UP ⇡⇡ NYC

UP ⇡⇡ NYC a.k.a. Underground Performance NYC is a new, power-packed interdisciplinary art festival that will rock Brooklyn at The Paper Box on Thursday, April 21, 2016. This festival will feature artists that represent the harsh and dystopian aspects of the counter-cultural movement.

UP ⇡⇡ NYC is the brainchild of NYC art tricksters, WILD TORUS, and Estonian renegades, NON GRATA. Both of these extreme collectives will perform live at the festival, alongside boundary pushing performance artists like YOLTEOTLI, JON KONKOL, UTA BRAUSER and more. The extreme experimental sounds of electronic noise musicians DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS, FRATAXIN, MAX ALPER and CHANNEL63/I SAY FUCK will cleanse the sensory palette of the audience. Additionally, experimental live video performances, curated by ERIC BARRY DRASIN, will explore the fringes of perception and consciousness.

Original prints, artwork editions, and wearable art from participating artists will be on sale throughout the night. Pre-sale, discounted tickets are available here on Eventbrite. RSVP on Facebook for details. $15 at door from 7:00p-on. Ticket and artwork sales go directly to artists. The Paper Box is an expansive music and arts complex, located at 17 Meadow st, in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn with a main stage, a full bar and an outdoor patio. (http://thepaperbox.nyc/ )

Performing Live:

NON GRATA (http://www.nongrata.ee ) is an Estonian collective that has firmly established itself as one of the most audacious and evolving performance art groups to consistently stage rebellious performance-happenings with fire and red-hot cattle brands. Taking its name from the phrase “persona non grata” meaning “an unwelcome person,” Non Grata first started as an alternative art academy, called Academia Non Grata. Now, they travel the world practicing radical performance art with a revolving set of members that, over the years, has totaled up to 900 different artists. Non Grata is led by Anonymous Boh and Devilgirl.

WILD TORUS (www.wildtor.us ) is an NYC-based collective that creates live, interactive experiences within immersive, digital installations. Wild Torus is the spiritual practice of our current Internet-driven, consumerist society. Wild Torus uses both digital and physical means to create shared, multi-sensory happenings that challenge pervasive cultural beliefs. Their creations are mystical and spectacular, often with references to ancient aliens, cult theologies and Wild Torus’ own personal lives. Wild Torus is led by Vlady Voz Tokk, originally from Moscow, Russia; and Mág Ne Tá originally from Washington, D.C.

YOLTEOTLI (www.yolteotli.com ) is an NYC-based collective made up of Ixtel, a sculptor and process artist, and Kino, a live cinema innovator. Yolteotli collaborates to create unique physical encounters. Yolteotli seeks to dramatize contemporaneous situations, approaching them in a social praxis mode, laced with the misuse of technological innovation. Yolteotli repurposes cityscape detritus to invent surreal narrative commentary. Incorporating design elements such as mechanical balance and solar power regeneration, Yolteotli constructs site-specific works where sublime narratives unfold within self-perpetuating fantastical apparitions.

Uta Brauser (http://utabrauser.com ) is an NYC-based artist who can be described as a body, channeling the vector of divine creation that flows through selected people. Brauser’s performances invite artists and the public to interact, and express themselves in a peaceful manner beyond materialism and violence. Their multidisciplinary forms of expression range from outsider art, surrealism, pop to art activism. The main focus in their life remains a study of the human character, questions of social interaction and perfecting the approach to personal self-development and enlightenment. Brauser emphasizes continued dialogue and interaction between people.

JON KONKOL (http://www.jonkonkol.com) is an NYC-based performance artist who takes the grotesque imagery of people’s minds and crafts subversive narratives. The resulting work is a Freudian nightmare that’s come to life.

DRUMS LIKE MACHINE GUNS (https://myspace.com/drumslikemachineguns ) is a Philadelphia-based collective, specializing in noise music. Since 2004 the Morsberger brothers have been playing together as DLMG, producing revolutionary tracks like Get Radical and Pay What You Owe. Their performances are high energy and intense.

Channel63 + I SAY FUCK (www.channel63.bandcamp.com +https://isayfuck.bandcamp.com/) is a collaboration between two NYC-based noise musicians. Channel63 is the harsh noise project of artist and organizer, Joel Rodriguez. I Say Fuck makes ambient and drone noise. This collaboration will consist of schismatic volume and frequency distortion.
FRATAXIN (https://frataxin.bandcamp.com ) is a noise musician from New Jersey who practices feedback worship and one take recordings. Their sound is described as “cripple power electronics”.

Max Alper (http://maxalpermusic.com ) is a sound artist and technologist from Brooklyn, by way of Boston. Their compositions and improvisations challenge the limits of listening.

ERIC BARRY DRASIN (http://www.ericbarrydrasin.com) is an NYC-based artist, musician and curator working at the intersection of digital media, performance and installation. Their generative glitch art videos are very psychedelic and hypnotizing.