FIAF Announces Crossing the Line Festival 2013, 9/19

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York's premier French cultural center, today announces the full program for Crossing the Line 2013, the seventh annual edition of its highly acclaimed fall festival, presenting interdisciplinary works and performances by artists from around the world. Crossing the Line takes place this year from September 19-October 13 in venues throughout New York City. Nespresso is the Presenting Sponsor of Crossing the Line 2013. Tickets go on sale August 6.

Over twenty-five days, Crossing the Line 2013 will offer New Yorkers a chance to engage with the work and imagination of seventeen extraordinary International Artists, several presenting their work and ideas in New York for the first time. Inaugurated in 2007, the festival nurtures the dialogue between artist and public, and examines how artists help re-imagine the world as critical thinkers and catalysts for social evolution.

Initiated and produced by FIAF in partnership with leading cultural institutions, Crossing the Line is co-curated by Lili Chopra, FIAF's Artistic Director; Simon Dove, independent curator; and Gideon Lester, Director of Theater Programs at Bard College. "The artists in this year's festival are all pioneers and innovators, who are imagining new forms of art, and new relationships with our city and our world," said Gideon Lester. "Their work is unexpected, daring, and beautiful."

"As people all around the world, from Brazil to Istanbul, are increasingly interrogating established social, economic, and political systems, artists as independent thinkers can offer us critical new perspectives," said Simon Dove. "Crossing the Line strives to bring to New York those artists whose work and imagination can refresh and revive our sense of how the world could be."

This year, FIAF is thrilled to present several Crossing the Line artists through a new collaboration with the Hermès Foundation, in the framework of their New Settings program, which provides major support to innovative international collaborations between visual and performing artists. "We are immensely grateful for such strong partnerships with New York institutions, and this year for our new collaboration with the Hermès Foundation's New Settings program-all of which helps support the work and ongoing development of the festival's outstanding artists," said Lili Chopra.

Catherine Tsekenis, director of the Hermès Foundation (Fondation d'entreprise Hermès), said: "In addition to supporting their creations, the New Settings Program also allows artists to meet their audience. When deciding to present these three pieces in New York, it seemed natural to partner with FIAF, as we share the same artistic visions and commitment toward the artists." (fondationdentreprisehermes.org)

Crossing the Line 2013 Commissions and Residencies

Crossing the Line's acclaimed program of Commissions and Residencies supports artistic evolution and the development of exciting new work by both established and emerging artists. For the 2013 edition, Crossing the Line commissioned Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life & Times Episode 5, Ernesto Pujol's Time After Us, and Nora Chipaumire's riot. Additionally, two artists, Fanny de Chaillé and Pascal Rambert, are receiving residencies to further the development of work to be presented during the festival.

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Opening Weekend

Thursday, September 19 through Saturday, September 21

Xavier Veilhan & Eliane Radigue, Systema Occam (U.S. Premiere)

Co-presented with the Hermès Foundation's New Settings program

Thursday, September 19 at 8pm

FIAF, Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

FIAF Members $20; Non-Members $30; New Settings Package $50

Crossing the Line 2013's opening weekend begins with a unique collaboration-and the first piece in the partnership between Crossing the Line and the Hermès Foundation's New Settings program-with renowned French visual artist Xavier Veilhan and pioneering French electronic music composer Eliane Radigue.

The two-part performance begins with a sensory art installation, interpreted by five performers who breathe life into inanimate objects through simple movements, and gradually gives way to Eliane Radique's work for solo harp, performed by illustrious British harpist Rhodri Davies, creating an immersive, continuous soundscape.

Martine Fougeron, Teen Tribe

Co-presented with The Gallery at Hermès, an exhibition produced by the Hermès Foundation

Friday, September 20-Friday, November 22

Monday through Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 10am-6pm; Thursdays, 10am-7pm

The Gallery at Hermès, 691 Madison Avenue at 62nd Street, 4th Floor

Free and open to the public

New York-based French photographer Martine Fougeron explores the transformative state of adolescence in Teen Tribe, a series of portraits of her two teen-aged sons and their friends. A colorful, sensual visual diary that captures the liminal state between childhood and adulthood, the feminine and the masculine, innocence and burgeoning self-identity.

