PETITION BY ROBERT LEDERMAN

https://www.change.org/petitions/mayor-bloomberg-and-parks-commissioner-white-repeal-the-park-restrictions-on-performers-musicians-and-artists

Mayor Bloomberg and Parks Commissioner White: Repeal the park restrictions on performers, musicians and artists.

Artists, musicians and performers are exercising their basic First Amendment rights in parks. The expressive matter rules violate these rights. The US Supreme court has ruled that: “Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights and liberties of citizens.”

THE STORY IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER,

includes links to articles, video and documents. Summarized by Robert Lederman.

4/16/13 – Parks Dept Lying About Performer Ban

http://www.scribd.com/doc/136741106/Park-Performers-Banned-–Again

5/1/13 Parks Department Can’t Get Its Story Straight

http://www.scribd.com/doc/139113930/Parks-Department-Can’t-Get-Its-Story-Straight-for-web

B. The humanbeing

C. The One.

We are all meant to achieve our purpose.  Life is short, in this amount of time, this is when you create everything you ever dreamed of.  I’d say take it to the max in all directions of love.  As silly as that sounds, its not silly.  Love is a very real thing.  Actually forget about love and just go into your heart.  The heart chamber glows brighter when connections are being bounded.  Everything in our lives is meant to be.  There are infinite directions you can taken it, it doesn’t matter, relax.  The only thing that matters is the heart and its health.  Your heart is your game piece, it is also your survival.  Me I use my heart everyday. and then I started to realize everybody uses their heart everyday.  Your always using your heart.  Use it to harness love and connections again.  Wake it up like an ancient magic tool.  YES I BELIEVE IN THE HEART!!!!!  Wake the things up god damn it!!!!  The TIME IS NOW!!!!!

MATTHEW SILVER’S GBM PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:

-March 14, Thurs., 11pm
-March 28, Thurs., 9pm
-April 4, Thurs., Midnight
-April 20, Sat., 11pm
-May 2, Thurs., 10pm
-May 29, Wed., 9pm
-June 12, Wed., 11pm
-June 28, Fri., 8pm

You will be surprised, I finally got to the point where I can say, I’m good enough to be entertaining. So if you want a show that will scare you into laughter, I’m your man! Wink wink wink boing, Yatzeeeeee. It was me all along, The hairy Guy, here to help you understand the power of Enlightenment, and my Mashooganaaa!!!!!!!

Watch One of his performances HERE:

is a collaborative art endeavor that documents and performs the hand-crafted Cocoons with dancers, video projections, sound and music in site-specific performance-installations. CocoonNYC was created by Sherry Aliberti, an architect and performance artist based in New York City.The Cocoon Project creates interactive performance art and colorful temporary installations with the Cocoon. Performers use gestures, poses and noises to express ideas about form, shape and movement in space and memory. Utilizing sound, projections and fragrances, the experience is different every time.  Influenced by Martha Graham and Ernesto Neto a fabric enclosure provides freedom for the performer/muse to become a morphing sculpture. Structurally, these postures represent a scale model of an architecture and materiality based on the forces of the body.

www.sherryaliberti.com

@CocoonNYC on twitter

Allison Brainard is an artist working mainly in performance and sometimes in video. She has been focusing on developing a process of structured improvisation that allows for performers to make independent choices within a given set of parameters. She is looking for collaborators and you should email her.

Www.cargocollective.com/allisonbrainard

Allisonbrainard@gmail.com

2 Shea -

Normally found in the tropical region of Florida.  Unknown origin.  Member of the Non Grata performance collective.  Member of Thank you, Illegal Trouble, Young Rectums.  Performed in NYC, Brooklyn, Florida.  Fond of pizza, palm trees, and DMT.

Ouija - 

Ouija began life as a normal Floridian earthling until her parents bartered her off to an alien hive mind (based out of Brooklyn, NY) for scientific research where they taught her how to knit beer koozies and grow hallucinogens. She managed to escape the mothership and joined the Non Grata performance collective and is now a professional slacker.

makes performances in the guise of lectures, tours, and seminars that satirically address contradictory meanings embedded in popular culture. He has tackled subjects as varied as former French president Francois Mitterrand’s last meal, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain’s sex life and banker Jamie Dimon’s letters to his estranged wife. Most recently, he has been staging performances within existing spectacles, like a seminar in the back of a limousine driving around Wall Street, and a one on one performance at an NBA game.

He was a recipient of the special mention prize at the Montreal Film Festival, a recipient of the Jack Long award from the National Film Board of Canada, a festival prize at the FilmWinter in Stuttgart, Germany and an audience award at The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg Pennsylvania. He has presented works at CONFLUX festival, Flux Factory, and Art Connects New York. His recent work has been written about on Hyperallergic.  www.nathanielsullivan.net

Whitney Hunter -

I am an artist who consistently questions the purpose and function of art.  I have a genuine interest in hybrid forms and works that cross artistic boundaries. Working from a Shape (the rediscovery of perception) philosophy, I am engaged in creating live performance and mediated works based in the act of ritual as a medium of artistic expression towards the ignition of the imagination through contemplation.

My African American heritage, African diasporic identity, and spiritual beliefs provide a context for my work, and facilitate my role as an artistic medium.  My performance works are ceremonial in nature and have an intention towards the construction of new tradition and rituals.  My body is the object, material, and site utilized to physically explore and experiment with socio-cultural issues.

