Nana Ama Bentsi-Enchill

In-forming and in-formed by knowledges, practices and wisdoms from politics, law, anthropology, and their own global cultural positions, backgrounds, and experiences, three artists situate live works for and with a present public. Through radical joy, interpersonal meaning-making, and social exuberance, these artists materialize a space-time to savor, share, and revel in existence.

"CROP KILLA" by JODIE LYN-KEE-CHOW
"PROMOTION" by NANA AMA BENTSI-ENCHILL
RAHA BEHNAM

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ABOUT JODIE'S WORK 'CROP KILLA'
On Nov 6, 1983 Adrian Piper's performance "Funk lessons" debuted as a response to xenophobia. 34 years later our generation continues to encounter racial and cultural tensions. The artist, Lyn-Kee-Chow responds to our times with a new iteration of her Crop Killa performance, "Crop Killa's Soca Social". Both a dance instruction and social event the artist embodies her character, a Jamaican dance hall queen from her "Crop Killa" performance to engage others to let loose, learn a few dance moves, and enjoy life.

ABOUT AMA'S WORK 'PROMOTION'
"My performance work explores cultural value systems: Why do we love what we love? How do we come to identify the acceptable and the taboo. My ongoing performance and installation series, "Promotion" is an investigation of oppositional (Euro colonial and Indigenous West African) value systems that come into silent conflict and the stains of dissonance left for the colonized to grapple with, (or not). The work plays with sensuality, the communal and etiquette at the "dinner table". You are invited."

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RAHA BEHNAM

Raha is an Iranian-born, Canadian-raised, US-based dance and performance artist. She has studied and performed in the San Francisco Bay Area with Abby Crain, Kathleen Hermesdorf and Sara Shelton Mann, and in the DC area with Pearson/Widrig Dance Company, and Deviated Theatre. Her work has been presented at the Performance Studies international conference in Hamburg, San Francisco's FRESH Festival, SALTA (Oakland), Figure One Gallery (Champaign, IL), The Knockdown Center (NY), Grace Exhibition Space (NY), and the Wild Project (NY). She holds a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Bachelor’s degrees in Dance and Anthropology from the University of Maryland. Her interests lie at the intersections of dance, embodiment, community development and urban politics. http://rahabehnam.com/

NANA AMA BENTSI-ENCHILL

Nana Ama Bentsi-Enchill is an artist, educator and arts advocate who holds over 15 years of experience in the non-profit, arts and youth development. With a dual B.A. International Affairs and Government/Law from Lafayette College, Ama has managed to bridge her love for youth empowerment, contemporary African art and global affairs professionally and in her art practice. Professionally, she has served youth as an arts educator and coordinator of youth programs here and abroad. Creatively, Ama uses mixed media, performance, and textile to express a point of view informed by her Ghanaian heritage. Ama has recently performed at the Chale Wote Festival in Ghana (with Ayana Evans, Tsedaye Makonnen, and Megan Livingston) and as part of performance art shows at Rockaway Brewing Company and Le Petit Versaille in NYC.

JODIE LYN-KEE-CHOW

Born and raised in Jamaica, West Indies, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow received a BFA at the New World School of the Arts, Miami in 1996. In 2005 she attained an MFA from Hunter College, New York City. She has exhibited her work at venues including Exit Art (NYC), Rush Arts Gallery (NYC), SUNY Old Westbury College (NY), Grace Exhibition Space, Queens International 4 at the Queens Museum of Art (NY), “Open International Performance Art Festival” at Open Contemporary Art Center in Beijing, China, and a featured artist in Jamaica Biennial 2017, She has received grants and fellowships from Franklin Furnace, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and NYFA. Lyn-Kee-Chow often explores performance and installation art, which draws from the nostalgia of her homeland, the commodified imagery of Caribbean primitivism, folklore, fantasy, consumerism, spirituality and nature's ephemerality. She lives and works in Queens, N.Y. and is a faculty member of the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts. www.jodielynkeechow.com

PERFORMANCY FORUM: CIVIC REFLEX/ REFLEJO CÍVICO

Public performances/presentations Saturdays:
April 21, May 26, September 29, October 20, November 10, 2018 all at 8pm
FREE & Open to the Public

@ Panoply Performance Laboratory
104 Meserole Street
Brooklyn, NY 11206

PERFORMANCY FORUM: CIVIC REFLEX is a collective performance/social art project involving: 1) the formation of a self-reflexive collective of 20 artists/groups 2) a series of 5 public forum events and 3) an online blog substantiating and framing “civic” “civil” and “reflexive” performance practices and performative theoretics (http://reflejocivico.civicreflex.us/).

