Friday, September 29th from 4-10pm, and Saturday, September 30th from 12-5pm & 6-10pm, ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of work commissioned for our Isolated Field Recordings Series (2020), which engaged nineteen artists to create new audio field recordings, with associated visuals, in response to COVID-19’s impact on public assembly. This series supported artists directly in an unprecedented moment of uncertainty, struggle, and financial risk, and emphasized the solidarity of artists working in a situation where everyday life was confined and separated.
The showing on the evening of Saturday Sep. 30th will include a panel conversation at 8pm with three ISSUE Artists-In-Residence (AIR) who were commissioned as part of the series: Kim Brandt (AIR 2015), Dawn Kasper (AIR 2015), moderated by Jules Gimbrone (AIR 2012).
Focusing on recordings from the artists’ conditions, the Isolated Field Recordings Series broadly approached the field recording as an expanded form and open invitation to experiment with home audio recording during this period of social distancing. The Series focused on both emerging artists and many from across the organization’s history: ISSUE Artists-In-Residence and artists who called NYC home, composers, sound artists, choreographers, filmmakers, and interdisciplinary artists in the experimental arts community. The projects streamed for free on ISSUE's event webpages and Vimeo account, and remain accessible on our Archive page. Additional commentary about the projects are also available on Montez Press Radio in which each field recording project featured an original audio recording by an artist, along with commentary on its process.
Field recordings have long been a part of the history of experimental art—not just as a primary form of music in its own right—but as a unique documentarian and archival strategy underpinning modes of experimental film, dance, performance, and the artistic process generally. During 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering (1966) organized by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan, John Cage premiered “Variations VII,” (re-staged at ISSUE in 2016 by Ed Bear). Cage and his collaborators manipulated two long tables of devices and dialed sonic feeds from apartments and locations around the city, including the kitchen of Lüchow’s Restaurant, New York Times printing presses, the aviary at the Zoo, a dog pound, a Sanitation Department depot, and Terry Riley’s turtle tank. In this spirit of an “expanded” field of recording, this series served as a specific, if ephemeral, portrait of our current time, and a view of artists working under isolated conditions. We hope these recordings will reveal an expressive spectrum of the varied approaches of artists, and a partial view into our veiled lives during the COVID-19 outbreak.
SCHEDULE #1
Friday, September 29th
4:00pm - Lary 7
4:48pm - Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
6:09pm - QUALIATIK
7:10pm - Shelley Hirsch
8:11pm - Bergsonist
8:34pm - Andrew Lampert
9:36pm - Aki Onda
SCHEDULE #2
Saturday, September 30th
12:00pm - Derek Baron
3:49pm - Rachelle Rahmé
4:14pm - Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves
4:37pm - Laura Ortman
SCHEDULE #3
Saturday, September 30th
6:00pm - Peter Zummo
7:02pm - C. Spencer Yeh
7:26pm - Voice Training
7:36pm - LoVid
8:00pm - Panel Conversation
8:50pm - Jules Gimbrone
9:00pm - Kim Brandt
9:07pm - Dawn Kasper
9:19pm - James K
Between Friday, Sep 29th and Saturday, Oct 7th, ISSUE invites audiences to experience presentations of works - originally commissioned for online distribution during the COVID-19 pandemic - at the 22 Boerum Pl. theater. The commissioned work will be shown as projected installations, coupled with a variety of artist talks, for a limited capacity environment of 74 people.
In response to our suspension of in-person programming during the onset of the pandemic, ISSUE commissioned more than 250 artists to present free online programs through series such as: Isolated Field Recordings; The Steve Circuit; Heroes Are Gang Leaders; Distant Pairs; With Womens Work; and 90 presentations of Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room amongst others. Our commitment to support these artists mattered more than ever during the pandemic given the challenges that artists and many small cultural organizations across NYC experienced and still currently face. ISSUE is pleased to present these works as installed projections for audiences to experience in person, in ISSUE’s home theater, gathering with our community in celebration of the organization’s 20th Anniversary.
