Dave Harter Reporting for Green Options Buffalo:
*In this series Green Options Buffalo will be highlighting events, festivals, shows and rides that are guaranteed to be top-notch adventures for bicycle riders.
Creating art as a commodity is something that many artists only begrudgingly accept as a necessity of the modern world. For these artists, a culture centered on property and privilege seems fundamentally opposed to the essence of creative expression. Whether from impulsive bursts or slow, careful crafting – upon its creation, art seems destined to enrich the world and the Buffalo Infringement Festival gives any artist a chance.
In no particular order the Infringement manifesto includes ideas like: art is for people not corporations, so the Infringement Festival takes no corporate sponsorship or any sponsorship that can dictate content. Also, art is for all people so artists are encouraged to put on free or very low cost events that anyone can afford to attend; any money that is made from art should go to the artist. Property and business owners generously donate the use of their spaces for the Infringement festival so that artists are the total beneficiaries of their creativity. Finally, no art is excluded.
This weekend I had the pleasure of experiencing the Infringement Festival on a bicycle. Unlike many festivals in Buffalo that take over a street (or an area) of the city and mass people in a defined space, the Infringement Festival isn’t in Buffalo – it is Buffalo. The Infringement Festival happens all over the city with participating venues in Allentown, the Theatre District, Blackrock, Broadway/Fillmore, the Elmwood Village and Grant. The diversity of locations is a great reminder of just how many nooks and crannies this city has, each with their own flavor. The diverse locations mean that you’ll be doing some adventuring around the city to get from show to show but fortunately, Buffalo is small and flat so traversing it by bicycle is a quick, cheap and fun way to get around.
My infringing started Friday night by skipping around to musical sets at The Vault, Sugar City, Nietzsche’s and The Hardware Café. I got to watch Anal Pudding and Gruvology within five minutes of each other. Only at Infringement can one see 4-5 different music acts as diverse as Anal Pudding’s crass lounge-rock and Gruvology’s virtuosic jazz and spend about $5. When I reached in my pocket and had a bunch of left over money (having not paid for gas or parking, and very little for cover charge) I bought some of Gruvology’s merch and got a high-inducing Portabella Po-Boy from Lagniappes.
I biked to more events on Saturday including the Merge Infringement Circus where more bands, artists and games could be enjoyed for free. Again, because everything was free, I found myself spending more money supporting local artists and institutions. In one particularly sincere moment of local economy, I bought a bands CD who then exclaimed, “Looks like we’re going to lunch!” and then took off into Merge.
I contacted Sarah Bishop at Buffalo First! to ask her about the economic benefit of local events like Infringement and she had this to say, “Supporting a local artist is supporting a member of your community – a member that intuitively understands the need for a culturally vibrant, diverse and community-oriented approach to economic development. Supporting initiatives like Infringement keeps 3x more money in the local economy – if that’s not a benefit, I don’t know what is.”
Art yearns primarily to express some small piece of the infinite spectrum of human experience to an audience, thus broadening our mutual context of understanding. When art is simply commoditized it too often becomes nothing more than a marker of class privilege, a trophy on a wall like a set of antlers in a house with no hunters. The Buffalo Infringement Festival manages to make art available to everyone and still be good for the financial vibrancy of our community.
The amazing story of The Buffalo Infringement Festival only starts with the idea that art is for all people and continues with a monumental amount of cooperation and grit. The immense work of volunteer organizers is beyond commendable. These tireless believers work like mules to pull together 1,200 artists and 50+ venues for 11 days of “Art Under the Radar” and they do if for love of art and community.
There are only 4 days left of this amazing festival and lots more great events going on. If you ride your bicycle you will not only have a quick, fun, free-parking adventure, but also the satisfaction funneling your money into the local economy instead of the wealthy owners of environmentally devastating resource extraction/refining operations that give us our gasoline. Check out the full schedule here… and Happy Infringing.
Photo credit: Sarah Schneider, co-owner Merge Restaurant – Eye Glimpse