OTL Blog

Founded in Montreal in 2004 to protest the commercialization and trademarking of the once-grassroots Fringe Festival, the infringement festival attempts to reclaim culture by empowering artists and communities to work independent of corporate manipulation. This year the infringement movement is especially thrilled to welcome a new festival, the Columbia Infringement Festival, into the fold. Emily […]

When infringement festival founder Donovan King was invited to the first-ever World Fringe Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, he thought there had been a mistake! After being kicked out of the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2001 for criticizing a corporate sponsor, King has made a point of crusading to protect Fringe Festivals from excessive corporate interference in order […]

Exhaustion is becoming a common theme at the World Fringe Congress, and after only 2 or 3 hours of sleep I was back at it again, blogging and getting ready for the final day. My mission, in addition to wrapping-up the Congress, was to actually get out there and see some Fringe shows to help me reflect […]

Day 3 of the World Fringe Congress began with the World Fringe Fair, a showcase of all the Fringe Festivals present for the general public. We each got a small table, so I set up my infringement materials, including Buffalo Infringement Festival’s 2012 programme, a small booklet explaining the mandate and history of the movement, the […]

All is not well at the Edinburgh Fringe, and like in North America, there is considerable discontent amongst artists on the street regarding an increasingly corporate festival. It seems that most artists go into an unreasonable amount of debt to play at the Fringe, while at the same time a deceptive new system,  the re-branded “Edinburgh […]