Karl Marx Festival: ON YOUR MARX is a Free Frestival of Theater, Dance, Music and Special Events
By: Stephi Wild Sep. 06, 2018
Taking these words to heart, NYU Skirball will present On Your Marx a *pay-what-you-think-it's-worth, two-week commemoration of the great philosopher Karl Marx's 200th birthday, featuring theater, dance and choral performances. Admission to all performances is free: however, audiences will receive an invoice detailing the cost of every element of the production (supply). They are then free to determine the worth of the production and donate accordingly (demand) thus enabling the artists to "earn money in order to live and write."
In this historical moment that feels primed for revolutionary action, Marx's works are potentially all the more urgent. These performers enact Marxist ideals through the lenses of queer, postcolonial, feminist, and anti-racist praxis, bringing Marx to the 21st century.
Karl Marx (1818-83), revolutionary economist, philosopher and author of The Communist Manifesto, was one of the most influential figures of all time. Inspired by Marxist writings on the perils of capitalism, class struggle and socialism, the festival features works that represent aspects of Marx's theories: P Project (the effects of capitalism); Brujx (the oppression of the proletariat;) and the premiere of Choral Marx, a choral adaptation of Marx's Manifesto. Special events include a Marxist DJ Dance Party & Marathon Reading of Marxist Texts and The Fate of the Commons:
a Trotskyite View, a Skirball Talk by Slavoj Žižek.
IVO DIMCHEV: P PROJECT
Wednesday, October 17 at 7:30 pm
P Project tests Marx's theories on capitalism by offering audiences cold, hard cash in exchange for a performance. Ivo Dimchev is a Bulgarian performing artist, known internationally for his provocative and often controversial works of performance art. P Project (2012) is an escalating, interactive performance where actual cash fuels participation based on several P words, such as Piano, Pray, Pussy, Poetry, Poppers, and so on. The People will be offered several opportunities to Participate in the P Project, for which they be Paid quite well.
Ivo Dimchev is a Bulgarian choreographer, visual artist, singer-songwriter, now living in London. His work is extreme and colorful mixtures of performance art, dance, theater, music, drawings and photography. Dimchev has created over 30 pieces, has received numerous international awards, and has presented his work across Europe, South America and North America. He is the founder and director of Bulgaria's Humarts Foundation, organizes an annual competition for contemporary Bulgarian choreography, is an Artist in Residence at Kaaitheater in Brussels, and tours extensively. In 2014, he opened MOZEI in Sofia, Bulgaria, as an independent space for presenting contemporary art and music.
Friday, October 19 & Saturday, October 20 at 7:30 pm
Brujx, a world premiere, ritualizes the labor of the dancers, exposing and transcending it to unearth the powerful and primal magic brujx within them. As in all of achugar's work it proposes DANCE as the necessary transformational healing for our time. Brujx resists western assumptions of beauty and hierarchical order, freeing the dancers both of their role as worker in the power structure within the creative project and of the universal shame of being animal-sexual-powerful-instinctive creatures.
luciana achugar, a Brooklyn-based choreographer from Uruguay, has been making work in NYC and Uruguay independently and collaboratively since 1999. She is a two-time Bessie Award recipient and was nominated for a 2016 Bessie for Outstanding Production for her latest An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love. She was a 2017 Alpert Award recipient, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grantee, amongst other accolades. She was one of Dance Magazine's 2012 "25 to Watch" and her Bessie Award-winning work PURO DESEO was named one of 2010 Time Out/NY's "Best of Dance." Her works also include The Pleasure Project and OTRO TEATRO. lachugar.org
LET US EAT CAKE: A FREE MARXIST DJ DANCE PARTY & MARATHON READING OF MARXIST TEXTS
Friday, October 19 at 9 pm
This free birthday party, following the performance of luciana achugar's Brujx, will feature DJ Andrew Andrew spinning the finest Marxist tracks, plus readings from the masterworks Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, performed by a revolving cast of thinkers, artists, Marxists and celebrities.
