EXCESS — what are we doing?
EXCESS space is an art organ housed in the small barn off Grant Street, serving as a nex(ha)us for performance, multimedia, installation and visual art exhibition but will also be a hub for circulating skills and techniques, providing theater and means for the decanting of tigers of feeling.
EXCESS’s mission is to address the paradox of utility by amassing cultural alternatives to the commercial and academic art experience, and in this economy reflect back to negate and to re-envision artistic expression and elements, and to nurture and promote “the tiger in space” in Bloomington. Included in the mission will be special consideration for the cultural diversity of Bloomington. EXCESS will be a base to utilize, enjoy, (re)learn, and deconstruct — with a focus on the deterriorialization of culture, creativity, and ideas.
The space will operate through creative exhibition & programming, and diffuse promotion, subscription and fundraising, all under the banner, ‘The infinite does not transcend the finite; rather, it is the very movement of the finite itself.’
To use Excess Space, please email, tweet, message or swing by on Sundays at 6pm.
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Though some events will ask a donation for the touring artists and performers, we've decided against charging admission prices or hanging fees. We would like to sustain more than a calendar of individual events and exhibits; instead, we elect to use a subscription model. Each subscription, a small monthly financial contribution, is tied to—and perhaps thereby encourages—regular use of Excess Space. Because our project goes beyond the collective and toward the collaborative, we hope more small and various uses of the space will bring about the more spontaneous use. We ask only small monthly contribution amounts to encourage accessibility. As we it, the dollar is far too determinative throughout modern history, and—however ideally—we want no further part in it.
Activities at EXCESS will center around afternoon & evening happenings and exhibitions that synthesize audience and participation. We will also offer several workshops and demonstrations that extend EXCESS's mission by faciliating community experimentation in a range of creative activities. Weekdays will have regular afternoon open gallery hours, and weekly special events such as poetry and prose nights, creative skill shares, reading groups, film screening experiment, as well as both local and touring musical performances.
A monthly Gallery Opening for the “First Friday Gallery Stroll” concentrates on bringing together a wide array of the Bloomington community by offering space to meet the featured artists and discuss their work. Featured artists are also invited to host a monthly Artist Workshop. We intend for these workshops to dissolve the gap between spectacle and spectator (however briefly) — allowing the artist to exhibit and teach a part of their process, reflecting on the process from another perspective, as well as providing new means for community members to explore artistic expression as guided by the featured artist.