WHAT?
mars2bklyn / bklyn2mars is an ongoing platform for collaboration and discovery between artists and cultural venues from Brooklyn, New York and Marseille, France.
The platform will offer performances, concerts, and exhibitions, as well as panel discussions in both cities. It will initiate exchanges between artists and venues from the two cities and commission artists to inspire themselves from the "other" city.
WE ARE READY TO LAUNCH PHASE 1 of the PROJECT on April 29-May 5th, 2013
We are inviting Marseille artists to come to Brooklyn to exhibit, perform and hold panel discussions with Brooklyn artists and audiences. This first phase will plant the seeds for future collaborations with Brooklyn artists and venues. Participating venues in Brooklyn for April-29th-May 5th, 2013 are the Irondale Center, the Powehouse Arena, and Residency Unlimited. (*see below for participating artists)
WHY?
Brooklyn and Marseille have a lot in common: they are large, prodigious, liberal, exceptionally diverse, and slightly rebellious, melting pots with strong social and cultural contrasts. As both Paris and Manhattan get more clogged and artists priced out, a shift in what is the center of creation is in the making. Brooklyn and Marseille no longer represent the “outskirts” or “the margins” of some other place: they have themselves become the centers of artistic and cutting edge innovation.
mars2bklyn / bklyn2mars aims to highlight these centers of creation, draw parallels between them, and initiate links between the two cities, within the context of an ongoing platform of cultural exchange.
The platform will focus on artists whose work blends cultures, and integrate the essence of their city or neighborhood, or one particular aspect of it in the work. The objective is to bring about collaboration between these two port communities and highlight the locality of each city via the arts.
WHO?
mars2bklyn / bklyn2mars founders, curators, and producers are Bertie Ferdman, Erika Latta, and Claire Hallereau along with Ivan Talijancic as Creative Producer.
CLAIRE HALLEREAU was born and raised in France, where she earned a degree in Business and International Marketing. She moved to New York in 1999, joined Marianne Weems and The Builders Association in 2002 as their company manager, toured with ALLADEEN, produced and managed SUPER VISION's tour, and produced CONTINUOUS CITY's development and tour. She moved to Marseille, France in early 2009, where she started collaborating with renowned French stage director/writer/set designer Hubert Colas and his company Diphtong Cie. For him, she produced LE LIVRE D'OR DE JAN (IAN'S GUESTBOOK), a large-scale production which premiered at the Festival d'Avignon in July 2009. In 2011, she accompanied French collective Ildi! Eldi to the Under the Radar Festival in New York, with a production called VICE VERSA. She just produced the creation of ROSE, by French contemporary circus company Cahin-Caha, which just premiered in MarseilleProvence2013 to a sold-out run, and critical and audience acclaim. She is also a kundalini yoga teacher.
ERIKA LATTA is originally from the Northwest where she was raised on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham, Washington. She holds a BFA in Theater at the University of Washington and a MFA in Acting from Columbia University. She is the artistic co-director and founding member of WaxFactory, with whom she has continuously worked as an actor, director, writer, choreographer, and teacher in international venues and festivals such as the ICA/Institute of Contemporary Art (London, UK), The Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal), SommerSzene (Salzburg, Austria), OLTRE90 (Milan, Italy), FIT/ Festival Internacional de Teatro (Caracas, Venezuela), MESS (Sarajevo, Bosnia), the Exodos Festival and Cankarjev Dom Center for The Performing Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and SommerSzene in Salzburg, Austria. In New York she has performed at La Mama, HERE, PS122, NYTW, Lincoln Center, Soho Rep, Old American Can Factory, En Garde Arts, Ohio, The Culture Project, and the Act French Festival. She was a participant at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center as an actor and photographer; and Associate Director of Begat Theatre (Marseille, France), with whom she directed LES DEMEURÉES, LE JARDIN AVEUGLE as well as HIDDEN STORIES; She was recently seen in CONCUSSION by Staccie Passon at the Sundance Film Festival and in LILY by Matt Creed at the Tribeca Film Festival and in Punchdrunk's SLEEP NO MORE.
BERTIE FERDMAN was born and raised in Puerto Rico to Argentinean parents, and has been living in Brooklyn for the past 15 years. She holds a BA in Theater from Yale University, an MA in Performance Studies from NYU, and a PhD from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research specialties are on contemporary theatre and site-based performance. Bertie initiated and co-curated the first International Site-Specific Symposia in the United States at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in 2006 & 2009, alongside Gülgün Kayim and Frank Hentschker. She also curated such exchanges as the US premiere of Rodrigo Garcia’s Accidens; “Nouveau Cirque” with Aurelien Bory/Cie 111 and Phil Soltanoff; “Staging Presence” with Marianne Weems and Nick Kaye; and “Urban Performance” with Maud Le Floc’h. She was a Chateaubriand Fellow (2003), a fellow at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics (2010), and a fellow at the Mellon School of Performance Research at Harvard University (2011). Her articles and reviews have appeared in PAJ: Journal of Performance and Art, Theatre Journal, Performance Research, and Theater. She is an Assistant Professor in the department of Speech, Communications, and Theatre Arts at Borough Manhattan Community College, CUNY.
