[ALIVE PODCAST] Interview featuring Bushwick-based performance artists and directors of Para\\el performance space, IV Castellanos and Amanda Hunt by Polina Riabova

IV Castellanos + Amanda Hunt | Newburgh, NY | 2019 | photo credit Nina Isabelle.

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Interview with IV Castellanos and Amanda Hunt (Brooklyn, NY)
[ALIVE PODCAST]
By Polina Riabova
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Polina: My name is Polina Riabova. I am director of programming at The Ear, a performance artist, a writer and a correspondent for Performance Is Alive. I'm here with IV Castellanos and Amanda Hunt who run the Brooklyn DIY performance space Para\\el. They are also performance artists in their own right. They are going on tour at the end of this month, which is February 2020. IV and Amanda welcome to the podcast!

Amanda Hunt: Thank you for having us. 

IV Castellanos: Thank you very much.

Polina: We are here having tea at Para\\el… since we’re at Para\\el I want to ask you about your relationship to the space. Before Para\\el became Para\\el it was Panoply Performance Laboratory or PPL as it was known in our community and it was an essential, integral part of the Bushwick performance art scene and internationally; the performance community is quite small. Tell me about your relationship to PPL and how the takeover of the lease came about.

IV: I'm happy to take that one on. My relationship to PPL is my relationship to Esther, to start. [Esther Neff is the originator of PPL]. I'm going to get the years maybe wrong but we lived at Surreal Estate. That was around off the Morgan L probably around 2012/2013. Esther ran the performance space in collaboration with Brian [McCorkle] in the venue. When we all scattered out of that space - there was 30 people living in that building, a bunch of art, a lot of overlap of people -  is when I segued into IV Soldiers and there was a gap of time in between when Esther took 104 over, which was Spread Art at the time run by Thomas Bell.
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