You Never Know

signs and symbols presents You Never Know, a new performance work by artist Amy Khoshbin as part of artists & allies.

You Never Know is a political speech turned cathartic rap dance-party by Iranian-American artist Amy Khoshbin, who is running for City Council in Brooklyn in 2021. Exploring the culture of violence and fear-mongering that Western media perpetuates, Khoshbin shares her experiences at the gun show, asks what the opposite of a weapon could be, and encourages a group catharsis through video, dance, and rap music. Can political empowerment for change and liberating entertainment be the same thing?

Amy Khoshbin is an Iranian-American Brooklyn-based artist merging performance, video, collage, costume and sound to examine our individual and collective compulsion to create, transform, and sometimes destroy the stories of who we are and who we think we should be. She produces media and mythologies using humor and a handmade aesthetic to throw a counterpunch at the high-definition, profit-generating codes and signals that American audiences are trained and accustomed to consuming. She has shown at venues such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Times Square Arts, The High Line, 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.