Che Chen: WHALE CREEK

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Wednesday, June 8th, 7pm ET & Thursday, June 9th, 8pm ET, ISSUE is pleased to present two new works from sound and visual artist Che Chen. The June 8th program is a live outdoor performance along the banks of Whale Creek Canal—the first of a two part (inter)action with the sonic environment of Newtown Creek, former Mespat hunting/foraging ground and now home to the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, a public art park superimposed on one of the most polluted waterways in America. The June 9th program will feature a streaming broadcast of collaged field recordings, onsite and studio recordings gleaned from Chen's long relationship to the site and surrounding areas.

Notes from Che Chen on WHALE CREEK:

“This two part (inter)action with the sonic environment of Newtown Creek will include a live outdoor performance on the banks of Whale Creek Canal on June 8th and an online “dub” of collaged field recordings and studio materials gleaned from my long running relationship with this complicated site, airing on the following day. Newtown creek is a heavily layered site, probably best known as the site of a decades long oil spill (roughly 50% more oil than was discharged by the Exxon Valdez) and one of the most polluted waterways in America. Prior to colonization it was a rich hunting, fishing and foraging ground used by the Mespat tribe (of the Lenape people), who began to be displaced by Dutch colonists starting in the 1600s. Agricultural then industrial use by White settlers culminated in the disastrous oil spill and chemical dumping of the 60s-80s. It's now a superfund site and home to one of the largest sewage treatment plants in the city. This sewage overflows into the creek during heavy rains.

The Nature Walk is another strange layer to this dense history, at once an attempt to move towards much needed remediation of the polluted canal, an artist's public art vision (George Trakas), a tax write off, urban planner's virtue signal, and the beginning of waterfront gentrification in the area. It's also pretty pleasant and since the park was founded it's served as an outdoor practice space for several Greenpoint experimental musicians (I lived in Greenpoint from 2006-2017). More recently it was the site of a series of much needed outdoor concerts organized by David Watson during the spring/summer of 2021. But don’t eat the fish.”

Performers will be stationed on the east bank at the end of Whale Creek Canal near the “Monitor Table” and in the “Whale Creek Turret” on the walking bridge opposite. Audience members are encouraged to move around the site during the performance, listening from either side of Whale Creek Canal or on the walking bridges that cross the canal. There is seating along the footbridge that crosses the canal, as well as in the turret. There are two entrances to the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, on at the end of Paidge st (just past the intersection with Provost, a 15min walk through the Greenpoint Ave G Subway Station) or from Kingsland Ave. northwest of Greenpoint ave, here (17min walk from Greenpoint ave G station).

ISSUE is commissioning artists to produce back-to-back online and physical presentations as a response to the way performance sites have been expanded, contested, flattened, fragmented, disputed, and reimagined throughout the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These commissions ask artists to produce a performance work as a hybrid two-day happening: an outdoor live event paired with an online extension on separate days. ISSUE’s prompt does not state or direct a specific relationship between the two sites and the artist is encouraged to imagine relationships between the “live” physical and the site of online experience. By seeking to contrast, correlate, and contemplate how we experience artists’ work in these two distinct sites, the series attempts to clarify artists’ recent performative tactics and hybrid methods of working amidst shifting contexts.

Che Chen has been an energetic presence in New York City’s experimental underground as an improviser, band leader, multi-instrumentalist and organizer since the early 2000s. In 2012 he and percussionist Rick Brown formed 75 Dollar Bill. Their “little big band” is a community-based, multi-generational, multicultural ensemble that combines free improvisation, rock, minimalism, African and Asian music traditions. Though primarily a self-taught musician, Chen took a two week crash course in the Moorish modal system with Jeich Ould Chigaly in Nouakchott, Mauritania in 2013, an experience to which his approach to guitar is deeply indebted. Leaning more towards sound than technical virtuosity, he also performs and records on violin, contrabass, woodwinds, percussion and tape-based devices. He organizes the monthly concert series, Fire Over Heaven, at Outpost Artist Resources in Ridgewood, and shows at other DIY venues throughout the city.