Steve Lambert, Capitalism Works for Me! (True/False) (New York Premiere)

Co-presented with the Times Square Arts

Friday, September 20, from 12-5pm, Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets

Sunday, October 6 through Wednesday, October 9, from 12-7pm, Broadway Plazas between 44th and 46th Streets

Free and open to the public

American artist Steve Lambert invites the public to engage in one of the 21st century's most discussed hot topics by voting True or False to the phrase "Capitalism works for me!" Set amidst the bustle of Times Square in the form of a massive, attention-grabbing, illuminated scoreboard, the piece creates the ultimate public forum for one of today's most complicated and important issues.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma

Life & Times Episodes 4.5 & 5 (New York Premiere, A CTL13 Commission (Episode 5))

Friday, September 20 and Saturday, September 21 at 8pm

FIAF, Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

FIAF Members $20; Non-Members $30

Please note: Due to the graphic content and adult nature of the material, admission will be limited to adults over the age of 18.

Award-winning New York performance group Nature Theater of Oklahoma begins the next installments of the epic Life and Times series with a 30-minute animated film and ends with a medieval illuminated manuscript, invading even more art genres and molding them to the unique Nature Theater voice.

Life and Times will be a sixteen-hour, multi-art serial created from a single phone conversation with one 34-year-old woman, who tells her whole life story up to the present day. The new Episode 4.5 begins where we left off with the end of high school and the search for love-starting with the older boys in science class and ending finally in the comfort of the family cat. The saga continues in Episode 5 and takes even more unexpected twists and turns, including the first sexual experience.

Midnight Moment
Sunday, September 1-Monday, September 30 from 11:57pm-midnight

Co-presented with Times Square Arts and Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC)

Times Square

Free and open to the public
A three-minute clip from Life and Times: Episode 4.5 will be shown simultaneously across 15 electronic billboards in Times Square as part of Midnight Moment: A Digital Gallery, the largest coordinated effort in history by the sign operators in Times Square to display synchronized, cutting-edge creative content at the same time every day.

10 fps (World Premiere)

Saturday, September 21-Saturday, November 2

Opening Reception: Friday, September 20 from 6-8pm

FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

Free and open to the public

For the animated film shown in Times Square during the month of September, Artistic Directors Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper retraced images frame by frame from a home movie on 4x6 cardstock. The 1,343 hand-colored drawings that comprise the clip will be on display in FIAF's Gallery.

Annie Dorsen, Spokaoke (U.S. Premiere)

Saturday, September 21 through Sunday, October 13

Opening: Saturday, September 21, from 9pm-midnight

Karaoke Cave, 11 East 13th Street (between 5th Avenue and University Place)

Free and open to the public on Saturday, September 21, from 9pm to midnight

Must be 21 and over to enter.

Speeches available for rent from September 21-October 13. Normal package and bar rates apply.

Visit karaokecave.net/rooms for info.

Conceived by Obie Award-winning director Annie Dorsen, Spokaoke is a participatory theatrical event that invites spectators to perform speeches, both well-known and obscure, as they would ordinarily perform songs in a karaoke bar. Using dozens of texts including political speeches, philosophical writings, and even eulogies, Spokaoke gives the participant a chance to play with our shared legacy of spoken artifacts, treating snippets and snatches of public address like a Top 40 radio of our collective discourse. On Saturday, September 21, New Yorkers are invited to deliver their speech in the main room, or rent the catalogue of speeches anytime to perform in private rooms through Sunday, October 13.

Co-produced by Steirischer Herbst and Black Box Teater.

Boyzie Cekwana & Panaibra Canda, The Inkomati (dis)cord (U.S. Premiere)

Co-presented with New York Live Arts

Wednesday, September 25 and Thursday, September 26 at 7:30pm

New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenue)

$20

Two leading voices in contemporary dance in Africa, South African Boyzie Cekwana and Mozambican Panaibra Canda, collaborate to create a haunting, powerfully physical examination of post-colonial Africa.

