FIAF Hosts Their Crossing the Line Festival 2011 9/17-10/16

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, announced today the full program for Crossing the Line 2011, the fifth annual edition of its highly acclaimed fall festival, taking place this year from September 17-October 16 in venues throughout New York City.

The transdisciplinary festival of contemporary arts and culture is a platform for vibrant new developments in artistic practices on both sides of the Atlantic. Each fall, the month-long festival provides opportunities for New Yorkers to explore the dialogue between artist and society, to examine how artists help re-imagine the ways we perceive the world, and to engage with the vital role artists play as critical thinkers and catalysts for social evolution.

Inaugurated in 2007, Crossing the Line has enjoyed increasingly strong audience response from diverse segments of the New York City area, as well as prestigious critical acclaim. The festival has been voted "Best of 2009" and "Best of 2010" by Time Out New York, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times wrote: "One of the fall's most exciting and thought provoking performance events" (2008) and "The city should have a party for the French Institute Alliance Française for giving it this wonderful interdisciplinary festival" (2009).

Crossing the Line 2011 presents a broad-ranging program of performances/events in both indoor and outdoor locations across New York City aimed at engaging diverse audiences. This year's festival program can be framed by three principal programming clusters: Fiction & Non-Fiction, a Lecture/Performance series, and Endurance/Resistance/Inspiration. This fifth edition will continue the festival's focus on supporting the creation of new work through its vital commissioning program, and will feature new works by Nick van Woert, Kimberly Bartosik, Soundwalk Collective, Prune Nourry, Chong Gon Byun, Amélie Chabannes, Rachid Ouramdane, Marie Losier, Arthur Nauzyciel, and Sophie Calle, among others.

Conceived and produced by FIAF in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions, Crossing the Line 2011 is co-curated by Lili Chopra (Artistic Director, FIAF) and Simon Dove (Director, Herberger Institute School of Dance, Arizona State University). "Crossing the Line invites New Yorkers to re-imagine the world in which they live, and to re-consider the role they play in it," said Lili Chopra and Simon Dove. "The extraordinary work presented by this year's artists is potent, vivid, and immensely inspiring."

The program...

Fiction & Non-Fiction
What do we rely on to determine truth from fiction? How much of our interpretation of the world depends on our senses and how much on our rational mind? What role does intuition play in shaping our perception of the world around us? This series of commissioned works and installations, live performances, and experiences invites people of all ages to playfully explore their assumptions and sensibilities.

Fiction & Non-Fiction
Saturday, September 17, 2-6pm
Co-presented with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy
Crossing the Line 2011 launches on September 17 with a day that directly engages the public through new works, talks, walks, and commissioned projects for various locations on Museum Mile and Central Park.
Site-specific commissioned works by Kimberly Bartosik, Prune Nourry, the Multi-Arts Incubator at Columbia University's School of the Arts, Thupten Phuntsok, and Soundwalk Collective will occupy 972 Fifth Avenue, the former Payne Whitney house, currently the home of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. Works by Raimund Hoghe, Laurent Pichaud, Trajal Harrell and Perle Palombe, and others will run throughout the day.

Installations/Performances
Cultural Services of the French Embassy

Kimberly Bartosik, Ecsteriority3-3rd Floor (World Premiere)
Together with long-time collaborator Marc Mann, American choreographer Kimberly Bartosik continues her examination of decay and the collapsibility of space while delving into a rigorous exploration of duration in the site-specific installation Ecsteriority3, the third part of her Ecsteriority trilogy.

Trajal Harrell and Perle Palombe, The Conspiracy of Performance-Reception Room (New York Premiere)
American dancer Trajal Harrell and French actress Perle Palombe present a lecture/performance, The Conspiracy of Performance.

Raimund Hoghe, Pas de deux-Reception Room (New York Premiere)
German director/performer Raimund Hoghe presents site-specific excerpts from his newest work Pas de deux.

Presence, from the Multi-Arts Incubator at Columbia University's School of the Arts-Ground Floor (World Premiere)
A project developed by Columbia MFA students from across artistic disciplines, exploring the history, geography, and anthropology of New York's Museum Mile.

