposed a set of rules or regulations and no one was present for the purpose of evaluative criticism or judgment. Yet conversation did occur--this salon-style format of performance led to rigorous dialogue among the people in the loft, and had a catalytic, generative power.

Keeping this in mind, nothing that occurs at Chez Bushwick has ever exactly surprised me; from the moment I established the loft as a rehearsal studio in late 2002, the doors have remained wide open to artists from every walk of life, and it has always been a space where things happen--a space where things are allowed to happen. These initial performances gave way to a showcase organized by Jeremy and myself called SHTUDIO SHOW, which we invited Miguel Gutierrez to curate beginning in 2004. Miguel did a remarkable job of assembling interdisciplinary performances from radically different corners of the New York performance world. He also initiated a series of provocative public interviews with both artists and public figures, notably a guest interview with Vallejo Gantner following a controversial comment about his plans as the new artistic director of PS 122 and a public interview with New York Times dance writer Gia Kourlas after her disparaging remarks about the condition of local dance. To top things off, Miguel invited Technopia (a.k.a Samuael Topiary) to regularly host each event and conduct interviews as a faux-foreign MC, a hilarious alter-ego with razor-sharp wit. Through events such as these, Chez Bushwick quickly earned a reputation as both an incubator of experimental performance and a safe-zone for activism and political debate, often shocking the performance community out of its complacency through a free-for-all approach to public dialogue.

With the expanding social and political impact of Chez Bushwick came the need for documentation and critical writing. Yet in the spirit of experimentalism, the cohorts of Chez Bushwick devised an alternative to review-based journalism in printed and online media. Wanting to maintain an artist-run organization, we engaged Ryan Tracy (a gifted composer and former employee of the Brooklyn Academy of Music) to be an in-house cultural critic; Ryan produced a monthly essay in response to each SHTUDIO SHOW and an profile of the event on www.culturebot.org. Ryan now regularly spearheads essays in response to each performance, and has been a leading force behind online dialogue.

Ironically, the refusal to open the series for public review created unusual media attention amongst dance and performance journalists; Chez Bushwick consequently earned a reputation as a modern-day Salon des Refusés, and was profiled in a number of highly-visible feature articles, as opposed to reviews, in daily or weekly periodicals. Alex Escalante and Matthu Placek (two devoted friends of the space and frequent audience members) have provided photo documentation for each show. After attending and documenting a Chez Bushwick performance by her friend Charlotte Gibbins, Treva Wurmfeld approached me about collaboratively directing a full-length documentary about the development of Chez Bushwick, which is presently in production.

As the SHTUDIO SHOW developed, so did its audience...by the end of 2005, both the attendance and budget had increased by 400% in one year's time, which was overwhelming from any perspective. This exponential growth was exacerbated by the fact that we were not an incorporated 501(c)(3) organization, and had flagrantly disregarded any institutional approach to marketing, audience development, or public relations--we were a space that allowed absolutely anything to happen, and were interested in keeping things cheap for artists--always producing programs that cost only $5 to attend. Yet we had also completely scandalized our neighbors in the building. Following a marathon performance event honoring the video artist Charles Atlas in April, 2006 (entitled A Benefit Of The Doubt, Chez Bushwick's annual fundraiser), I received a concerned phone call from our landlord the next morning. Perhaps it was time to change gears, if the space was to maintain any kind of a sustainable future within the building.

Sometimes when I'm caught off guard, I wake up in the morning with total despair; peers of mine, pioneers of the neighborhood, are already being forced out of their homes and workplaces. Landlords have long been revoking the leases they once offered their tenants. Increasing the scale of its operations while keeping true to the needs of its artists, Chez Bushwick has developed a new series in response to the evolution of Bushwick, addressing the need for a cultural strategy within the neighborhood, and reflecting an internal change within the organization's structure. AMBUSH, a migratory event in the area, was produced monthly by Chez Bushwick in collaboration with nine other alternative spaces, both strengthening relationships between arts organizations in Bushwick and offering larger venues to safely accommodate an ever-increasing audience.

The first AMBUSH event was held on September 9, 2006 to an audience of over 150 people. We worked closely with the raw, unfinished space on the top floor of 3rd Ward, a new art space in the neighborhood that opened in May 2006. Ambiguously titled The Changing of the Garde, the event featured a pan-generational mix of performers across disciplines. In honor of John Cage's birthday, I read with David Vaughan (probably the most resilient 83-year old in New York) from the late composer's writings, in part to acknowledge that the old avant-garde is no longer with us, though it still has incredible resonance. Reflecting this from a musical point of view was Jim Staley, a renegade trombone player and the founder of the experimental music venue Roulette Intermedium. Dance works were offered by Elke Rindfleisch and Wanjiru Kamuyu, and the program also featured the rare chance to see three 1966 performance works for film and video (Abstracting A Shoe, Span, and Legal Size) by Bruce Nauman, a maverick of avant-garde performance who has never strayed far from interdisciplinary experimentation. Finally, Carla Peterson, the newly-appointed artistic director of Dance Theater Workshop (DTW), was interviewed live, continuing Chez Bushwick's unwavering tradition of public dialogue while also indicating another change within the New York "garde": a transfer in the institutional authority of DTW's artistic programming.

We had an overwhelming turnout, and in keeping with the traditions of Chez Bushwick's SHTUDIO SHOW, all of the proceeds go straight to the artists who perform--which I believe is completely unique in New York at this time. In its own way, this creates an ethos of radical doubt with regards to current models of presentation; how can an artist-run venue be paying comparable rates to the more established presentation venues? Will the existing models of performance presentation change, as they once did, due to the initiatives of artist? This remains to be seen. But for the moment, I can't imagine a more vibrant, experimental, and inspiring place to be living and working.

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