PERFORMANCY FORUM: REFLEJO CÍVICO es un colectivo de arte social y performance que consiste en: 1) la creación de un colectivo de 20 artistas/grupos que se comporte de manera auto-reflexiva 2) una serie de 5 eventos/foros abiertos al público 3) un blog online dedicado a proveer contexto y enmarcar teóricamente prácticas de arte performático, civil, cívico y auto-reflexivo (http://reflejocivico.civicreflex.us/).

The 20 artists/groups forming the CIVIC REFLEX/REFLEJO CIVICO temporary collective are:
Rina Espiritu, Pei-Ling Ho, Tsedaye Makonnen, Diane Dwyer, David Ian Bellows/Griess, Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez, @Daniel Gonzalez, Nana Ama Bentsi-Enchill (Ama BE), Aditi Natasha Kini and Amin Husain, Leopold Krist (Leopoldo Bloom), Megan Livingston, Feminist Art Group (F.A.G.), Amelia Marzec (Amelia Meta), Samantha CC (Samantha Regina), Sierra Ortega, Verónica Peña, Ada Pinkston, Lorene Bouboushian, Arantxa Araujo, Helen Yung

This temporary collective will meet on each of the five Saturdays for forum discussion and interaction 6pm-7:30pm, followed by public performances/presentations/situations at 8pm on each date:

April 21 public performances/presentations by: Diane Dwyer, Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez, Rina Espiritu
https://www.facebook.com/events/1003293089837925/

May 26 public performances/presentations by: Pei-Ling Ho, Tsedaye Makonnen, Daniel Gonzalez, Nana Ama Bentsi-Enchill

September 29 public performances/presentations by: Aditi Natasha Kini and Amin Husain, Leopold Krist, Megan Livingston, Feminist Art Group (F.A.G.)

October 20 public performances/presentations by: Amelia Marzec, Samantha CC, Sierra Ortega, Verónica Peña

November 10 public performances/presentations by: Ada Pinkston, Lorene Bouboushian, Arantxa Araujo, Helen Yung, David Ian Bellows/Griess

PLEASE VISIT INDIVIDUAL EVENT PAGES FOR MORE ARTIST/PRESENTER/PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

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CIVIC REFLEX/REFLEJO CIVICO is organized as/by Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation (BIPAF) and Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL) as a part of PERFORMANCY FORUM. Members of the temporary collective were selected through an Open Call by a peer committee convened March 8, 2018.

CIVIC REFLEX/REFLEJO CIVICO is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). This grant is distributed to the 20 artists/groups involved, allowing honorariums of $150/each. The remaining grant monies go towards toilet paper, cups, printed programs, and the project blog domain.

ABOUT BIPAF
Brooklyn International Performance Art Foundation (BIPAF) is an anonymous entity operating as an ongoing institutional critique project. BIPAF was initiated in 2013 to produce the first and only ever month-long Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, a mass organizing endeavor that took place across 11 spaces and many public sites in Brooklyn. “BIPAF” has since been used by JACK, Leili Huzaibah and Esther Neff, and others to perform administrative, bureaucratic, and institutional activities (such as grant disbursement, letters of invitation for Visas, grant proposals, and more). BIPAF is, in and of itself, performance art. www.bipaf.net

ABOUT PERFORMANCY FORUM
PERFORMANCY FORUM is an exhibition platform and discursive program constructed for and by performance artists. Initiated in 2009 by Esther Neff/PPL. PERFORMANCY FORUM has since has since become a relational, self-reflexive project, collaborating with artists, spaces, sites, curatorial collectives, and many others to produce exhibitions, shows, workshops, conferences, actions, events, and performative critical gatherings. Initiatives and events have emerged in relationship with SUPERFRONT (Public Summer at Industry City), the Poop Project (BOB the Pavilion at Columbia University), MDW Art Fair, Performer Stammtisch, Association for Performance Art Berlin (APAB), Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival/Foundation (BIPAF), ITINERANT (Hector Canonge), Petrichor Performance Collective, and many independent curators, organizers, artists, and groups from all over the world. PF’s primary activities include the monthly incarnation of the platform as one-night performance art exhibitions at Panoply Performance Laboratory in Bushwick, Brooklyn. www.performancyforum.net

ABOUT PANOPLY PERFORMANCE LABORATORY (PPL)
PPL is a flexible collective, thinktank(s), and lab site. PPL makes and situates performance art, operas-of-operations, installations, and social projects, operating across a spectrum between live art/life art and cultural organizing, researching embodiments, forms of public gathering, and performative ideation, conceptualization, and theorization across scales and spheres. www.panoplylab.org