Resisting Commodity, Promoting Democracy (Excerpt)

GRITtv -- Now in its last week, the one month long Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF) is a response to the commodification of performance art. Over 150 artists from around the world contributed their time and creative energy, seeking to use performance art as a vehicle for creating and defying across borders. Esther Neff, one of the co-organizers of the festival and a collaborator at the Panopoly Performance Laboratory and an artist herself, tells GRIT, “Anytime art is capitalized upon or incorporated into the metabolism of capitalist art markets, and institutionalized in a lot of different ways, it removes it out of hands of the people who might be wandering into a gallery that’s in their own neighborhood or a space that is a community center, or even a public space.” Performance art at its most dynamic encourages audience participation and tests the boundaries of our daily social performances and, according to Neff, allows us to explore what it means to be together and create together. How does BIPAF promote this type of democracy? Find out more in this interview with Laura Flanders. Distributed by OneLoad.com