RodeRick Murray, Lighting Installation-Entire Building
Acclaimed American lighting designer RodeRick Murray creates lighting to highlight the features of the building and link the events and installations extending over all three levels of 972 Fifth Avenue.

Prune Nourry, Sperm Bar-Garden (World Premiere)
This commissioned installation from New York-based French artist Prune Nourry brings the online sperm-bank shopping experience to Main Street.

Laurent Pichaud, Lande Part-Central Park (New York Premiere)
What happens to a dancing body outside of the protective walls of the theater? How does it navigate space? And what can the spectator's eye perceive beyond the confines of a fixed frame? This solo piece originates from the artist's desire to escape the theater, the stage, and the expectations they create for both performer and audience.

Thupten Phuntsok, Meditation on the Nature of Reality-Reception Room (New York Premiere)
Haitian-born Lama Thupten Phuntsok presents a Meditation on the Nature of Reality.

Soundwalk Installation Les Non-Dits-Venetian Room (World Premiere)
A commissioned sound work by Soundwalk Collective, pressed on vinyl for the elaborate mirrored waiting room at the Payne Whitney mansion.

Fiction & Non-Fiction Soundwalk (World Premiere)
Co-presented with Soundwalk Collective, Saturday, September 17, 11am-6pm
Soundwalk Collective, the New York-based group of sound artists, has collaborated with Crossing the Line 2011 to create a free, downloadable audio-guided walk featuring five specially commissioned texts by contemporary French writers Olivier Cadiot, Philippe Claudel, and Camille Laurens, and New York-based writers John Giorno and Teju Cole.

Each author has created a short narrative based on, or inspired by, a place, building, object, or site in the neighborhood, and the Soundwalk will guide the listener on a journey through real or imaginary experiences on Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile. The spoken texts, available in both English and French versions, are supported by original music and sound design created by Soundwalk Collective. Available for download at crossingtheline.org, the audio-guided tour can be taken on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 11am-5:30pm.

Arthur Nauzyciel, Jan Karski (My Name is a Fiction) (New York Premiere)
Co-presented with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Centre Dramatique National (CDN) in Orléans, Saturday, September 17 & Sunday, September 18 at 8:30pm
Arthur Nauzyciel, Director of the Centre Dramatique National in Orléans, returns to Crossing the Line to direct a site-specific staged reading based on the French novel Jan Karski written by Yannick Haenel and translated by Ian Monk (published in the U.S. as The Messenger), which will open the 2011 Avignon Festival. Set in Warsaw in 1942, the novel recounts the heroic acts of Jan Karski, a messenger of the Polish Resistance for the exiled government in London who risked his life to report to the Allies on the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto and the holocaust. Haenel uses documentary and fiction to relate the life of Karski, who was one of the witnesses interviewed in Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary, Shoah.

Chong Gon Byun, A Layer of the #1L (World Premiere)
Saturday, September 17-Sunday, November 6
Co-presented with The Invisible Dog Art Center
Opening Reception at The Invisible Dog Art Center, Saturday, September 17, 6-10pm
Acclaimed Korean-born mixed media artist Chong Gon Byun gives found and discarded objects new meaning by using them to create sculptures and assemblages that explore the clash between post-industrial civilization and the present consumerist culture. In this installation, the walls of The Combined residence and studio are lined with shelves and cabinets stuffed with books and objects of every description:

African and oceanic masks, totems, skulls, musical instruments, ornate frames, mirrors, images and replicas of Castro, Ho Chi Min, Marilyn Monroe, and Mickey Mouse, as well as reproductions of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, his Last Supper, and esoteric 17th century Italian paintings, all jostle with globes of the world, plastic fruits and flowers, stuffed parrots, metallic insects, lamps, vintage appliances, springs, coils, and mannequin heads and bodies. The space itself is the artwork and it is from this treasure trove that Byun draws inspiration and constructs his witty and poignant works.

