Infringement Festival
Encyclopedia
The infringement Festival is an international, interdisciplinary critical arts festival that features theatre
, music
, film
, culture jamming
, street performance
and visual arts
, with an emphasis on activist art and work that challenges the commodification
of culture.
Conceptualized by theatre activist Donovan King
, the festival was founded in Montreal
in 2004 by King and fellow theatre activists Jason C. McLean
and Gary St-Laurent as a response to high registration fees and conflict-of-interest sponsorships in the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival
and the trademarking of the word "Fringe" by the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals.
It has since spread to Ottawa
, Toronto
, Buffalo
, Regina
, Brooklyn
and Bordeaux. Plans are also underway for possible events in Lockport, NY, Hamilton, Ontario
and Barcelona
.
The festival's mandate insists on no registration fees for participating artists, no ticket surcharge and only ethical sponsors that pose no conflict of interest.
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, culture jamming
Culture jamming
Culture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...
, street performance
Street theatre
Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres, car parks, recreational reserves and street corners. They are especially seen in outdoor spaces where there are...
and visual arts
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
, with an emphasis on activist art and work that challenges the commodification
Commodification
Commodification is the transformation of goods, ideas, or other entities that may not normally be regarded as goods into a commodity....
of culture.
Conceptualized by theatre activist Donovan King
Donovan King
Donovan King is a performance activist and experimental theatre artist from Montreal, Canada who juggles acting, teaching, directing, dramaturgy, and theory, and is a columnist for Indie Theatre Times and Review.-Background:...
, the festival was founded in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
in 2004 by King and fellow theatre activists Jason C. McLean
Jason C. McLean
Jason C. McLean is a Montreal-based theatrical activist, actor, writer, journalist, and aco-founder of both the International infringement Festival and the Forget The Box Media Collective....
and Gary St-Laurent as a response to high registration fees and conflict-of-interest sponsorships in the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival
Fringe theatre
Fringe theatre is theatre that is not of the mainstream. The term comes from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which name comes from Robert Kemp, who described the unofficial companies performing at the same time as the second Edinburgh International Festival as a ‘fringe’, writing: ‘Round the fringe...
and the trademarking of the word "Fringe" by the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals.
It has since spread to Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan
Regina is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province and a cultural and commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. It is governed by Regina City Council. Regina is the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox...
, Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
and Bordeaux. Plans are also underway for possible events in Lockport, NY, Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
and Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
.
The festival's mandate insists on no registration fees for participating artists, no ticket surcharge and only ethical sponsors that pose no conflict of interest.