Performance Art Festival to Feature International and Local Artists

Courtesy Photo Anya Liftig, a performance artist from New York, N.Y., and will be performing during INVERSE Performance Art Festival in Northwest Arkansas April 22 at 21C in Bentonville.

UPDATED: Information about the Art Night Out portion of INVERSE at Crystal Bridges has been added.

Northwest Arkansas will soon be host to its first-ever performance art festival featuring 28 artists from as far as China and as close as Fayetteville. It’s also going to be completely free.

Organized by Cynthia Post Hunt and Emma Saperstein of Dallas, Texas, INVERSE Performance Art Festival will take place the weekend of April 22-23. The festivals seeks to “elevate the medium of performance” in the region through a variety of performances with diversity of content and duration, while highlighting the local arts scene.

What is performance art?

There’s not exactly a definitive answer. Performance art is essentially the relationship or engagement between a performing artist(s) and the audience in a fine art context. The performance itself can be interactive, improvisational, or scripted. Most performance art involves space, time and the performer’s body. It’s also often interdisciplinary, sometimes involving video, technology, sound or props.

Artists will be performing on Friday, April 22 at 21c in Bentonville, and on Saturday, April 23 at various venues in Fayetteville, including Backspace, Lala Land, Local Color Studio Gallery, the Shed, SUgAR Gallery, and the Fayetteville Underground.There are also a few artist lectures planned for the weekend.

The festival will conclude with performances Saturday evening at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art during Art Night Out April 23. Admission to the “Rock & Roll on the American Road” show will be $10. Two INVERSE artists, Beverly Fre$h and Jordan Long, will be performing as part of the event. Long performed here in NWA last year at Bottle Rocket, and he is originally from Arkansas.

Courtesy Photo
Entity, an experimental dance group, features locals April Robertson, Shannon Terry, Avery Martin, and Missy Conry. They will perform at 10 a.m. at the SUgAR Gallery inside the Pryor Center in downtown Fayetteville.

“All of the performances are very sensory, and that’s what’s beautiful about performance” Post Hunt said. “They’re about really taking in not just sight but sound and smell and really engaging in the space the actual artist is in.”

INVERSE will feature artists from Arkansas, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Oklahoma, as well as a live broadcast performance by six artists in Shanghai.

“The performance community is very inclusive and I think people are just so excited to be a part of something new,” Post Hunt said. “The artists who aren’t from Arkansas, I don’t think most of them have been here at all. They’re equally intrigued by what’s going on in this area and who lives here and why. Whatever opportunities there are that weekend, they will be totally open to conversation.”

Wanbli Gamache, a Fayetteville native, will be performing a video installation piece Saturday April 23. His piece will involve video projection and motion sensors, so when attendees enter the performance space there will be a reaction. Some of the themes he wants to explore include the reliance of technology, physical and digital presence and media over-stimulation.

Courtesy Photo
FUPA is a performance art group from Shanghai, China. Their performance will be on Saturday, April 23 at 11:30 a.m. at Backspace in Fayetteville.

“This town is working really well as far as a sense of a laboratory for people to expand and work. The community here has been very supportive and welcoming to local people to try out things people aren’t used to,” Gamache said. “Especially at Backspace with Samantha Sigmon or Sam King at Lala Land. The community here seems to be expanding really well in a good direction, I think that’s because we’re open and interested in experimentation and there’s not a clear cut idea of what exactly the scene of this town is. It doesn’t need to be cemented into one idea.”

The inspiration for a performance art festival in Northwest Arkansas came to Post Hunt — a Chicago-to-Fayetteville transplant — and Saperstein this past December. Both artists are inspired by the works and from collaboration with the Industry of the Ordinary from Chicago, so initially, Post Hunt wanted to just invite IOTO’s Adam Brooks and Mat Wilson to perform. After discussing it with Saperstein, the two decided they wanted to throw a party for it to make it something worth coming to. So Post Hunt reached out to Dayton Castleman at 21C to pitch the idea of a performance festival, and he thought it was great.

Courtesy Photo
Industry of the Ordinary, from Chicago, are dedicated to an exploration and celebration of the customary, the everyday, and the usual. Their performance will be ongoing throughout April 22 in Bentonville.

Post Hunt had also collaborated with several of the local art DIY spaces in the area and wanted to involve as many of them as she could, and she found the same enthusiasm for the event from the whole community.

Local businesses have also been very supportive of INVERSE, especially the NWA Creative Arts Network, which has helped raise funds. Foxhole Public House in Bentonville came up with an INVERSE cocktail, The Handlebar in Fayetteville offered bikes for artists and Onyx offered coffee.

“That’s a beautiful thing about Fayetteville,” Post Hunt said. “The donations have been amazing. We’ve got local members of the community hosting artists as another way to engage and help us save on that expense and help create new relationships. What element has been really important to me throughout the whole process.”

There are also plans to document the festival with photos, videos and bios to be culminated in a book.

For more information about INVERSE artists or the schedule of events, visit inverseperformanceartfestival.org.