SUPPORT

Since in-person events were suspended in March, ISSUE has worked with more than 100 artists, committing $50,000+ in fees for their projects. At the same time, ticket revenue has ceased as we pivoted to present all events online, free to the public. The Artist Fund builds on the support of ISSUE’s Members to underpin continued commissions through 2020 and an enduring home for underrecognized practices.

As contexts and infrastructure for performance shift, ISSUE’s commitment to work that eludes convention takes on increased significance. Our 2020 programs invite experimentation across isolated conditions and unfamiliar presentation mediums — fostering expanded approaches to field recording, internationally mediated collaborations, virtual snapshots of New York’s cultural history, emerging curatorial contributions, and remote frameworks for residency work and premieres. Join us in bringing this work forward through uncertain conditions, ensuring a flexible and responsive platform for cultural dialogue.


Jim O'Rourke: from my kitchen window the building was blinking

“for about 4 or so years i lived in brooklyn, about 1 block from where the manhattan bridge touched the ground. at that time there were only a few apartments, and most of the area was warehouses. every night at midnight, from my kitchen window, the windows of the building across the way would start flashing rapidly in some incomprehensible but independant pattern, and last for an hour. on occasions i would film it with a video camera, but i never went over to the building during the daytime, and never made any efforts to find out what was happening. but it continued every night all the same.” — Jim O'Rourke

Sarah Hennies: Passing

Sarah Hennies’s minimalist film Passing considers the existential condition of those who cannot walk through the world unnoticed. For these people, an awareness develops of one’s “otherness” that pervades their entire existence and self-image. This is especially a concern for many transgender women who are disproportionately affected by unwanted attention, verbal abuse, violence, and murder. Through repetitive imagery of Hennies dragging a toy train car along a country road, an arresting musical score, and an unexpected interview, Passing is a meditation on one’s greatest joy provoking their worst fears. The film takes its inspiration from the life of Mark Hogancamp, a Kingston, NY artist who was beaten nearly to death after telling a group of men that he liked to wear high heeled shoes.

Holland Andrews, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste & Will Rawls: drill hall, bim bam bom

drill hall, bim bam bom is a new collaborative experiment between ISSUE Artists-In-Residence Holland Andrews (2020), Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste (2017) & Will Rawls (2018). Longtime friends and collaborators, all three artists often make appearances in each others work. For this piece, Andrews and Toussaint-Baptiste collaborate together on sound, with Rawls providing a video accompaniment.



jim o’rourke has been involved in music and film since the late 80’s, as composer, producer, engineer, and collaborator . He has produced records for Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Wilco, John Fahey, amongst others. His own music has been released by Drag City, Tzadik, Editions Mego, and others. He has scored films for Werner Herzog, Koji Wakamatsu and others. Since 2013 he has released the bulk of his own work on

Sarah Hennies is a composer based in Ithaca, NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, love, intimacy, psychoacoustics, and percussion. She is primarily a composer of solo and chamber works, but is also active in improvisation, film, performance art, and dance. She presents her work internationally as both a composer and percussionist with notable performances at Le Guess Who (Utrecht), Festival Cable (Nantes), send + receive (Winnipeg), O’ Art Space (Milan), The OBEY Convention (Halifax), Cafe Oto (London), ALICE (Copenhagen), and the Edition Festival (Stockholm). As a composer, she has received commissions across a wide array of performers and ensembles including Bearthoven (NYC), Bent Duo (NYC), Cristian Alvear (Santiago), Claire Chase (NYC), R. Andrew Lee (Denver), LIMINAR (Mexico City), The Living Earth Show (San Francisco), The Thin Edge New Music Collective (Toronto), Two-Way Street (Knoxville), and Yarn/Wire (NYC). In 2017, she premiered her audio-visual work Contralto at ISSUE Project Room and has since presented the work over 20 times around the world to widespread critical acclaim. She is the recipient of a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a 2016 fellowship in music/sound from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received additional support from New Music USA, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County. Sarah is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College.

Holland Andrews is an American vocalist, composer, improviser, and performance artist whose work is based on emotionality in its many forms. In their work, Andrews focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build soundscapes encompassing both catharsis and the interplay between dissonance and resonance to tell stories of the interior worlds of humanity. Frequently highlighting themes surrounding vulnerability and healing, Andrews arranges music with voice and clarinet, harnessing the innate qualities of these instruments’ power and elegance to serve as a vessel for these themes. As a vocalist, their influences stem from a dynamic range of musical stylings including contemporary opera, free jazz, musical theater, as well as ambient, drone, and noise music. In addition to creating solo work, Andrews develops and performs the soundscapes for dance, theater, and film, and whose work is still toured nationally and internationally. Andrews has gained recognition from publications such as The New York Times, Uncut Magazine, Electronic Sound, NPR, and more. Holland Andrews is currently based in New York City. Andrews also performs solo music under the stage name Like a Villain, including a performance at ISSUE alongside Tyondai Braxton in 2017.

Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste is a New York-Based artist, composer, and performer considering notions of errant relations which thrive across subjectivities. Toussaint-Baptiste was a 2017 Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room and received a Bessie Award in 2018 for Outstanding Music Composition and Sound Design. He has presented visual and performance work at MoMA PS1; Performance Space New York; The Brooklyn Museum; The Kitchen; Issue Project Room; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; FringeArts, Philadelphia; Tanz Im August at Hau3, Berlin; Stoa Cultural Center, Helsinki among others. Toussaint-Baptiste is a founding member of the performance collective Wildcat!, and frequently collaborates with performers and visual artists including Will Rawls, Yanira Castro/a canary torsi, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and André M. Zachery. Toussaint-Baptiste lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and holds an MFA from Brooklyn College’s Performance and Interactive Media Arts program.

Will Rawls is a New York-based choreographer, performer and writer. His practice engages dance and multiple other media to investigate poetics of blackness, ambiguity and abstraction. His work has appeared at the MoMA and MoMA PS1; MCA, Chicago; Danspace Project; New Museum of Contemporary Art; Issue Project Room; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Walker Arts Center. At Danspace Project, he co-curated Lost and Found, comprised of performances and artist projects focused on the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS on dancers, women, and people of color. His writing has been published by Artforum International, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Modern Art. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Rauschenberg Residency and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant. He teaches and lectures widely in university, community and festival contexts.



For more information contact: Corinne Daniel, Development Director (718) 330-0313 x5 or corinne@issueprojectroom.org

The Artist Fund is proudly supported by the ISSUE Project Room Board with Lead Presenter Nancy & Joe Walker.

The Artist Fund supports ISSUE's 2020 Season, complementing ongoing support from The Golden Rule Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Metabolic Studio (a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation), NOKIA Bell Labs, and the TD Charitable Foundation.

ISSUE wishes to extend our appreciation to all presenting artists for the generosity of support & spirit plus BOMB Magazine, Drag City, Forced Exposure, Sound American and Wild Arc Farm for their contribution to the 2020 Artist Fund event.