Past Events

Red Bull Arts NY and ISSUE co-present two live audio-visual performances organized in response to Gretchen Bender’s unfinished work of media theater, which was to be entitled So Much Deathless, by post-industrial band Black Rain (with Philip Vanderhyden) & Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (with Sean Hellfritsch).

Philosopher and musician Henry Flynt performs Everlovin’ Game On, an evocation of his best-known work: You Are My Everlovin’. Featuring solo electric violin & pre-recorded tambura, the piece brings together disparate vernaculars: Southern blues, modal jazz, Appalachian fiddle & North Indian raga.

DeForrest Brown Jr. curates “Okonkwo Weeps In Exile,” a new rhythmic opera featuring producer Nicholas Dawson (Bookworms), drummer Donald Sturge Anthony Mckenzie II, poet and "enlightened educator" Rafael Sanchez, with text from Guerilla essayist His Triumphant Blackness: The Negro Subversive.

ISSUE presents the debut NYC collaborative performance from Jennifer Walshe and San Francisco-based musician & composer Wobbly (Jon Leidecker). The artists perform solo & collaborative works ranging across their shared interest in the idiosyncrasies of digital sound and the outer reaches of online culture.

2019 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow Benedict Nguyen presents very peak summer solstice (vpss), featuring Fana Fraser, Jasmine Gibson, Annie Heath, and Sokunthary Svay. This is their second program in soft bodies in hard places, a platform of trans-disciplinary events circling planetary events over 2019.

2019 Artist-In-Residence Charmaine Lee premieres “Laminals II”, the second movement for a new long-form piece for solo voice. The evening also features a duo with Victoria highlighting their individual practices of physicality (of voice, body, and technology) in relation to performance and sound.

Rena Anakwe continues her residency with Fast Forward to Silence, an immersive sound and body collage that honors the air around us. Focusing on sequences shifting between the minute and the rigorous, the piece explores the duality that air possesses through a duet with Jonathan González + lighting from Kelley Shih.

ISSUE & Harvestworks present acclaimed musician Michael Morley presenting Music for The Never Quartet + 2019 Harvestworks Resident artist Natacha Diels premiering Sad Music for Lonely People a series of works involving a step-by-step guide to using heavy machinery in healing rituals.

ISSUE & Harvestworks present a second showing of Michael Morley's Music for The Never Quartet + 2019 Harvestworks Resident artist Ursula Scherrer & Michael Schumacher premiering Exotica, a new piece that subverts the sonic and visual tropes of the city -- sirens, alarms, jackhammers, and more.

ISSUE presents a special “end of season” program gathering three singular artists working across avant-garde rhythmic music. The evening showcases new work from iconic electronic musician Actress, composer, percussionist, and sound artist Susie Ibarra, and "rhythmanalyst" Speaker Music (DeForrest Brown Jr.).

ISSUE Project Room's 2019 Fall season opens at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights with renowned Texan electronic minimalist composer J D Emmanuel, auteur composer James Ferraro, and mutli-instrumentalist Eve Essex. Join as an ISSUE Project Room Member at any level and receive a free ticket.

Experimental hodgepodge-ist & 2019 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Ying Liu premieres an ambitious new movement work utilizing swivel stools (deconstructed office chairs). Distilling a year-long process into an hour, a cast of dancers have adapted to these chairs as extensions of their bodies.