Infringement Festival

Founded in the summer of 2004 in Montreal, the infringement Festival is an interdisciplinary festival open to all critical artists. It has since spread to Ottawa, Buffalo and New York City.

Celebrating freedom of expression and designed as a real arts democracy, this festival is a critical response to the neoliberal worldview and all its billboards, televisions programs, flyers, advertisements, and jingles.

The infringement welcomes a variety of performances and cultural resistance: theatre groups, performers, street activism, political theatre, musicians, radical performance, visual artists, films, marginalized arts, spoken-word, puppet shows, disadvantaged groups, and anyone wishing to artistically infringe on a globalized monoculture.

The festival aims to emphasize both critical practice in the arts, and artistic practice in activism. It also aims to provide a positive environment that encourages and nurtures critical art.

The first year saw performances by Montreal playwright David Fennario as well as award-winning transgendered theatre artist and writer S. Bear Bergman, NYC Boal Practitionner Kayhan Irani, Optative Theatrical Laboratories' Car Stories and Dead Dolls Cabaret from Travesty Theatre who joined more than 25 critical artists.

The second edition saw more than 60 acts in 11 days including Norman Norman Nawrocki, Mother DIS-Courage of the Subversive Theatre Collective of Buffalo, The Young War (best play at the San Francisco Fringe 2004) and the return of Bear Bergman along with a greater variety of music and film screenings.

To avoid being co-opted, the infringement festival’s mandate is as follows:

1 - The infringement festival is free for all artists and activists to participate in. The festival will never charge a registration fee and participants will keep 100% of their box office.

2 - The festival is open to all critical artists and will never discriminate, set entry criteria or censor.

3 - The festival is run as a non-hierarchical arts democracy.

4 - The festival will only accept ethical companies that pose no conflict of interest as sponsors, as the interests of the festival's participants come before those of the sponsors.

5 - The festival will encourage, although not be limited to, progressive acts that encourage discussion and oppose oppressive structures.

Website: www.infringementfestival.com

Profile by Jason C. McLean

Last updated 2010-08-14

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