Marie Losier, Byun, Objet Trouvé (World Premiere)
The installation will be complemented by the commissioned short film Byun, Objet Trouvé by New York-based French director Marie Losier. In this latest installment in her ongoing series of acclaimed film portraits of contemporary directors, musicians, and artists, Losier offers an insightful and whimsical view of Chong Gon Byun's world of found objects. Via stop-motion animation, Byun, Objet Trouvé takes viewers on a journey into the artist's fascinating sense of reality and imagination.

Xavier Le Roy, More Mouvements für Lachenmann (New York Premiere)
FIAF's Florence Gould Hall, Monday, September 19 at 7:30pm
This beautifully re-imagined concert showcases French choreographer Xavier Le Roy's exploration and deconstruction of the classic musical concert format. Working with composer Helmut Lachenmann and eight musicians, Xavier Le Roy fractures and uncouples sounds and movements, events and silences, actions and stillness. A gradual transition in how we perceive the concert unfolds, intensifying and enhancing the experience of listening and looking.

Ariane Michel, Les Hommes & Video Works (New York Premiere)
Co-presented with Anthology Film Archives

Les Hommes
Monday, September 19 at 6:45pm and Thursday, September 29 & Friday, September 30 at 7:30pm
French artist and filmmaker Ariane Michel has become increasingly involved in ambitious film installations in which the piece's environment plays an essential creative role. Les Hommes, her first feature documentary, is a cinematic exploration of Greenland. It captures the natural environment-the ice, stones, and animals of the country-during the annual visit of a group of scientists who come to perform research.

The film offers a sustained observation of nature and invites the audience to adopt its specific point of view. The work gently questions the gaps that separate geologic time from human time, the scientific gesture from animal subjectivity, and the love of nature from vegetal indifference.

The Cellar and Other Video Works
Monday, September 19 at 9:15pm and Wednesday, September 28 at 7:30pm
Anthology Film Archives and FIAF present a retrospective of Michel's remarkable short video work, including The Cellar (2010), which witnesses a man working by lamplight in an icy cellar, patiently thawing an immense block of frozen earth. As the ice begins to melt, enormous, glittering bones emerge, followed by a thick coat of black fur. Gradually, the viewer witnesses the revival of a giant mammoth, still intact after 19,000 years in Siberia's permafrost. Other works include: Horse Dream (2004), After the Rain (2003), On the Earth (2005), Here (2005), The Round Eyes (2006), and The Beam (2010).

Ariane Michel will participate in a Q&A following the screenings on Monday, September 19 and Wednesday, September 28.

Ariane Michel, The Screening (North American Premiere)
Van Cortlandt Park (Bronx), Saturday, September 22
Bus departure from FIAF at 6:45pm, screening at 8pm
An audience is guided into the woods, to a clearing. There, they find some benches in front of a white screen. They sit down. The lights are extinguished, and a film projection begins. The Screening is a performance where the spectator gradually has the impression of watching himself on the screen together with the wild animals in the surrounding woods.

Nick van Woert, Terra Amata (World Premiere)
FIAF Gallery, Saturday, September 17-Saturday, October 29
Opening Reception Wednesday, September 21, 6-8pm
The FIAF Gallery presents Terra Amata, a specially commissioned installation by Brooklyn-based American sculptor Nick van Woert. Known for transforming found objects and scavenged art materials into surreal, gravity-defying figures and shapes, the former architecture student borrows icons from the past and overlaps them with more familiar contemporary materials.

This new work makes visible a chronology of forms and ideas that reference the ideals of former generations, bridging classical sculpture to the Donner Party, Henry David Thoreau to Ted Kaczynski, and Pruitt-Igoe to 6221 Osage Avenue. The exhibition's title, Terra Amata, refers to a site in the South of France where it is believed that fire was used domestically for the first time.

Kimberly Bartosik, i like penises: a little something in 24 acts (World Premiere)
Co-presented with Danspace Project, Thursday, September 22-Saturday, September 24 at 8pm
In this evening-length work, Bartosik creates a choreographic play on power, desire, and value. i like... is a dialogue between art forms, as the cast of three dancers and one visual artist perform their crafts live, alongside one another, in multi-layered scenes. The performers and art forms interrupt each other with highly virtuosic performance, in a competitive play of replacement. During the course of each performance, Brooklyn-based collage artist Jonathan Allen builds a unique work of art out of cheap objects (purchased from 99¢ stores), which the dancers offer and use to attract him. As these objects move from the dancers' game of seduction and exchange to become part of a "work of art", their significance/value transforms.

