The BRIC OPEN is an annual arts and ideas festival borne out of BRIC’s core values of creativity, inclusion, and community, bringing people together to radically imagine a more equitable future. This year’s festival theme, Borders, illuminates the way real and imagined borders intersect, and celebrates our capacity to create connection across boundaries. Closing Day of the festival includes a conversation with artist and activist Jess Thom, an art installation from Erika Harrsch, and more.
BRIC OPEN: Borders - Closing Day
Bordering the Imaginary Gallery Tour
12PM | BRIC House Gallery
On the final weekend of the exhibition, join us for a tour of Bordering the Imaginary: Art from the Dominican Republic, Haiti and their Diasporas.
Jess Thom: Biscuits Without Borders
1PM │ BRIC House Ballroom
For this Festival-closing talk, UK-based artist, writer, performer, and part-time superhero Jess Thom (aka Touretteshero) makes visible the hidden barriers that exclude disabled people, and others, from public spaces. Thom blurs the boundaries of her lived experience, the arts, and play practice to disrupt assumptions about normative privilege. Referencing the social model of disability, her provocation challenges ideas about whose responsibility it is to adapt to our culture, calling out our collective failure to consider difference.
Following Jess Thom's talk, join us for snacks and refreshments provided by Peapod and General Mills.
Multi-Day Programs & Exhibitions
Bordering the Imaginary: Art from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and their Diasporas
10AM-6PM | Gallery at BRIC House
Bordering the Imaginary investigates the complicated relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti—two nations that share a single island. The exhibition features work in a wide array of media by 19 Dominican and Haitian artists, based in both their native countries and in the United States. The artists draw on their experiences of difference, movement, and immigration to create a collective visual narrative that exposes inequalities and stereotypes of race, gender, and sexuality, which have plagued the island since the 15th century. Their work also displays the vitality of the visual arts in their communities. Through the exhibition, exhibition catalogue, and public programs, Bordering the Imaginary will reveal the complexities of a historically shifting transnational border space and the formation of distinct but intertwined nations.
Erika Harrsch: Under the Same Sky...We Dream
10AM–6PM | BRIC House Artist Studio
This immersive multimedia installation by Erika Harrsch, in collaboration with internationally acclaimed Mexican singer Magos Herrera, is an homage to the children who cross borders to start a new life with or without their parents, and to parents who dream of a better life for their kids. The piece reflects on the right to move freely across borders, the consequences of migration, the dehumanizing experience of detention, and the DREAM Act legislation of the United States that was never adopted. Participants are invited to rest in the room as an act of reflection and solidarity with the Dreamers, over 20,000 of whom live in Brooklyn.
BRIC_Portal
10AM–6PM | BRIC House Swing Space
In a fractured world, human beings too often see themselves and their tribes in isolation and competition. Portals, a global public art initiative, is about harnessing the incredible technology we have at our fingertips to forge connections between communities that might otherwise never meet. Portals are gold spaces equipped with immersive audiovisual technology. When you enter a Portal, you come face-to-face with someone in a Portal somewhere else on Earth live and full-body, as if in the same room. As walls are going up across the world and borders are hardening, the BRIC_Portal carves wormholes throughout the planet, connecting individuals to create unexpected dialogues that engage questions of borders in many ways. BRIC_Portal is presented by Shared_Studios™.
Katie Shima: What time is it there?
10AM-6PM | BRIC House Hallway
Katie Shima’s intricately constructed wall relief sculptures weave together digital and traditional techniques as a means to explore how societies shape their environments by building in, over, and through the landscape. What time is it there? is comprised of natural materials such as stained wood and fiber, the installation will appear as if an archipelago of disparate locales.
In an effort to make the BRIC OPEN Festival truly accessible, all events are FREE with RSVP, but if you have the means, and you value artistic and cultural work, please consider making a donation to support the continued health of this programming at BRIC. Donate here!
NOTE: Seating for BRIC OPEN: Borders events is on a first come, first served basis, whether you have RSVP’d or not.
BRIC OPEN: Borders - Closing Day is sponsored by Alloy, Peapod, and General Mills.
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Venue Information:
BRIC House is Brooklyn’s cultural living room: a 40,000 square foot multi-disciplinary arts and media complex in the former Strand Theatre, where emerging and established artists can create work that deepens their practice and engages the diverse communities of the borough.
Beginning Nov. 1, 2022, attendees of any BRIC House programming will no longer have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter the building. Masks are encouraged but not required in all BRIC operated spaces. If you have questions regarding this protocol, please email Safety@bricartsmedia.org
BRIC is committed to welcoming people of all abilities. BRIC's main entrance, located on Rockwell Street, is fully accessible. In addition the main floor of BRIC House has an accessible, all-gender bathroom. The BRIC Media Center, located on the 2nd floor, is accessible via elevator. The Gallery level is accessible via a wheelchair lift. Portable FM assistive listening devices are available for programs on the Stoop and in the Ballroom upon request. To make a specific access request, or to let us know other ways we can provide you with a welcoming experience, please contact Benno Orlinsky at borlinsky@bricartsmedia.org or (718) 683-5637.