ISSUE Project Room celebrates the 20th Anniversary of its Artists-In-Residence (AIR) program throughout 2026 with performances by current residents and returning alumni. This anniversary season highlights AIRs whose work reflects the ongoing evolution of a much broader community of experimental artists who have helped shape ISSUE for over twenty years.
Thursday, October 1st at 8pm, ISSUE presents an entirely new work for Serge Modular synthesizer by 2012 AIR Sergei Tcherepnin. Developed by the artist’s uncle, Serge Tcherepnin, in 1973, the Serge Modular continues to inform Tcherepnin’s work across sound, sculpture, and live performance. This event also follows ISSUE’s celebration of the Serge Modular’s 50th anniversary in 2023.
Incorporating elements of noise, trance and minimalism, the piece unfolds as an intense urban landscape where densely layered harmonies collide with shimmering noise. Odd tonal patterns emerge, dissolve, and recombine in unexpected ways, building on the artist’s longstanding interest in the material and psychological effects of sound.
Since his ISSUE residency in 2012, Tcherepnin’s practice has expanded to encompass what he calls queer sound and queer listening. In a performance-lecture presented ahead of his installation at the Whitney Biennial in 2014, he proposed that sound, and the process of listening, exists beyond pure materiality. Drawing connections between psychoacoustics, queer listening, and the socially coded ways we perceive sound, the artist has continued to explore how listening shapes our experience of one another and the world around us. This new work reflects those ongoing concerns, inviting audiences into a mode of sensitive, deep listening.
Sergei Tcherepnin is an artist whose practice spans music, visual art and performance. His installations and performances often bring together sound and image through tapping into the sculptural possibilities of sound. In his work, “sound” and “image” can inhabit a plurality of forms, such as: composed acoustic music, welded brass sculptures, textile collages, electronic dance music, flickering light boxes, environmental sound design, and photography. Tcherepnin has composed music extensively for film, dance and theater. He has composed music for dance choreographed by Ballez, films by Kerstin Bratsch, Keren Cytter, Ei Arakawa, and Fern Silva. His music for Fern Silva's film Rock Bottom Riser won Best Original Music at Cinéma du Réel at the Pompidou in 2021. Tcherepnin's performances and installations of his own multimedia work include the Whitney Biennial, New York; Roulette, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pavilion of Georgia at the 55th Venice Biennale; the Kitchen, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the 30th São Paulo Biennial. Recent performances and exhibitions include Sub at Twinkler, Vienna; Cloud Babies, Night Babies as part of the Japanese Pavillion in the Venice Biennale; and Birds as part of the group exhibition Lebt und Arbeitet in Wien, Kunsthalle Wien.
