This arts fest is so 'Beta'

By Aaron Short

Ever wonder where all the artists in Brooklyn are moving to these days?

That would be Bushwick — where another arts festival is set to command your attention on Sunday.

Beta Spaces, a free one-day arts festival sponsored by the all-volunteer group Arts in Bushwick, consists of more than 50 group exhibitions from neighborhood artists all encompassed between three subway stops on the Williamsburg-Bushwick border. 

“The festival provides an opportunity for inexperienced curators to try something for the first time, said Arts in Bushwick’s Ali Aschman, who curated her own show, “The Box Which Contains the World” at Brooklyn Fire Proof. “We’ll accept anybody as long as they are within the parameters we set. We don’t turn anyone away.”

That freewheeling spirit has generated a lively mix of shows each with its own theme that include a pile of metal, rubber and plastic scraps that experimental musicians use to make music, a mystical alleyway on Forrest Street filled with performance artists and trees, and a female arts collective called the Push Pops leading an “aerobic utopia,” 

“For ‘Push Pops Gone Wild,’ we’re talking about a woman’s right to be fierce and nasty, her right to embrace wild free love,” said Push Pops founding member Katie Cercone. 

Beta Spaces events will be throughout Williamsburg and Bushwick mostly around the Morgan Street L train, Nov. 14 noon–7 pm. For info, www.artsinbushwick.org.