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Amy Khoshbin

In Residence:
October 4, 2015 - October 23, 2015
Discipline:
Performance Art, Theatre, Video Art
Country:
United States
Amy Khoshbin is a Brooklyn-based artist. She creates hybrid works using performance, video, and interactive media to explore the production and transmission of narratives both personal and cultural. Using a collage-style approach to creating works across mediums, she uses imagery from different sources to assemble mythologies that evade a unified understanding. She has shown her solo and collaborative work at venues such as Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Invisible Dog Art Center, The Stone, Blanton Art Museum, and festivals such as South by Southwest and MakerFaire. She is a 2014-2015 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Resident, and has completed residencies at Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, Team Effort! in Glasgow, Scotland, and at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. 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 at New York University. She is currently in a sci-fi rap group called C∆N-D with sound artist Michael Clemow and head dancer Liz McAuliffe. She has also collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, Tina Barney, and poets Anne Carson and Bob Currie, among others.
Liz McAuliffe is a dance and performance artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her interests include queerness catharsis, and collaboration. She has performed at venues including BAM, Alvin Ailey, The New Museum, The Highline Ballroom, Judson Church, Greenwood Cemetery, and CAVE. Notable collaborations include dancing with the butoh-influenced company Leimay, and writing and performing as a member of the Washington D.C. based music project Queer Pressure.

During their residency, Amy Khoshbin and Liz McAuliffe will develop and perform the final scene of The Myth of Layla, which will ultimately be a solo performance lasting 60 minutes. Written and performed by Khoshbin and co-directed by Khoshbin and McAuliffe, The Myth of Layla is set in a near future when the I.S. is at war with Iran. This science fiction-themed performance explores the corruption of the political ideology of its main protagonist, Layla, an Iranian-American activist, through her participation in the American media system. As Layla’s fame increases and she is cast on a new reality show called Activists in Sexy Solidarity (A.S.S.), she must choose between her own beliefs and those of dubious external forces. Khoshbin deliberately creates a handmade aesthetic world for this piece using costumes, animation, and multi-channel video design to highlight the construction of so-called HD “reality” media.

The modern American cultural phenomenon of representing Middle Easterners as the war enemy is of specific interest to Khoshbin as Middle Eastern-American artist. She appropriates personal and cultural archetypes to explore alternate forms of representation in the war-and celebrity-driven Western media. The Myth of Layla explores the commodification of identity as a branded media product.

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