In 1984, Mozambique and the South African apartheid state signed the Nkomati accord, a non-aggression pact. The Inkomati (dis)cordrefers to this failed agreement, and the river that lent its name to it. Using their own bodies, identities, and histories, the work explores the internalized colonial boundaries that still alienate shared histories and aspirations.

Come Early Conversation (Pre-show), Destabilizing Reality, A Discussion on African Surrealism, with Awam Amkpa, PhD (Associate Professor, NYU; author of Theater and Postcolonial Desires) on Wednesday, September 25 at 6:30pm

Stay Late Discussion (Post-show) Discussing The Inkomati (dis)cord, Simon Dove, Co-Curator of Crossing the Line, in conversation with Boyzie Cekwana and Panaibra Canda on Thursday, September 26 immediately following the performance

Fanny de Chaillé, The Library (U.S. Premiere)

Co-presented with The New York Public Library's Jefferson Market Branch

Tuesday, September 24 and Thursday, September 26, from 4-8pm

FIAF, Haskell Library, 22 East 60th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

Friday, September 27, from noon-4pm

Jefferson Market Library, 425 Avenue of the Americas

Free and open to the public

For the interactive and intimate The Library, French choreographer Fanny de Chaillé creates a living library where visitors are invited to choose from a catalogue of "books"-actually, people-each of whom will relate their individual story once selected. Set in The New York Public Library's historic Jefferson Market branch and FIAF's Haskell Library, each narrative is the result of a collaboration between the artist and a New Yorker, who, together, determine a theme, topic, or personal history to be shared. Illuminating each individual's unique role in an increasingly computerized and detached society, The Library is a compelling reminder of the power of storytelling, a practice as ephemeral as it is enduring.

Fanny de Chaillé & Philippe Ramette, Passage à l'acte / Acting Out (U.S. Premiere)

Co-presented with the Invisible Dog Art Center and the Hermès Foundation's New Settings program Thursday, September 26-Saturday, September, 28 at 8pm

The Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NYC

FIAF Members $20; Non-Members $30; New Settings Package $50

This collaboration between Fanny de Chaillé and renowned French visual artist Philippe Ramette, comprised of twelve performances, is rooted in the duo's shared fascination with the body and its surrounding environment of human-made objects.

With a series of delightfully absurd human sculptures set in motion, the artists attempt to "rationalize the irrational," recreating comic and improbable situations, and toying with our sense of perspective. Like visitors in a museum, audience members are invited to circulate through the room and observe the performers, who playfully ignite our imagination and challenge traditional notions of spectatorship and performance.

Bouchra Ouizguen, Ha! (New York Premiere)

Co-presented with New York Live Arts

Friday, September 27 and Saturday, September 28 at 7:30pm

New York Live Arts, 219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenue)

$20

Inspired by Persian poet and Sufi mystic Djalâl ad-Dîn Rûmî, Ha!, the latest creation from Moroccan dancer/choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen, is a journey into madness. Joined by three traditional Aïta singers and using the same working method that made Madame Plaza (presented as part of Crossing the Line 2010) a huge success, Ouizguen returned to her native Morocco, gaining inspiration from the cultural terrain that has enriched the movement, singing, and power of this new work.

Come Early Conversation (Pre-show), Aïtas and the Art of Vocal Rebellion with Lili Chopra, Artistic Director of FIAF and Co-Curator of Crossing the Line on Friday, September 27 at 6:30pm

Stay Late Discussion (Post-show), Ha! Performing Across Cultural Borders, Carla Peterson, Artistic Director at New York Live Arts, and Adrienne Edwards, Associate Curator of Performa Institute in conversation with Bouchra Ouizguen on Saturday, September 28 immediately following the performance

Tim Etchells

Lecture by Tim Etchells

Saturday, September 28 at 6pm

FIAF, Tinker Auditorium, 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

Free and open to the public - RSVP required to erenault@fiaf.org by Monday, September 23

The Artistic Director of the celebrated British experimental performance group Forced Entertainment discusses how language is constructed and recycled, investigating the rules that both liberate and constrain us.

Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First (New York Premiere)

Saturday, September 28 at 8pm

FIAF, Tinker Auditorium, 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

FIAF Members $20; Non-Members $30

In Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First, writer/director Tim Etchells explores the complexities of the world and the failure of language to define and describe them-a mission that is comically doomed from the outset. A free-associating monologue performed by Jim Fletcher, the New York-based actor best known for his work with Richard Maxwell's New York City Players and for his role in Gatz by Elevator Repair Service, the text is structured as a maddening stream of unlinked facts delivered as statements. Comical in its apparent simplicity and amazingly encyclopedic in scope, the work's effect is at once funny and disturbing.

The Active Partnership: Artists, Communities, Funders, and Institutions

Co-presented with A Blade of Grass
Tuesday, October 1, from 6-8pm

The 8th Floor, 17 West 17th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenue)

Free and open to the public. RSVP at fiaf.org/ctl after August 6

A panel discussion for artists, institutions, and the communities with whom they collaborate, that will examine better ways to develop and support socially engaged works through partnerships. Panelists include Sergio Bessa, Director of Curatorial and Education Programs, The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Maria Canela, community organizer and participant in Immigrant Movement International; artist Mary Mattingly; and Paula Marincola, Executive Director of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia. Co-presented with A Blade of Grass, the first funding nonprofit that focuses exclusively on socially engaged art.

Ernesto Pujol

Time After Us (World Premiere, A CTL13 Commission)

Co-presented with Trinity Wall Street

From Thursday, October 3 at 10:30am to Friday, October 4 at 10:30am (24 hours)

St. Paul's Chapel, 209 Broadway at Fulton Street

Free and open to the public

In his first public piece in New York, site-specific artist and social choreographer Ernesto Pujol asks: "What if we could go back in time to revisit, repair, restore?"

Set in St. Paul's Chapel, a primary refuge for first responders after 9/11, the work is performed in silence by Pujol and twenty-three artists, who enter the space at thirty-minute intervals. Lasting a full twenty-four hours, the piece creates a solitary yet connected community, and invites people from all walks of life to observe and reflect on the nature of the paths we take.

Conversation with Ernesto Pujol & Carol Becker

Co-presented with the Rubin Museum of Art

Wednesday, September 25 at 7pm

The Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenue)

$15

Carol Becker, Writer and Dean of Columbia University School of the Arts, joins Pujol in conversation about the process of his sited performance work as it has evolved in relationship to the Buddhist concept of "Ignorance." Presented as part of the Rubin Museum's new conversation series.

Nora Chipaumire, riot (World Premiere, A CTL13 Commission)

Thursday, October 3-Saturday, October 5 at 8pm

FIAF, Le Skyroom, 22 East 60th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

Award-winning New York/Zimbabwe dancer/choreographer Nora Chipaumire has challenged stereotypes of Africa and the black performing body, art, and aesthetic for the past decade.

In riot, a new two-part work inspired by the iconic The Rite of Spring, celebrating its centenary this year, she explores questions of sacrifice embodied in performance and by the performer. As part of Crossing the Line 2013, Nora will perform part one, a solo created in collaboration with Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole, a Crossing the Line 2011 artist, and Kenyan-born visual artist Wangechi Mutu.

Pascal Rambert, a (micro) history of world economics, danced (U.S. Premiere)

Co-presented with La MaMa and Performance Space 122 (PS122)

Friday, October 11 at 7:30pm

Saturday, October 12 at 2:30pm and 7:30pm

Sunday, October 13 at 2:30pm

Post-show talk on Friday, October 12

La MaMa, Ellen StuArt Theatre, 66 East 4th Street, 2nd Floor (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue)

Students, Seniors, FIAF Members $15; Non-Members $20

French playwright/director Pascal Rambert returns to Crossing the Line with this acclaimed production investigating our collective economic history.