I am truly a seeker and a wanderer in constant search of my primal identity, and my contemporary art practice is with the effort towards exploring the transformative potential of art. http://whitneyhunter.com/

Hector Canonge -

is an artist based in New York City.  His work incorporates the use of New-media technologies, physical environments, cinematic and performative narratives.  In his work he explores and treats issues related to construction of identity, gender roles, and the politics of migration.  His performances mediate movement, endurance, and ritualistic processes as well as the interaction with the public.  Canonge’s visual arts projects and performance art work have been presented in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Exhibitions to his credit include: GAYLERIA (2011), ABSENCE at Queens Museum of Art (2010), BABEL at Space 37 (2010), FRAMING AIDS – Positive I (2008) for Queens Media Arts Development, and Queering Bodies for VISUAL AIDS (2007). He organizes the monthly artists’ program A-LAB Forum at Crossing Art Gallery, directs the monthly independent film series CINEMAROSA, and organizes ITINERANT, the annual Festival for Contemporary Performance Art in New York City.  Canonge’s work has been reviewed by The New York Times, ART FORUM, New York Daily News, Manhattan Times, Hispanic Magazine, by major networks ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, UNIVISION, etc., and by online art publications such as Art Experience NYC, NYRemezcla, Turbulence, ART CARDS Review, NYFA Classifieds, and HYPERALLERGENIC among others.  After living for seven months in various regions in South America -where he created and exhibited a new body of work- Canonge returned to the USA this past February to start working on LAB.ORAL, his Franklin Furnace Award 2013 project, and to present new works at various venues and programs in New York City.  More information: www.hectorcanonge.net

Jon Konkol -

His transgressive work seeks to open road windows with questions, as opposed to closing ladder doors with answers. He lives in Brooklyn. Go there; knock on his door and you’ll see. JK has performed at University of Cincinnati. Museum gallery gallery museum, semantics gallery, 424 gallery, blue gallery, and fountain square.  Panoply Performance Lab, English Kills Art Gallery (unauthorized), and participates regularly at Grace Exhibition Space.  He also performs in the streets and transit lines

Courtney Leigh Novak - “I experience life through emotion, I remember the past based on smell and the mood. Creating new moments consciously, constantly, while playing a synopsis of all that came before back silently for only my eyes, behind my eyes. I insist on connection and on commonality, I relinquish all roles I agreed to unconsciously in some other life I lived before I was the me I am now awake to be. I am noticing our differences & dancing with the devils within all of us. I am enjoying my human-form in all of it’s fallibility. I am on my way and I am here. I am en route to this primordial animal place where we all admit to our shit and our blood and our beauty and we are still as love.”

Esther Neff - is the founder and co-director of the Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL), a space on 104 Meserole and a flexible collective organized with Brian McCorkle to make durational and collaborative performance art operas. Framing performance as acts of theorization, Esther’s performances realize social and relational structures, involve analogic use of found materials, and emphasize conflicts between the material body and its cognizing selfhood(s). She has most recently performed at Culture Fix, IV Soldiers Gallery, Fitness Center for Arts and Tactics, Gowanus Ballroom, and Glasshouse Gallery in NYC, in Chicago at Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery and MANA Contemporary. As a curator/organizer, her projects include PERFORMANCY FORUM platform for performance art, the LUMEN Festival on Staten Island, and the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF) currently in the works for July 2013.  www.panoplylab.org/estherneff

Florence Nasar - is a nyc-based choreographer/dancer/performance artist originally from the jersey shore. She studied dance and creative writing at Hunter College, where began creating and performing in multiple student and repertory works. She has recently collaborated with artists Fortune Chalme, Ariel Krupnik, Sandra Levykh and Marti Flicker. Currently, she is interested in exploring Judaism and Feminism through performance – taking movement from her cultural & religious upbringing and questioning ideas of ritual, invisibility, and space.

 Christen Clifford - has performed at Joe’s Pub, SoloNova, PS 122, HERE, Classic Stage Company, Irondale, cultureproject, and on The Moth mainstage.  Her work has also been seen at Bushwick SITE fest, Grace Exhibition Space, Postmasters Gallery and the Itinerant Festival.  She is a core member of the NO WAVE PERFORMANCE TASK FORCE.  Her solo about maternal sexuality, ”BabyLove” premiered at the Mesto Zensk festival in Ljubljana and won Best of Fringe at The San Francisco Fringe Festival, and the Audience Award at the NYFF, and was named a Critic’s Pick by New York Magazine and Time Out.  Her writing has appeared in Salon, Smith Magazine, the Huffington Post and Truthdig.  She won a NYFA for Nonfiction writing, is a Visiting Professor of Performance Art at SUNY Purchase in Spring 2013, curates Experiments and Disorders at Dixon Place, was an interpreter in Tino Seghal’s This Progress at the Guggenheim and is the mother of Felix and Vera and partner to Ken.  Find her at http://christenclifford.tumblr.com/ and @cd_clifford

Performance Heart 3/5 –  My Heart is important, God Damn it!! Theme – 1

Katie Donut is a Brooklyn-Based performance artist who pushes personal boundaries to communicate (both her experience with and reaction to) mental illness, along with the social stigma of it. Often toying with masculinity-versus-femininity, in pieces ranging from lighthearted and comedic to dark and masochistic, Katie Donut hopes to open up dialogue about mental illness in order to initiate and reinforce the bond between the “mentally ill” and the “healthy” members of the community.

Baxton Alexander – Although a harpsichordist and musicologist by training, Baxton Alexander’s primary focus is the art of story telling. Whether traditional or experimental, rational or absurd, he often expands narrative beyond the aural fixation – He often includes tactile elements, visual developments, sometimes you can smell it, sometimes you can taste it.