FIAF to Host CROSSING THE LINE 2013 Festival, 9/19-10/13

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 performance 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'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.

Crossing the Line 2013 Programming:

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 47th 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
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. Please note: Due to the graphic content and adult nature of the material, admission will be limited to adults over the age of 18.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma
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 MidnightMoment: 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.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma
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)cord refers 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.

Tim Etchells
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.

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.

FIAF's mission is to create and offer New Yorkers innovative and unique programs in education and the arts that explore the evolving diversity and richness of French cultures. FIAF seeks to generate new ideas and promote cross cultural dialogue through partnerships and new platforms of expression.

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