BRIC House Announces Spring 2018 Programming

In Its Award-Winning Downtown Brooklyn Arts and Media Center, BRIC Presents and Incubates Bold New Work by Artists and Media-Makers Reflecting NYC's Diversity

Performances, Contemporary Art Exhibitions, TV Programs and Artist Residencies Include:

• Reenactment, a group exhibition curated by Jenny Gerow that through performance, photography, and video by six artists of color agitates the implications of historical reenactment and underscores the problems with the singular nature of the word "history." (On view through February 25)
  
• BRIC House Sessions, a weekly music series that features a wide array of genres and renowned musicians including Mokoomba (February 22), Les Nubians (March 1), Birds of Chicago (March 8), Jamila Woods (March 15), ÌFÉ (March 29), Juana Molina (April 5), and BRIC artists-in-residence The Knights (April 12).
  
• Work-in-progress performances incubated at BRIC through the BRIClab Residency, including Kamala Sankaram's Looking at You (February 8-9), Brother(hood)! Dance's Afro/Solo/Man (February 22-23), Tatiana Pandiani's Azul Otra Vez (Blue, Revisited) (March 8-9), and Tangled Lines Productions' The Island of Sighs (March 22-23).
  
• Bordering the Imaginary: Art from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and their Diasporas, an exhibition curated by Abigail Lapin Darashti, with works from 20 Haitian and Dominican artists examining the complicated relationship between the nations.
  
• The premiere of a monthly variety show on BRIC TV titled Hey, How Ya Doin'? (February 2018), and the return for Season 2 of comedies Actually, No (April 2018) and Brooklynification (May 2018). BRIC TV continues to provide a robust take on local news and social justice reporting through 112BK, Going In with Brian Vines, and the Emmy-winning documentary short series #BHeard.

BRIC, the leading presenter of free cultural programming in Brooklyn, announces a panoramic season of programming for Spring 2018 at BRIC House, the organization's award-winning 40,000SF Downtown Brooklyn home. BRIC's Spring 2018 season features premieres and works-in-progress spanning the performing arts; music across the spectrum of genres; rigorously curated exhibitions; new shows and returning favorites on the award-winning Brooklyn-focused cable/digital network BRIC TV, and on BRIC Radio, Brooklyn's premier independent podcast network; dynamic panel discussions of timely topics; poetry slams; family programs; education initiatives; and more. The season further deepens the organization's inclusive approach to both local and global discussions, and the places where they intersect.

At once a cultural living room for its multifaceted and diverse borough and a year-round destination for must-see arts programming, BRIC's all-too-rare emphasis on providing Arts for All is actualized through their commitment to strictly free and low-cost events. As Brooklyn Vegan recently wrote, "There are those who believe that art and culture is the province of the few, the elite-i.e., those who can afford it. Then there's BRIC. The organization advocates that culture is everyone's right and, as one of the city's largest presenters of free cultural programming, it backs up that advocacy big time."

BRIC House, which opened its doors in 2013, has quickly become one of New York City's most inviting and accessible spaces to experience art in its many forms. The Municipal Arts Society named it "Best Neighborhood Catalyst," The New York Times hailed it as a "venerable...arts organization" with "snazzily redesigned headquarters," and Time Out NY deemed it "one of Brooklyn's best hubs for performance art and exhibitions." BRIC received the 2015 Building Brooklyn Award for Community DeveloPMent by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, awarded to "renovation projects that improve the borough's diverse neighborhoods and economy."

Leslie G. Schultz, President of BRIC, said of the upcoming season: "This spring, BRIC House will once again be filled with adventurous programming of the highest quality across a wide spectrum of disciplines, and will proudly maintain its place as a welcoming cultural town square for all. BRIC's support of diverse Brooklyn artists and media-makers in the development and presentation of inspiring new work is unparalleled."

Tickets to BRIC House events are currently on sale to BRIC members and will open to the general public on Monday, January 8 and may be purchased online at BRICartsmedia.org or via phone at 877.987.6487. The Box Office at BRIC House is open on performance days only, one hour prior to the event. BRIC House is located at 647 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn and is open weekdays and Saturday at 8am and Sundays at 10am.

