days of

11(!)

THEATRE/Electronic music/ Poetry/busking/Blues/LIT/CHALK ART/R&B/workshops /LIVE PAINTING/Hip hop/ IMPROV THEATRE/Classical/ dance/Jazz/drawing/soul/filmmaking/Sculpture/ Folk/yarnbombing/ photography/Rock/

AND SO MUCH MORE
If you can do it, you can infringe it!

JUST WHAT IN THE HECK IS THE
BUFFALO INFRINGEMENT FESTIVAL?

Check out this video from
2012 by Carly Weiser!

The Buffalo Infringement Festival is a non-profit-driven, non-hierarchical grassroots endeavor bringing together a broad range of eclectic, independent, experimental, and controversial art of all forms. Visual, performing, and media arts are all welcome here.

Taking place in multiple venues in and around Buffalo’s Allentown District, the festival is an annual eleven-day event running from the last weekend of July through the first weekend of August.

The Infringement Festival is an interdisciplinary festival open to all critical artists. Celebrating freedom of expression and designed as a real arts democracy, this festival is a critical response to the oppressive neoliberal worldview and all its billboard trucks, televisions, flyers, advertisements, jingles, made-for-TV wars; and the depoliticisation of people through this diversionary Spectacle.

The Infringement Festival welcomes a variety of performances and cultural resistance: theatre groups, performers, street activism, political theatre, musicians, radical performance, visual artists, films, marginalized arts, spoken-word, puppet shows, disadvantaged groups, and anyone wishing to artistically infringe on the monoculture that creeps into every corner of our lives.

The Infringement Festival aims to emphasize both critical practice in the arts, and artistic practice in activism. It also aims to provide a positive environment that encourages and nurtures critical art.

To avoid being co-opted, the Infringement Festival follows a mandate:

The festival is free for all artists and activists to participate in. The festival will never charge a registration fee and participants will keep 100% of their box office less appropriate technical fees, where applicable.
The festival is open to all critical artists and will never discriminate, set entry criteria, or censor.
The festival is run as a non-hierarchical arts democracy.
The festival will only accept ethical companies that pose no conflict of interest as sponsors, as the interests of the festival’s participants come before those of the sponsors.
The festival will encourage, although not be limited to, progressive acts that encourage discussion and oppose oppressive structures.

THIS IS AMAZING!
HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?

HOW TO VOLUNTEER DURING THE FEST

Sign up to volunteer here!
- BIF needs your help to be successful- we need volunteers during the festival for a number or roles, from folks with vehicles who can drive an amp to a rooftop across town to parade marshals and promo distribution.

OTHER WAYS TO HELP

Organizers meet every First Monday at 7pm at the Allentown Association, 61 College Street. Please join us!
We rely on donations and sponsors! Scroll down to the next section to learn more.