Past Events

A talk by Evan Calder Williams develops around two fields of inquiry: the practice of weaving and the concept of the grotesque. Continuing his interest in the essay form as experimental historical montage, Williams moves between the daily and fantastic, passing amongst pixels, tombs, and factories.

ISSUE Members are welcomed for a sneak peek at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater at this invitation-only Year-End Celebration. Artist-In-Residence Dawn Kasper premieres "Not There", a new improvisational score inspired by the Lakota myth of Iktomi that illustrates a tale of deception. Preceded by an open-bar reception.

Korean filmmaker Hangjun Lee and improvising musician Chulki Hong have collaborated since 2006 as the audiovisual research project “Expanded Celluloid, Extended Phonograph”. Their practice has explored the performativity of the darkroom, the screening room, the private studio, and here in live performance.

ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Mariana Valencia’s Originators is a choreography and lecture shaped from the language of history and dance. This dense activation of content doesn't claim itself to a genre— rather, Originators proposes a new space where blended mediums meet without a hierarchy of value.

Keith Connolly, aka L.GRAY opens his ISSUE Project Room residency with A BLACKSTAR VALENTINE. A love letter in sound and vision to the Duke and the Baron, the event features PAPASHEROS (L.GRAY, JF Ryan, and Lala Ryan), Pigeons, and a very special appearance by legendary Japanese singer-songwriter Morio Agata.

Cellist Okkyung Lee and trumpeter Amir ElSaffar are distinguished instrumentalists with formidable reputations for their exploratory performance techniques and genre-blurring approach to musical styles. This acoustic performance features Lee and ElSaffar each performing solo sets, and in their first collaborative duo.

Williams' final residency presentation is a collaborative textile, video, sonic, and linguistic work that centers on the intersections between a screen and its projection and on the unseen gestures that vanish into the surface of images they create.

Active since the 1960s, Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki's intensive involvement with the phenomena of pulse and echo led him to develop his own instruments, many of which employ quotidian and modest objects. In this acoustic solo performance, he reprises four pieces from his late 70s series "Conceptual Soundwork".

Japanese artists Takahiro Kawaguchi and Makoto Oshiro use homemade devices and everyday objects to create sounds with discrete relationships to performance spaces. Kawaguchi performs with handmade acoustic horns and small objects, Oshiro improvises with diverse materials including electronics and household products.

Storied improviser Eugene Chadbourne is a leading voice in the American underground, developing new practices in avant song, instrument building, and music distribution since the early 1970s. In two solo sets, he excavates a broad catalog of works important to his musical development and buried in collected memory.

Saturday, April 9th at The Emily Harvey Foundation, ISSUE Project Room presents Dawn Kasper’s WISH WANT WISH, a new improvisational performance composition evoking historical references to the philosophy of desire.