NYPAC, the New York Performance Artists Collective, is pleased to present COLLAPSE (or, falling flat), an evening of curated performances at the Knockdown Center on October 3rd. The program is inspired by the legacy of failure in contemporary art, dance, and performance, as manifested in physical gestures (falling over, misstepping), unrealizable conceptual frameworks, and frustrated ideological objectives. COLLAPSE adopts failure as an artistic model that is itself past its prime. In a context where corporations can be too big to fail, how do technology and politics affect the possibilities of artistic acts of resistance, of therapeutic engagement? In what new ways can we disappoint each other?

COLLAPSE opened with a looped screening of a new video work by Caitlin Baucom. In Psycho/geographic, Baucom represents the body as a series of pathologized impulses, broken narratives, and failed social corrections. Lauren Bakst followed with a performance that combined elements constantly developing in her work: choreographed movements, procedural systems, and dryly humorous shout-outs to internet and pop culture. Sara Grace Powell presented a new technologically interrupted work about the vertical integration/synergy of the performance art market. The evening closed with a performance by Max Steele titled Mad Girl, a punk show about hell and feminism and mental illness.

Lauren Bakst is an artist whose works takes the forms of choreography, writing, video, and performance. A trained dancer, her work places the skilled body and choreographic form in conversation with questions around subjectivity, affect, memory, and history. She regularly collaborates with Yuri Masnyj—their works have been presented at Pioneer Works and The Drawing Center. Her previous works have been seen at Pieter (LA), CATCH, Center for Performance Research, Dixon Place, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Abrons Arts Center, Draftwork at Danspace Project, and Movement Research at Judson Church, among others. Lauren was a 2014 danceWEB fellow at ImpulsTanz, the Fall 2014 Research & Development Fellow at the New Museum, and is a 2014-16 Open Sessions artist at The Drawing Center. Lauren is the Managing Editor of the Movement Research Performance Journal and a Contributing Editor to BOMB Magazine. She teaches at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA where she also curates Knowing Dance More, an artist-driven lecture series. As a performer, Lauren has most recently worked with Gerard & Kelly and Michelle Boulé.

Caitlin Baucom is a Brooklyn based performer and composer, invested in parsing fear and making a mess. Her interdisciplinary works have been presented at Defibrillator Gallery, High Concept Laboratories, MDW Fair, Southside Hub of Production, Mana Contemporary, and Cock & Bull Theater (Chicago), Stockholm Fringe Festival (Stockholm), Dimanche Rouge Festival (Paris), Naherholung Sternchen (Berlin), Galerie KUB (Leipzig), Verge Fair (Miami), and ABC No Rio, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Fountain Art Fair, LUMEN Festival, The Slipper Room, Performance Mix Festival, HERE Arts, Good Work Gallery, and Dixon Place (NYC). She has work and writing published in Emergency INDEX: Volume 3, Bad at Sports, and Incident Magazine, and been in residence at Contemporary Artists Center and SOHO20 Chelsea in New York, and the ACC-Galerie in Weimar, Germany. In 2015 she is performing as French poet Renée Vivien in The Ladies Almanack, a feature film by Daviel Shy, and was shortlisted for the Artslant’s Georgia Fee residency in Paris. She works as a performer for the Museum of Modern Art, and holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BA from Evergreen.

Sara Grace Powell is a multimedia artist, recalcitrant, and a virgo. In 2008, she abandoned a New Age Cult in Los Angeles and went on to receive her BFA from Barnard in 2014. And here is one other possibly pseudo-biographical sentence written for virtual publication 2015.

Max Steele is a performer and writer based in Brooklyn. He has presented work at the New Museum, Deitch Projects, BAM, Joe’s Pub, La MAMA, Envoy Enterprises, PPOW Gallery, The Afterglow Festival in Provincetown and the Queens Museum of Art. He writes the psychedelic porno poetry zine Scorcher, and his writing has been featured in Dossier Journal, Spunk [arts] Magazine, East Village Boys, Birdsong, Vice and Best Gay Stories 2014. He was an Artist in Residence at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange from 2012-2014.

NYPAC, the New York Performance Artists Collective, is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the production, accessibility, and scholarship of performative and intermedia art. NYPAC is made possible with the generous support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. COLLAPSE is kindly hosted by the Knockdown Center.