Cuqui Jerez, The Rehearsal (New York Premiere)
Co-presented with Performance Space 122 at The Performing Garage, Wednesday, October 12-Saturday, October 15
The Rehearsal, a part of the piece The Neverstarting Story, presents a rehearsal, or perhaps the rehearsal of a rehearsal. In this quirky and intriguing work, Spanish choreographer Cuqui Jerez uses the simple process of the rehearsal, an integral component of traditional theater, as a starting point from which she explores questions of reality and fiction.

Sophie Calle, Room
Lowell Hotel, Thursday, October 13 at midnight to Sunday, October 16 at midnight
Sophie Calle, one of France's leading contemporary artists, creates a site-specific installation for Crossing the Line in a room at The Lowell, a luxury hotel in Manhattan. The autobiographical work will feature objects of particular significance, helping viewers to construct their own story of the artist's life.

"Invited to exhibit in a hotel... I have chosen to introduce, in the room assigned to me, several objects that hold a sentimental place in my life, and that I have used for my autobiographical narratives." Sophie Calle

Lecture/Performance Series
The format of the lecture/performance is being increasingly explored by artists. Offering the possibility to convey ideas or information in an engaging and subjective way, often with a minimum of means, this mode of presentation is inspiring for both artist and public alike.

Yet the conventions of the lecture as a source of knowledge, and the performance as a highly subjective presentation of ideas, offer artists a fertile and ambiguous landscape to explore. Linking the two intensive weeks of the festival will be a series of inspiring lecture/performances exploring ideas and perspectives related to Crossing the Line 2011 events.

Xavier Le Roy, Product of Circumstances
FIAF's Tinker Auditorium, Tuesday, September 20 at 7:30pm
Molecular biologist turned ground-breaking choreographer Xavier Le Roy uses the "illustrated lecture" form to take audiences through his professional journey from scientist to dance maker. He offers perspectives on the politics and power structures that determine what research really gets done within institutions, and engagingly examines the assumptions that frequently determine choices made in the performing arts world.

Jos Houben, The Art of Laughter (New York Premiere)
FIAF's Florence Gould Hall, Tuesday, September 27 at 7:30pm
Belgian actor and master of laughter and physical comedy Jos Houben presents a hilarious and enlightening talk/performance exploring laughter-its causes and effects and the role of the body in its creation. A graduate of Paris's renowned Jacques Le Coq school of physical theater, Jos Houben dissects the mechanics that trigger laughter, considering facial expressions, the idiosyncrasies of the human body, the act of falling down, and the importance of, er, timing. An amusing and delightful one-man master class on one of life's greatest pleasures.

Ralph Lemon, A Paradance: The inherent protest and émigré nature of performance (and how it could belong nowhere) (World Premiere)
FIAF's Tinker Auditorium, Thursday, October 6 at 7:30pm
Acclaimed American artist and performer Ralph Lemon offers a one-time talk titled, A Paradance: The inherent protest and émigré nature of performance (and how it could belong nowhere). Ralph Lemon is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and visual artist whose work addresses social and political issues in an elusive, striking, emotional, and powerful way through his poignant use of diverse forms. He currently serves as the Artistic Director of Cross Performance, a company dedicated to the creation of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performance and presentation.

Gérald Kurdian, 1999 (New York Premiere)
FIAF's Le Skyroom, Wednesday, October 12 at 7:30pm
The Paris-based French performer, songwriter, and radio artist presents a lo-fi performance on space-operas composed of forty-eight episodes of the British science-fiction TV series Space 1999. The work offers musical elements defined in relation to the producers' roles in the music industry from performer and composer to manager and artistic director, and prompts the audience to re-consider their understanding of the musical spectacle.