These initiatives complemented ISSUE’s work publishing archival documentation on online platforms currently collected and streamable on our expansive Archive page on the ISSUE website. ISSUE currently maintains a publicly accessible archive of hundreds of published video and audio recordings. These materials are a freely accessible collection of performance documentation that spans our recent and historic work.
During these presentations Laurie Berg’s (Sports) Bar-In-Residence will be activated as well as a lobby installation by Eva Davidova: Vinson and Catherine in the Garden, a series of augmented reality prints.
This Fall marks the 20th Anniversary of ISSUE and will be celebrated with a series of commissioned programs, orbiting around our annual Gala and affiliated Benefit events. During the Anniversary celebration, between phases of renovation, ISSUE returns to our 22 Boerum Pl. theater for a special series of twenty limited-capacity events. Featuring artists from across our history as well as new projects, these gatherings - including our 20th Anniversary Gala - present an opportunity to celebrate and support ISSUE as we continue an ambitious calendar of programming. Join us in recognizing this important milestone in our history.
These gatherings are free with RSVP, and members retain exclusive access to all limited-capacity events until sold out.
Panelist Bios
Kim Brandt's work has been presented by MoMA/PS1, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, SculptureCenter, The Kitchen, ISSUE Project Room, Pioneer Works, Bric, 411 Kent, Artists Space, Ceysson & Benetiere, Klaus Von Nichtssagend and AVA Gallery, among others. Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Princeton University, NYFA The Jerome Foundation and Brooklyn Arts Fund, and she's been an artist in residence at Sharpe-Walentas, Chinati Foundation, MoMA/PS1, Djerassi, Movement Research, Bogliasco Foundation, and Issue Project Room. Her writing has been published by The Smithsonian Archives of American Art Journal, Chinati Foundation, Sound American and Critical Correspondence, and recent press includes reviews and interviews in ArtForum, The New York Times, Art in America, Artsy, The Cut, Performa Magazine, Bomb Magazine, Girls Like Us and Marfa Public Radio.
Dawn Kasper is an interdisciplinary artist working across genres of performance, installation, sculpture, drawing, photography, video and sound. Her work often improvisational, emerges out of a fascination with existentialism, subjects of vulnerability, desire, and the construction of meaning. BFA, Virginia Commonwealth University (‘99). MFA, University of California, Los Angeles (’03). Select solo and group exhibitions: Portikus (Frankfurt), 57th Venice Biennale (Italy), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland), Tang Museum, Skidmore College (New York), Granoff Center for the Arts (Providence), ADN Collection (Italy), CCS Bard College (New York), Issue Project Room (New York) David Lewis (New York), American Academy in Rome (Italy), 2012 Whitney Biennial (New York), Tramway (Scotland), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), Pacific Standard Time Public and Performance Art (Los Angeles), Public Art Fund, (Miami), Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst (Zurich), Kasper is represented by David Lewis (New York), and has work included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, (New York) ADN Collection (Italy), and Aïshti Foundation (Beirut). Kasper has been visiting faculty and guest critic at Sarah Lawrence (New York), Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture (Philadelphia), Yale University (New Haven), Städelschule (Frankfurt), Brown University (Providence), Rhode Island School of Design (Providence), Parsons (New York), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia), Otis College (Los Angeles).
Jules Gimbrone is an artist and composer who asks how social performance is codified, captured, and transmitted through multi-modal perceptual differentiations. Gimbrone uses a variety of recording and amplifying technologies, in addition to materials like glass, clay, ice, mold, and the processes of decomposition, to investigate how sound travels through space, bodies, and language as a way of exploring sublimated power systems, and to expose the multiple queerings of the performative and pre-formative body. For Gimbrone, sound is more methodology than medium and can take form ranging from sculpture, recordings, performances, installations, and scores. Gimbrone’s works have appeared at such venues as Stellar Projects, SculptureCenter, ISSUE Project Room, The Rubin Museum, MOMA PS1, Human Resources LA, Park View Gallery, Vox Populi, and Théâtre de l’Usine, Geneva, Switzerland. Gimbrone received an MFA in Music Composition and Integrated Media from CalARTS in 2014.
