The Distant Pairs events are FREE to stream. In lieu of purchasing Series tickets, please consider making a $25 suggested donation (or an amount that you feel is meaningful) in support of ISSUE's 2020 commissions and Artist Fund.
Thursday, October 29th, ISSUE is pleased to stream the debut collaborative presentation of New York-based multidisciplinary artist Dreamcrusher & Berlin-based producer and DJ Dis Fig. Often expressing dystopian visions through powerful sound, both artists conjure unique styles of confrontational, revelatory, intense music. This commissioned work will be the first ever collaboration between these two artists. Both Dreamcrusher and Dis Fig have been heralded by the influential PTP label run by Val Bertelsen, who has presented work at ISSUE as both Geng (with Artist-In-Residence Julia Santoli) and King Vision Ultra (alongside Via App and YATTA). PTP has released acclaimed recent works such as Dreamcrusher’s Panopticon! and Dis Fig’s PURGE.
During the Fall, 2020, ISSUE is commissioning artists to produce collaborative work at a time when the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted their' ability to travel and perform, and altered the nature of collective work and performance. Pairing artists in disparate locations who cannot work together in “traditional” ways, the Distant Pairs series examines the collaborative process, methods of working, and partnership amidst these constrained conditions.
Playing a fringe yet stylized version of noise and industrial that is intelligent, expressive, and powerfully physical, Dreamcrusher is the solo musical endeavor of multidisciplinary artist Luwayne Glass- hailing from Wichita, Kansas. Formed in 2003, reveling in the aughts of myspace, tumblr, soundcloud and other social media sites, Dreamcrusher began as a project of self-discovery and self-release while contained in a queer, gender non-binary (they/them pronouns, not he/him or she/her), black body in America's bible belt. Creating over thirty releases, splits, extended plays and singles all before 2014, without ever releasing a full-length album, each project shows a very individual growth while sitting in many scenes that often don't lend themselves to explicit artistic morphing. The Dreamcrusher project and their releases have become increasingly more personal, confrontational, concise and challenging. After migrating from Kansas to New York City, their success hit new heights diving headfirst into the American live DIY scene. Dreamcrusher continues to alter the overwhelmingly rigid aesthetic of 'noise' and underground scenes by expanding the meaning of 'genre', and in many ways completely distorting 'genre' to form to them rather than the reverse. They choose not to underestimate the intelligence of their audience by challenging them at every sea change.
For Berlin-based producer and DJ Felicia Chen (aka Dis Fig), risk-taking and provocation is an integral part of the creative process. Chen's new live show fleshes out the unflinching sonics of debut LP PURGE (released in Spring 2019 on New York collective and experimental label PTP) into an astonishing and annihilating spectacle, her singularity on stage only augmenting the sense of a very personal rite of exorcism. Marking a move away from the dancefloor strictures that Dis Fig continues to explore in her full-blooded, multi-layered DJ sets, PURGE is a calculated procedure towards a new chaotic world. Tinted by fever dream atmospherics, Chen places her own vocals, which morph between inconsolable distorted wails and polyphonic reverie, at the forefront. PURGE is an involuntary act; it journeys into the body-breaking cost of emotional repression and the crippling catharsis that inevitably follows.