Endurance/Resistance/Inspiration
The third series of the festival celebrates and illuminates the human capacity for optimism, the struggle to overcome extreme situations, and the things that inspire us to continue working towards a better world.

Rachid Ouramdane, Ordinary Witnesses (New York Premiere)
Co-presented with New York Live Arts, Tuesday, October 11 & Wednesday, October 12 at 7:30pm
Rachid Ouramdane with his company of performers explores the effects of a violent past on people's bodies and minds in this sublime and poetic new work. Based on extensive conversations with survivors of torture, Rachid Ouramdane portrays this violence as a withdrawal from humanity.

Ouramdane probes the limitations of representing barbarity and explores how the body can transform itself in the extremes of endurance. He shares portraits of those who have experienced the unimaginable so that their suffering is not forgotten, and highlights the repeated use of violence at a time when torture appears to be tolerated and even used legitimately on the global stage. Ordinary Witnesses is a moving testimony to the extraordinary power of the human spirit.

Rachid Ouramdane, World Fair (New York Premiere)
Co-presented with New York Live Arts, Friday, October 14 & Saturday, October 15 at 7:30pm
What can authorities expect from a work of art? What are the marks left by political history on the body? In this new work, French-Algerian maker and performer Rachid Ouramdane with multi-instrumentalist Jean-Baptiste Julien, explores our notions of nationhood and identity by examining the relationship between the body and power.

Faustin Linyekula, more more more...future (New York Premiere)
Co-presented with The Kitchen, Wednesday, October 12-Saturday, October 15 at 8pm
Choreographer and director Faustin Linyekula creates intricate and powerful performance works that reflect the political, social, and cultural history, and present-day struggles of his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. more more more...future takes inspiration from ndombolo, a fast-paced dance genre originating in the region that combines rumba, traditional rhythms, and funk.

In this raucous and provocative performance, Faustin Linyekula's choreography embraces creative destruction and stakes a claim to his own no-future society. Three dancers, including Faustin Linyekula himself, twist and rage to the seething poems of Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, a political prisoner in Kinshasa and childhood friend of Faustin Linyekula's, set in song by music director Flamme Kapaya, an exceptional guitarist and major star in the Congo. Driven by the rhythms of Kapaya and his five-member on-stage band, more more more...future is a fierce celebration of hope in the face of despair.

The 2011 U.S. Tour of more more more...future is produced by MAPP International Productions in partnership with the Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium.

Amélie Chabannes, Intimate Immensity (World Premiere)
Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, Wednesday, October 12-Saturday, October 15
In this site-specific mixed-media performance/installation, New York-based French artist Amélie Chabannes investigates the difficult task of capturing the depth and complexity of the human being. She uses the context of a staged archeological dig to explore the enormity of the "person" within a specific philosophical and psychoanalytic framework.

Drawing on Carl Jung's Contributions to Analytical Psychology and Gaston Bachelard's Poetics in Space, Amélie Chabannes will present the "being" as a physical place, a site, an archaeological landscape. A massive rectangular block, composed of dozens of layers and set in the center of a large, gridded open space evokes the site of an archaeological dig. In a performance spanning a few days, she will excavate the piece, digging and breaking into it to release hundreds of fragments and artifacts, each to be archived where it falls.

Crossing the Line 2011: PARTNERS

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

Anthology Film Archives; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Danspace Project; The Invisible Dog Art Center; New York City Department of Parks & Recreation; New York Live Arts; The Kitchen; Performance Space 122; and Soundwalk Collective.

Crossing the Line 2011: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FIAF would like to thank the following for their generous support of Crossing the Line 2011:

American Airlines, the Official Airline of FIAF; 972, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Institut
français; Florence Gould Foundation; Robert de Rothschild; National Endowment for the Arts; FACE: French American Cultural Exchange; Etant donnés: The French American Fund for the Performing Arts; FUSED: French U.S. Exchange in Dance; New England Foundation for the Arts; BNP Paribas; Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York State Council on the Arts; Nespresso; The Lowell Hotel (as of July 27, 2011). Special thanks to Arizona State University.