BRIC SPRING 2018 PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS

Art Exhibitions

Reenactment
Curated by Jennifer Gerow

Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 17, 7-9PM

On View: Through February 25

BRIC House Gallery, FREE

Reenactment is a group exhibition examining and agitating the aesthetics and politics of historical reenactment in contemporary art. In traditional reenactments, events like the American Revolution and Civil War are embodied by amateur performers using storytelling and props, all too often approaching history as unchangeable and absolute. Through work in performance, video, and photography, this exhibition looks at six artists of color who are unsettling cultural mythologies and origin stories, and who approach history as fluid. With works from Ken Gonzales-Day, Crystal Z. Campbell, Marisa Williamson, Maria Hupfield, Alicia Grullón, and Farideh Sakhaeifar, the histories represented range from civil rights activism and gentrification in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighborhood to the refugee crisis in Syria and the American Revolution, asserting the experiences of people underrepresented throughout history.

Related Programs:

Coffee & Conversation

Saturday, February 3 at 12pn

BRIC House Gallery, FREE

BRIC hosts a gallery talk with Jenny Gerow, curator of Reenactment, and exhibition artists Maria Hupfield and Farideh Sakhaeifar, who will discuss performative reenactment and their individual practices.

Performance and Discussion

Wednesday, February 7 at 7PM

Performances by Maria Hupfield and Alicia Grullón, followed by a discussion moderated by Harry Weil, Manager of Programs at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Bordering the Imaginary: Art from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and their Diasporas

Curated by Abigail Lapin Darashti

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 14, 7-9PM

On View: Through April 29

BRIC House Gallery and Project Room, FREE

Presented by Goya

Bordering the Imaginary investigates the complicated relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti-two nations that share a single island. The exhibition features work in a wide array of media by 20 Dominican and Haitian artists, based in both their native countries and in the United States, who draw on their experiences to create a collective visual narrative that exposes inequalities and stereotypes of race, gender, and sexuality. Bordering the Imaginary will display the vitality of the visual arts in these communities while revealing the complexities of a historically shifting transnational border space, and the formation of distinct but intertwined nations.

Artists include Freddy Rodríguez, Julia Santos Solomon, Tessa Mars, Cybil Charlier, Scherezade Garcia, Fabiola Jean-Louis, Groana Melendez, Edouard Duval Carrié, Pascal Meccierello, Alex Morel, Artiz Resistan, Raquel Paiewonsky, Roberto Stephenson, Nyugen Smith, Patrick Eugene, Raúl Recio, and Iliana Emilia Garcia.

Related Programs:

Coffee & Conversation

Sunday, March 17 at 12PM

BRIC House Gallery, FREE

BRIC hosts a gallery talk with Abigail Lapin Darashti, curator of Bordering the Imaginary, and exhibition artists, who will provide an in-depth discussion of the context surrounding the exhibition.

Panel Discussion: Facing Contemporary Hispaniola

Wednesday, April 4 at 7PM

BRIC House Stoop and Gallery, FREE

Bordering the Imaginary curator Abigail Lapin Dardashti moderates a panel discussion with several exhibition artists who are members of the Dominican and Haitian diasporas in New York. Artists discuss their work and offers perspectives on the relationship between the two countries.

Master Work: Slaves of New York 1776

Kenseth Armstead

Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 17, 7-9PM

On View: Through February 25

BRIC House Project Room, FREE

Master Work: Slaves of New York 1776, part of Kenseth Armstead's ongoing Farther Land project, will envelop BRIC's Project Room with one duck feather for each slave in the colony of New York at the time of the American Revolution. The sculptural forms and materials of this work are derived from revolutionary-era symbols. Juxtaposing these with what amounts to 20,000 feathers tarred onto a translucent perforated steel frame, Armstead directly challenges the denial and censorship necessary to perpetuate myths of meritocracy and the American Dream.

Kenseth Armstead is a 2017-18 recipient of the ArtFP, an open call for Brooklyn-based visual artists to exhibit at BRIC House. For more information, visit BRICartsmedia.org/ArtFP

What Is It, Then, Between Us

Magali Duzant

On View Through May 26

BRIC House Café, FREE

In this installation, Magali Duzant illuminates the power of gesture to serve as a universal language. The text, an American Sign Language translation of an excerpt from Walt Whitman's poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," underscores the possibility of human connection through shared experience. To translate the poem, Duzant created an archive of hands-using different hands for each letter-many of them belonging to local artists who were first-time signers. As a result, each hand forms a unique version of the letter it portrays, personalizing the interpretations of the universal gestures.

Subtitles

Jesse Chun

On View February 26-March 14

BRIC House Garage Door, FREE

Through sculpture, installation, and video, Jesse Chun investigates language, identity, and communication through symbols and information technology. Subtitles is a conceptual poetry piece that employs the tropes of a film narrative, using interior design magazine text and color swatches to investigate how we construct conversations around memory, displacement, and space. Chun appropriates text and blocks of color from various interior design magazines and then selectively rearranges them to arrive at new formulations of home and desire.

