Chez Bushwick: An Industry in Its Own Right
Performance in front of Chez Bushwick’s monumental windows. — Photo by Michael Hart
Chez Bushwick is not known for being easy to find. A performing and visual arts organization, it’s housed in an industrial building that looms over a vacant lot. It is surrounded by similar forms — a tortilla factory, a packing plant. There is no sign on the front of the building save the tiny one next to the buzzer.
Through a door on the second landing of a large metal staircase is a long room with a wooden floor and windows along two sides. There are benches, pamphlets and papers on several tables, and a bathroom with a large pink artwork by Bruce Nauman, Body Press, (1976), a conceptual piece about pressing one’s body into a wall.
I’ve made the trek here a couple of times before — twice to rehearse and once to watch a performance. Back in March, Benjamin Rasmussen showed "Imprints," which was produced at Chez Bushwick by Arts In Bushwick as part of the SITE Festival series. He and another dancer balanced on construction grade bricks, covering themselves in scrapes and red dust. His work’s raw aesthetic echoed the surroundings, both inside and outside the building.
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Founded in 2002 by Jonah Bokaer and Loren Dempster, with contributions from Jeremy Wade and Jonah’s brother Emile Bokaer, Chez Bushwick grew out of the need for affordable space for artists in New York City. Bokaer first came to Bushwick in 1999, before the neighborhood was known for its now-burgeoning arts community. Once this community began to come together, he and his partners decided to create a space that would be available for creative use and performances — as Bokaer explains, "a space… about the place it’s in." They knew that it would be a repurposed space, so they began looking for a building with a sympathetic landlord and the right dimensions.
"We just opened," says Bokaer, once a suitable space was chosen. In the beginning, anyone could use the one room that comprised Chez Bushwick for free, and only later was the rental fee initiated. It still stands at a generously low rate of $5/hr — unadjusted for inflation. From there the organization grew organically. First, low-tech performances and space rentals, then, when artists wanted to produce higher-tech shows, video and sound equipment was purchased. Later, Chez Bushwick leased the adjoining space to use as an office.
Chez Bushwick now employs a full-time staff of two, and part-time staff of six, and has five distinct operating goals: to make available affordable space for artists, to support Center for Performance Research (a separate "green"-built arts space Bokaer helped develop), to create public programming in the form of art events, to be a fiscal conduit for Bokaer’s own multimedia performance works, and to support community development. Now, with the receipt of a grant toward a just-launched program focusing on community work — CAPITAL B — Chez B is now on a much more solid footing and seems likely to avoid the difficulties facing other large arts organizations in Bushwick.
For the coming hot summer evenings, Chez Bushwick offers several programming series for Bushwickers looking to get in off the streets. Their ongoing movement and performance art series CAKE, which takes place every Saturday at 7pm, offers artists the space they need to produce innovative new work. The start of May featured three visiting Belgian artists, Gwendoline Robin, Delgado Fuchs, and Claudio Stellato, whose dances toyed with ideas of sex and humor, all packed inside loaded visual effects. June 13th Andrea Liu will host a panel on Balkanization or, the theory of interdisciplinary art works.
Also ongoing is the screening series Kinetic Cinema, occurring on the second Wednesday of every month. June 10th offers an exploration of Vlogging, or blogging dance videos. The evening will be hosted by Boris Willis, a dance vlogger himself, who recently completed a project for which he posted a dance video every day for an entire year.
Chez Bushwick is a neighborhood arts anchor; an ambassador, through Bokaer’s high-profile art-world interactions, for Bushwick’s creative community; and above all, a great place to hang out with your neighbors and watch some cutting-edge performance. It’s location is fitting: Chez Bushwick manufactures culture.
Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St. #23 | 718-418-4405
