Performance INDEPENDENCE-DO International Art Festival

Performance INDEPENDENCE-DO International Art Festival
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic February 19, 2012

Independence-Do, a national and international platform for performance artists, announces the second edition of the Performance International Art Festival,which is scheduled to take placefrom February 21stto the 27th, at various locations in Santo Domingo and Puerto Plata.

The opening ceremony of the dialogue sessions will be held on Tuesday, February 21stat 11:00 am, at the Auditorium of the Museum of Modern Art, with the conference “20 years of Chilean performance” by artist and academic Samuel IbarraCovarrubias, curator of the International Biennial of Performance-DEFORMES (Chile).

The festival, which has the support of the Ministry of Culture, the Museum of Modern Art and the Spanish Cultural Center, constitutes an important platform for transcontinental discussionon today’s performance art based on a comprehensive program of interior and open spaces for activities that include lectures, workshops, screenings, and meetings where the public can discuss openly with guest artists, according to the information that has been provided by the coordinators Eliú Almonte, Grimaldy Polanco, Pery Jimenez, and art critic Amable Lopez Melendez.

The opening ceremony of the dialogue sessions will be held on Tuesday, February 21stat 11:00 am, at the Auditorium of the Museum of Modern Art, with the conference “20 years of Chilean performance” by artist and academic Samuel IbarraCovarrubias, curator of the International Biennial of Performance-DEFORMES (Chile).

The performance-related events will be launched at7:00 pm at the Spanish Cultural Center (CCE for its acronym in Spanish), simultaneously with the video performance festival entitled “Uneatable” (Inedible). The latter has been curated by Samuel IbarraCovarrubias, and will remain open to the public until February 25th.  Elvin Diaz and Grimaldy Polanco (Dominican Republic), Gabriela Alonso (Argentina) and Bartolomé Ferrando (Spain), will perform on the night of the opening ceremony.

On Wednesday the 22nd and Thursday the 23rd, starting at 7:00 pm, the INDEPENDENCE-DO events will take place at theMAM (Museum of Modern Art) outer spaces. Meanwhile on Friday, February 24th, starting at 6:00 pm,the event will continueat theRenovaciónCultural Society in Puerto Plata, with a culinary performance by Dominican artist Polibio Diaz, followed by presentations by Alexei Tellerías and Sorangel Fermin.

The events in Puerto Plata will extend from Friday the 24th through Monday the 27th of February, the National Independence Day, and will take place at theRenovaciónCultural Society, the Plaza de la Libertad, the San FelipeFort, the Plaza Independencia, the Ex-enfermería and the Rafi VasquezArt Center.

This event includes the participation of internationalstakeholders, such as Paul Couillard and Christine Brault (Canada), Nicole Soden (USA), Angelika Fojtuch (Poland), Samuel Ibarra (Chile), Fausto Gracia (Mexico) and Dominicans Geo Ripley, Pascal Meccariello, Eliú Almonte, Orlando Menicucci, Jochi Muñoz, Ingrid Madera, Nancy Vizcaino and Etienne Hernandez.

INDEPENDENCE-DO aims to promote the development of new creative disciplines, the strengthening of trans-disciplinary dialogue spaces, and the projection of the most advanced Dominican artistic expressions on the global map of contemporary visual culture.