Jesse Chun is a 2017-18 recipient of the ArtFP, an open call for Brooklyn-based visual artists to exhibit at BRIC House. For more information, visit BRICartsmedia.org/ArtFP

What time is it there?

Katherine Shima

Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 14, 7-9PM

On View: Through May 6

BRIC House Hallway, FREE

Katherine Shima's intricately constructed wall relief sculptures weave together digital and traditional techniques as a means to explore how societies shape their environments by building in, over, and through the landscape. Comprised of natural materials such as stained wood and fiber, the installation resembles an archipelago of disparate locales. Organic in overall appearance, the detail in each sculpture evokes a complex, self-perpetuating machine defined by its own patterns, logic, and dynamics.

Katherine Shima is a 2017-18 recipient of the ArtFP, an open call for Brooklyn-based visual artists to exhibit at BRIC House. For more information, visit BRICartsmedia.org/ArtFP

?The Life of a City
Elizabeth Riley
On View April 30-May 14
BRIC House Garage Door, FREE

Elizabeth Riley's video works address questions surrounding the complex relationship between our lived reality and its digital manifestations. The Life of a City follows the timeline of a modern cityscape-from a primordial, prehistoric realm up to the contemporary bustle of a cosmopolitan metropolis. While Riley's video speaks to the growth and accessibility of any major city, the work's setting at BRIC calls attention to the vast amount of development and movement perpetually occurring in Downtown Brooklyn. By allowing the video to fade out while the buildings are still constantly altering their facades, Riley proffers the notion that industrial and societal innovation continues indefinitely.

Elizabeth Riley is a 2017-18 recipient of the ArtFP, an open call for Brooklyn-based visual artists to exhibit at BRIC House. For more information, visit BRICartsmedia.org/ArtFP

Through the Door or Window

Sophia Narrett

Opening Reception: Friday, May 11, 7-9PM

On View: Through June 17

BRIC House Project Room, FREE

Sophia Narrett uses embroidery to tell stories about love and desire. Her work explores love as a transformative experience that has the ability to bring purpose, initiate self-discovery, and offer joy, as well as its potential to bring heartbreak, miscommunication, and manipulation. By basing her embroideries on digital collages sourced from the Internet and media, Sophia uses the language of pop culture and social media to express her own desires and fears, and the deep sense of conflict we are faced with as we try to navigate love and the evolving nature of identity against treacherous media portrayals of what we should be and want.

Sophia Narrett is a 2017-18 recipient of the ArtFP, an open call for Brooklyn-based visual artists to exhibit at BRIC House. For more information, visit BRICartsmedia.org/ArtFP

Night Mountains

Tatiana Arocha

On View May 29-October 27

BRIC House Café, FREE

Inspired by her childhood journeys into Colombia's rainforests with her anthropologist father, Tatiana Arocha's multidisciplinary work stems from a desire to celebrate the landscape's astounding biodiversity. Her immersive murals surround the viewer with nature rendered in monochromatic tones, a color palette that references historic naturalist engravings and warns of a future in which the rainforest exists only in the past. By installing depictions of nature in urban settings, Arocha's murals draw parallels between the diverse ecosystems of Colombia and the cultural flourishing of her current Brooklyn neighborhood.

Tatiana Arocha is a 2017-18 recipient of the ArtFP, an open call for Brooklyn-based visual artists to exhibit at BRIC House. For more information, visit BRICartsmedia.org/ArtFP

Music

The Knights

2017-2018 BRIC Artists-in-Residence

"One of Brooklyn's sterling cultural products...known far beyond the borough for their relaxed virtuosity and expansive repertory." -The New Yorker

Led by brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen, The Knights are a GRAMMY-nominated, Brooklyn-based orchestral collective that engages listeners and defies boundaries with programs that showcase the players' roots in the classical tradition and passion for musical discovery.

Love Sick

BRIC House Ballroom

Evening Concert: Saturday, February 3, 8PM

Tickets: $18 Advanced / $23 Door, General Admission Seating

Family Matinee: Sunday, February 4, 2PM

Tickets: $10 Advanced / $14 Door, General Admission Seating

Featuring Katja Herbers, television actress from Westworld and The Americans, this program of beautiful German lieder (poems set to classical music) includes beloved classics from Schubert and Schumann as a modern melodrama for solo voice and orchestra.