Originally created during the height of the European economic crisis, this large-scale performance piece is based on the life experiences of New Yorkers, recruited by Rambert to discuss and explore the economy's effects on their lives in writing workshops leading up to the performance. Joined by professional dancers, the workshop participants recreate their daily actions on stage in a performance of raw bodies, accompanied by a professional choir and a spoken economic history provided by economist Eric Méchoulan from the University of Montréal.

Kyle deCamp, Urban Renewal (World Premiere)

Co-presented with the Hermès Foundation's New Settings program

Thursday, October 10 and Friday, October 11 at 8pm

FIAF, Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)

FIAF Members $20; Non-Members $30; New Settings Package $50

Award-winning American theater artist Kyle deCamp's Urban Renewal is a meditation on perception, public policy, and the significance of the buildings we live in, from a child's rigorously unsentimental point of view. In this multimedia solo created in collaboration with video designer Joshua Thorson and co-director Yehuda Duenyas, deCamp maps an experience of growing up in Chicago in the chaotic '60s, caught in the crosshairs of power and history.

Additional talks will be announced shortly.

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About Crossing the Line 2013 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Crossing the Line is the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)'s annual fall festival, presenting interdisciplinary works and performances in New York. The festival explores the dialogue between artist and public, and examines how artists help re-imagine the world as critical thinkers and catalysts for social evolution. Crossing the Line is initiated and produced by FIAF in partnership with leading cultural institutions. The festival's seventh edition takes place this year from September 19-October 13, 2013.

Complete line-up and tickets will be available on August 6.

Since its inauguration in 2007, Crossing the Line has cultivated an increasingly large and diverse following, and received numerous accolades in the press. The festival has been voted "Best of 2009," "Best of 2010," and "Best of 2012" by Time Out New York, Frieze, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Events at the festival have won several Bessie awards, and 2012's Habit received an Obie award for creators David Levine and Marsha Ginsberg. The New York Times states, "For terrifically unusual, unpredictable, unnameable performance, we've come to expect a lot from ... the curators of the French Institute Alliance Française's interdisciplinary festival," and Time Out New York says, "This interdisciplinary festival...is one of the season's great joys ... Forget about categories; this is a whirlwind of art." For more information, visit fiaf.org/ctl.

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Crossing the Line 2013: Partners

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FIAF is thrilled to work once again with numerous partners throughout New York City, including:

A Blade of Grass; The Gallery at Hermès; Fondation d'entreprise Hermès; Karaoke Cave; La MaMa; New York Live Arts; Performance Space 122 (PS122); Rubin Museum of Art; The Invisible Dog Art Center; The New York Public Library's Jefferson Market Branch; Times Square Arts; and Trinity Wall Street.

About the Partnership between Crossing the Line and the Hermès Foundation's New Settings program

Crossing the Line is thrilled to partner with the Hermès Foundation's New Settings Program, launched in 2011 with the purpose of encouraging the development and staging of new performing arts productions. The projects supported involve the collaboration and creative dialogue between artists from the performing and visual arts. This year, works by the following artists are presented as part of the New Settings Program within the framework of Crossing the Line: Eliane Radigue and Xavier Veilhan; Fanny de Chaillé and Philippe Ramette; and Kyle deCamp and Joshua Thorson. For more information, visit www.fiaf.org/ctl.

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Crossing the Line 2013: Acknowledgements

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FIAF would like to thank the following for their generous support of Crossing the Line 2013:

Nespresso, Presenting Sponsor of Crossing the Line

Air France and Delta Air Lines, the Official Airlines of FIAF and Proud Lead Sponsors of Crossing the Line

Fondation d'entreprise Hermès; Florence Gould Foundation; Louis Roederer Foundation; Institut français; The MAP Fund; National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works; New York State Council on the Arts; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; FUSED: French U.S. Exchange in Dance, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange); The Enoch Foundation; The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation; British Council; Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques; and Robert de Rothschild.