PERFORMANCE
Ama BE
Littoral Dissonance
2017
19 minutes
video by Karl Cooney
Promotion: Pubessence addresses African womanhood, puberty, rites, violation and healing. It implicates the viewer as both violator and healer, asking the audience to "Repetal My Flower" as audio from a documentary in Akan on the Bragoro puberty ritual radiates from the body. The performance concludes with intimate gestures of ecstatic forgiveness
Performed at Inertia, presented by the Blue Rose on 11.11.17 at Oya Damla's The Ear, curated by Polina Riabova.
Littoral Dissonance addresses pangs of "longing to know" as relates to the African Diaspora's spiritual connection and disconnections by way of water.
The performance draws water from the East River and is performed at the site of New York City's first slave market on11.30.17the 306 year anniversary of its opening. "Initially, the buying, selling and trading of slaves was conducted privately, according to Columbia University. Some slaves were even sent out on their own to find work. But in 1711, in response to anxieties of white, middle-class New Yorkers who feared that the presence of so many black slaves looking for work on the streets might raise the risks of an insurrection, the market was erected." (link to article here)
The performance incorporates rock sea salt from Ghana in its ritual cleansing of the stained space and insists on the viewer to take part in sewing pieces of aqua tinted triangles of Mylar, representing the prickled pieces of our disdainful past.
This piece was performed on as a part of Black Gotham's, Nerdy Thursday series, the Ghana edition.
Ama BE
Promotion: Pubessence
2017
25 minutes
video by Karl Cooney
Promotion is the first iteration of the Mudcloth & Doilies performative brunch as a solo performance. The work addresses sources of cultural orthodoxy and dissociation of dining norms by way of forced migration.
This was performed on 9.22.17 as a part of Karl Cooney's Archive series at Le Petit Versailles.
Ama BE
Promotion
2017
25 minutes
video by Karl Cooney