Hungarian Rock

BRIC House Ballroom

Evening Concert: Thu, April 12, 8PM

Tickets: $18 Advanced / $23 Door, General Admission Seating

Family Matinee: Sat, April 14, 2PM

Tickets: $10 Advanced / $14 Door, General Admission Seating

Explore the wide influence of Eastern European folk music, including new arrangements of Brahms' famous Hungarian Dances and a world premiere arrangement of Ligeti's Hungarian Rock.

?BRIC House Sessions
Thursdays-7PM DJ Set, BRIC House Ballroom & Stoop
Tickets: $15 Advanced / $20 Door, General Admission Standing

The ethos of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival is alive at the organization's Fort Greene headquarters with world-class concerts reflecting the diversity of Brooklyn in a weekly music series: BRIC House Sessions. Spanning two stages, each show begins with local DJs and musicians on the BRIC House Stoop overlooking the Gallery, where guests can explore the contemporary art exhibitions. The featured artist will then perform in the BRIC House Ballroom, one of the best spaces for live music in Brooklyn.

February 22, 8PM

Mokoomba / Mandingo Ambassadors

Drawing inspiration from the Tonga people and their vibrant life, music, and culture, Mokoomba is regarded as one of Africa's best touring acts. An electrifying Afro-fusion of funk, ska, pop and traditional Zimbabwean rhythms, they are "a band that deserves to be seen live" (NPR). Mandingo Ambassadors will start the party with their Guinean Afro-jazz grooves.

March 1, 8PM

Les Nubians

The GRAMMY Award-winning Parisian sisters known for their neo-soul infused with sounds of the African Diaspora present Up Close & Personal, an intimate performance of classic and new songs with live visuals and storytelling. Co-curated with Joan Osborne's Womanly Hips Presents.

March 8, 8PM

Birds of Chicago / Victory

Mixing folk, mountain gospel and soul, husband-and-wife-led band Birds of Chicago returns to New York in support of their new album, American Flowers. Singer-songwriter and veteran busker Victory will open with songs from her debut solo EP, It's a New Dawn. Co-curated with Joan Osborne's Womanly Hips Presents.

March 15, 8PM

Jamila Woods / Celisse

A frequent guest vocalist in the hip-hop, jazz and soul worlds with the likes of Chance The Rapper and Macklemore, Jamila Woods has emerged as a powerful, once-in-a-generation soul and R&B singer-songwriter. Hard-rocking and blues-tinged singer-songwriter Celisse opens.

March 29, 8PM

ÌFÉ (New York debut) / M.A.K.U SoundSystem

A powerful synthesis of electronic sound and Afro-Caribbean language, ÌFÉ is a bold new project from Puerto Rico-based, African American drummer/producer/singer Mark Underwood, aka Otura Roso Mun. New York's 'immigrant beat' innovators M.A.K.U SoundSystem will start things off with their explosive blend of traditional Latin rhythms and gritty urban sensibility.

April 5, 8PM

Juana Molina / Maria Usbeck

Ever-experimental artist Juana Molina is known for creating distinct and bewitching music that defies genre. Using looping technology to layer propulsive guitar strumming, clanging percussion and her ethereal vocals on top of one another, she creates a whirling, hypnotic and often gorgeous musical tapestries. Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and former Selebrities frontwoman Maria Usbeck opens, performing songs from her solo debut album Amparo.

April 12 | 8PM

The Knights / Black Sea Hotel

The GRAMMY-nominated, Brooklyn-based orchestral collective explores the wide influence of Eastern European folk music, from traditional tunes set by Romani folk musicians to modernity. Brooklyn vocal trio Black Sea Hotel opens with their beautifully-precise Balkan vocal harmonies.

Look + Listen Festival

Friday, April 13 | 8PM

BRIC House Stoop & Gallery, FREE

"Stands out, even in a very crowded field, as a genuinely innovative series." -John Schaefer, WNYC's Soundcheck

The Look + Listen Festival celebrates the best of contemporary classical music by presenting it in compelling visual art galleries. Each concert offers a chance to hear a diverse group of performers playing works by some of today's finest composers. The program at BRIC House includes the New York City premiere of a festival-commissioned chamber piece, Talking Gong by Susie Ibarra, that's inspired by Philippine gong-chime music, and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Claire Chase performing Empty Garlic by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun for bass flute and electronics.

Performance

BRIClab Residency

BRIClab is a commissioning and residency program that offers local artists time and space to explore and expand the possibilities of their work in music, dance, theater and multi-disciplinary performance. Work-in-progress showings, presented with moderated artist-audience dialogues, bring you into the