Episode 3 // The Urgency of Art and Life: Va Bene Elikem Fiatsi + Anya Miller

What is the role of the artist, the power of silence, and the necessity of activism in fraught social worlds? In this episode Ghanaian artist, curator, and organizer Va Bene Elikem-Fiatsi and Anya Miller speak about life and death, sound and silence, action and stillness. It is designed for the listener to feel the urgency with which Va Bene performs and lives, and it forces the listener to understand how performance art and life become inseperable. 

For episode extras, and to learn more about the artists, hosts, and organizations involved, check out the Reckoning and Repair website: rnrphilly.com

This podcast was created at the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania, a multimodal research hub that views creative practice as intellectual work that necessarily historicizes the inequalities that pervade our society, and that develops solutions for their present iterations through collaborative and participatory work.

This season was produced in connection to 2023 exhibit, "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America", an AAMP and PAFA collaboration curated by Dejay Duckett (AAMP), Judith Tannenbaum (PAFA), Mekhala Signal (PAFA), Michael Wilson (AAMP). This exhibit brings together 20 artists to respond to the question: Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy? The exhibit runs March 23 through Oct 8 of 2023 at the Historic Landmark Building in Philadelphia.