IVAN TALIJANCIC (Creative Producer) is a multidisciplinary artist: director, choreographer, visual and graphic designer, video- and film-maker, performer, curator and journalist. Along with Erika Latta, he is the co-founder of WaxFactory. Some of his WaxFactory directing credits include BLIND.NESS, ...SHE SAID, QUARTET v4.0, X, and LADYFROMTHESEA, a site specific installation/performance staged in thirteen interconnected indoor and outdoor locations at the Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn (“most inovative production of the year”, 2001 Worldwide Critics Survey, Ballet-Tanz International magazine.) Ivan has received his MFA in Directing from Columbia University, he is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, a Usual Suspect at the New York Theatre Workshop, and a former fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. His work has been presented at numerous international venues such as the ICA/Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon, Portugal), SommerSzene (Salzburg, Austria), OLTRE90 (Milan, Italy), Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich, Switzerland), FIT/Festival Internacional de Teatro (Caracas, Venezuela), and Cankarjev Dom (Ljubljana, Slovenia), among others. His current work, 416 MINUTES, is a cross-platform project which is simultaneously being developed as a feature film and a live performance. In 2013-2015, he will be in residence at the Hermitage Artist Retreat.
ARTISTS participating in the ongoing mars2bklyn platform so far INCLUDE:
Marseille Artists
BEGAT THEATER (Karin Holmstrom, Dion Doulis, Philippe Laliard, Nolwenn Moreau, Hervé Cristianini, Fabrice Gallis, and Peter Holmstrom-of the Dandy Warhols)
ATELIERNATIONAL
FRANCK LESBROS
AYA TATEISHI
AYMERIC LOUIS
JEAN-FRANÇOIS ROUX
OLIVER LUBECK
EX NIHILO DANCE
Brooklyn Artists
PASCAL PERICH
BROCK LABRENZ
ERIKA LATTA
ABEL MACIAS
PASCAL PERICH
JONAH BOKAER
RIMA FAND
Participating Venues
THE POWERHOUSE ARENA
THE IRONDALE CENTER
RESIDENCY UNLIMITED
CPR-Center for Performance Research
HOW DID IT ALL START...?
The idea of mars2bklyn began to formalize when Claire Hallereau, who had been producing contemporary theatre for a decade in New York, moved back to Marseille. Erika Latta had been going back and forth between Brooklyn and Marseille for years along with Begat Theatre company and leading residencies in Marseille and in France in general, and Bertie Ferdman had spent months researching urban site practices based in Lieux Publics. The three of them realized how vibrant the arts scene was in Marseille and how little they were known, particularly in Brooklyn. The idea grew to create an artistic bridge between these two port cities.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
In the past 10 months we have dedicated all our energy, hard work and experience towards creating this platform for international arts exchange.
For this first phase of mars2bklyn, we are bringing a team of stellar artists to premiere their work here in Brooklyn.
The French Embassy and Institut Français are partners, as well as Irondale, Residency Unlimited, and Powerhouse Arena.
However, for this first time around, we have invested our own dimes in the project, and the visual artists for the moment are paying their own way to New York. Talk about stretching every penny...
Still, we all thought it was well worth it. Everybody we talk to thinks mars2bklyn has a brilliant future, everybody wants to be part of it, and we are convinced this first phase will lead to many more events in Marseille and Brooklyn. To us, each of you is a potential mars2bklyn artist, partner, co-curator, and host. It is our hope that we will be able to include each and everyone of you in the platform's future installments.
Our priority is to make this first phase a success and show institutions and potential co-producers that the bridge between Brooklyn and Marseille is real and thrilling and important in strengthening artistic communities.
WHAT DO WE STILL NEED for PHASE 1 of the mars2bklyn PLATFORM...?
We have received grants from FACE (French American Grant for Contemporary Theater adiminsterd by the French Embassy and from Institute Française to cover the cost of Hidden Stories by Begat Theater.
But...We still need to raise at least $9,000 for phase 1 to pay for:
Travel ($2,300 for three visual artists ( Franck Lesbros, Aya Tateishi and Marta Rueda)from AtelieRnaTional to travel from Marseille, France to Brooklyn, NY.
Artists Fees (we are $1,400 short for performing fees for five performers for Begat Theater for their performance of Hidden Stories and to pay the band, SHERITA, featuring Rima Fand for the opening ceremonies)
Exhibition Costs ($500 for visual artist to install at the Powerhouse Arena including transortation)
Promotion / Press / Administration ($1,700)
Housing ($700 for one week. We still need accomodations for one more artist, Aya Tateishi. All other artist in the platform have been housed in-kind through the generosity of friends.
Residincy Fee at Residency Unlimited: $2400 for two artists, Franck Lesbros and Aymeric Louis. This will secure both residencies for Franck and Aymeric in Brooklyn at Residency Unlimited in the spring of 2014.
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Total: $9,000
*ALL DONATIONS ARE FULLY-TAX DEDUCTiBLE
You can find more detailed information about contribution perks in the right-hand column on our indiegogo campaign page.
THANK YOU!!!
Above all, we want to thank you for reading this and considering donating to mars2bklyn. Your commitment to this project will lay the groundwork for future exchange between Marseile and Brooklyn and support the vibrant art scene in these two port cities. We are truly grateful for your support.
*video by Pascal Perich / music by Peter Holmstrom : International Airport for Begat Theater's production of Hidden Stories
