Vote and then explore the impact of visual culture on electoral politics at a special election night edition of Optics: A New Way of Seeing Contemporary Culture, hosted by writer/editor Jillian Steinhauer with artists Daniel Bejar and Jacques Servin, and featuring a special election-themed performance by Amy Khoshbin.
The evening begins with a discussion between Steinhauer, Bejar, Servin, and Khoshbin. They will explore how images and media profoundly shape our interpretation and navigation of electoral politics. From campaign posters and graphic identities, like Shepard Fairey’s unforgettable design for Barack Obama, to politicians’ self-styled photographs and social media presences—think President Trump trending on both Twitter and Instagram—the visual culture of politics is increasingly complex, and it’s more important than ever to deconstruct it.
Then, Khoshbin will perform an Election Day version of her piece You Never Know with Laurie Berg. You Never Know is a political speech (Khoshbin is running for City Council in District 39 of Brooklyn in 2021) turned cathartic rap performance educating on how we can change the system from the inside out and the ground up through voting, running for office, and keeping our spirits high in these trying times. Exploring the culture of violence and fear mongering that Western media perpetuates, Khoshbin encourages a positive group catharsis using some of that same media, video and rap music.
The program ends nearby at Von Bar (3 Bleecker Street) where BRUJAS will be DJing a special election results watch/dance party.
This is a free event, but please register in advance. ICP Members have access to preferred seating in our reserved members’ section. One half-price drink for the first twenty-five guests with their “I Voted” sticker!
Our ICP Museum–public program combination ticket grants $10 entry to the galleries starting at 4:30 PM to those attending the program. Tickets are only available online when you register for the program.
Program Schedule
7–8 PM - Conversation with Jillian Steinhauer, Amy Khoshbin, Daniel Bejar, and Jacques Servin
8–9 PM - You Never Know performance featuring Amy Khoshbin and Laurie Berg, event production advisement by Meredith Boggia.
9 PM–Late - Election results watch/dance party at Von Bar (3 Bleecker Street) DJed by BRUJAS
Bios
Jillian Steinhauer is a journalist living in Brooklyn. She won the 2014 Best Art Reporting Award from the US chapter of the International Association of Art Critics for her work at Hyperallergic, where she was formerly a senior editor. Her writing appears in the New York Times, the New Republic, and The Nation, among other publications. She writes mainly about art and politics, but has also been known to go on at length about cats.
Amy Khoshbin is an Iranian-American, New York-based, artist, rapper, and politician. Her practice advocates for changing commercial culture through co-opting and using popular media genres to create connections and catharsis. She has shown at venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Times Square Arts, the High Line, Socrates Sculpture Park, VOLTA Art Fair, PULSE Art Fair, Leila Heller Gallery, Mana Contemporary, National Sawdust, and festivals such as River to River and South by Southwest. She has received residencies at spaces such as the Watermill Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Anderson Ranch, and Banff Centre for the Arts. She is a 2017 Franklin Furnace recipient and has received a Rema Hort Mann Artist Community Engagement Grant. Khoshbin has bachelor's degrees in film and media studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. She has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Tina Barney, and poets Anne Carson and Bob Currie, among others.
Daniel Bejar is an interdisciplinary based in Brooklyn, NY. His work challenges the representations of histories, identities, and places. By constructing new narratives and transmitting them into the public realm, his practice reveals the underlying, often unquestioned, ideologies and power structures that pervade our physical and digital worlds. In 2018, Bejar was commissioned to create a permanent public artwork at a public school in Queens, NY, by NYC Percent for Art & NYC SCA Public Art for Public Schools. Bejar has received many prestigious awards including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Work (2015), a Franklin Furnace Fund Grant (2014), and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Grant (2013). Bejar has also participated in several residencies including The Drawing Center's Open Sessions Program, New York, NY (2016-17); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency, New York, NY (2011-12); and the SOMA Summer Program, Mexico City, D.F. (2012). His work has been featured in publications such as the New Yorker, Harpers Bazaar HK, Magazine B, and Hyperallergic, among others. His work was also recently included in the Vector Artists Journal #8 which launched at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Espai-d'art Contemporani de Castello, Spain; El Museo Del Barrio, NY; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; Georgia State University, GA; Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany; and The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY. Bejar has an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz, NY, and a BFA from Ringling College of Art & Design, Sarasota, FL.
Jacques Servin is a founder of the Yes Men and a member of the Creative Resistance, an all-volunteer collective of creative people who have made over 60 videos for local New York candidates to flip the New York State Senate blue. Creative Resistance videos have been viewed over 1.5 million times, and were part of the wave that demolished the IDC.
BRUJAS is an urban, free-form, creative and autonomous organization that seeks to build radical political coalition through youth culture. We express community through skateboarding, art and political organizing.
Laurie Berg is a dancer, performer, collagist, and jewelry maker. Her projects have appeared at The Kitchen, WeisAcres, BAX, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Dixon Place, Beach Sessions Dance Series, Astor Alive! Festival, The Invisible Dog Art Center as part of The Joyce Theater’s Unleashed Series, The Whitney Museum, The Mattatuck Museum of Art (CT), Catch, Avant-Garde-Arama, WiM at the TBG Theater, Pieter PASD (CA), Roulette Intermedium, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Food for Thought, Danspace Project’s Food for Thought and DraftWork series, and at Danspace Project as part of PLATFORM 2011: Body Madness - Rhythm and Humor, FACADE/FASAD, 303 Gallery, ICMC at Stony Brook University, the TANK, draftwork, and AUNTS among others. Berg was a 2016–17 LMCC Workspace Artist-In-Residence, the 2016 recipient of the Tom Murrin Performance Award, was a 2013 New York Live Arts Studio Series Artist and a 2010 Movement Research Artist-In-Residence. She co-curated the 2017 Movement Research Spring Festival and is currently a member of the Movement Research Artist Advisory Council. She also co-produces AUNTS, an underground platform for dance and performance, with Liliana Dirks-Goodman.
Meredith L Boggia is an arts worker and producer in fine and performing arts with institutions, festivals, tours, productions and management of individual artists and collectives. She has had the pleasure of staffing such institutions as Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Art and Design, National Dance Museum, Dance Theater Workshop/New York Live Arts; producing Solid Sound Music Festival, the Wassaic Project’s Summer Festival, and the Fresh Grass Music Festival among others. She is also an event producer for the Kentler Gallery, the New York Dance and Performance Award, the Central Park Boathouse, and others. Her passion is channeled through her now six-and-a-half-year-old consulting and production company, Meredith Boggia Productions, where she serves as a collaboratively oriented independent creative producer. She is honored to work with many artists, including luciana achugar, David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, Ain Gordon, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, Mallory Catlett, Ni’Ja Whitson, Katie Workum, and many others.