SKIRBALL TALKS: SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK, THE FATE OF THE COMMONS: A TROTSKYITE VIEW
October 22, Monday, 6:30 p.m.
From the Marxist standpoint, "Communism" refers to the multiple versions of our commons (the commons of nature, the commons of our biogenetic inheritance, the commons of our intellectual substance) which are all threatened by today's global capitalism. Perhaps the most important version of our commons is the world-wide digital grid which more and more controls and regulates our lives. How can a new emancipatory movement fight for the public control of the digital commons? In preparing and executing the October Revolution, Trotsky showed us the way when he focused on the seizure of power over the technical and material base of a state (electricity, railways, phone, etc.). How can we apply this Trotsky's insight to our contemporary predicament?
Slavoj Zizek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and Marxist social analyst. He many writings include The Indivisible Remainder, The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Metastases of Enjoyment, and most recently, Disparities, and Antigone.
RSVPs for this Skirball Talk will open on Oct. 1, 2018 at www.nyuskirball.com
CHORAL MARX: MANIFESTO FOR THE COMMUNIST PARTY IN EIGHT MOVEMENTS
Sunday, October 28 at 5 pm
Choral Marx is a singing adaptation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Manifesto for the Communist Party composed by Ethan Philbrick. It is a piece for mixed chorus-mixed not just in terms of gendered voice parts but also in terms of training and ability-made up of vocalists from both the contemporary music scene and socialist organizing communities, accompanied by the composer on cello. Choral Marx re-sounds Marx and Engels's 1848 critique of
capitalism in 2018 and explore how the Manifesto continues to resonate today.
Ethan Philbrick, a Brooklyn-based composer and writer, has performed original work in New York at BRIC, SculptureCenter, Abrons Arts Center and the Grey Art Gallery. His writing has been published in TDR, PAJ, Women and Performance, Studies in Gender and Sexuality and Movement Research Performance Journal. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Muhlenberg College. ethanphilbrick.com
Tickets for all Marx Festival events are free but must be reserved in advance. Reservations can be made online at www.nyuskirball.org, by phone at 212.998.4941, or in person at the Box Office, 566 LaGuardia Place at Washington Square: Tuesday-Saturday, 12:00-6:00 P.M. NYU Skirball is located at 566 LaGuardia Place at Washington Square, New York, New York 10012. www.nyuskirball.org
NYU Skirball, located in the heart of Greenwich Village, is one of New York City's major presenters of international work, and has been the premier venue for cultural and performing arts events in lower Manhattan since 2003. The 800-seat theater, led by Director Jay Wegman, provides a home for internationally renowned artists, innovators and thinkers. NYU Skirball hosts over 300 events annually, from re-inventions of the classics to cutting-edge premieres, in genres ranging from dance, theater and performance arts to comedy, music and film.
NYU Skirball's unique partnership with New York University enables it to draw on the University's intellectual riches and resources to enhance its programming with dialogues, public forums and conversations with artists, philosophers, scientists, Nobel Laureates and journalists. www.nyuskirball.org.
Jay Wegman is the Director of NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Prior to Skirball, he served as Director of the Abrons Art Center for ten years. During his tenure, Abrons was awarded various honors, including a 2014 OBIE Award for Innovative Excellence and a 2015 Bessie Award for Best Production. He was also a Fellow at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and for over a decade served as the first Canon for Liturgy and the Arts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He is the recipient of the 2015 FRANKY award for "making a long-term, extraordinary impact on contemporary theatre and performance in New York City." While not a performer, he has appeared in Brian Roger's film "Screamers" (2018), Sibyl Kempson's "12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens" (2017), and "Romper Room" (1969). Jay is a graduate of Yale University. www.nyuskirball.org.
Subways: A, B, C, D, E, F, M to West 4th St.; R & W to 8th Street; 6 to Astor Place.
Programs, artists and ticket prices are subject to change.
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