Friday, October 4th at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room presents Jo Andres’ short film Dreaming Out Loud (1990) at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. limited-capacity theater. After exploding onto the downtown New York performance art scene in the 1980s and 90s, Andres was amongst contemporaries Jennifer Reeves, Lisa Rinzler, Lucy Sexton & Elliott Sharp, who will join ISSUE this Fall to host a discussion on the legacy of Andres’ work and its echoes across music, dance and film. Bringing together experimental artists across generations, 2024 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Axine M will join Sharp in presenting a live score to the film.
Arriving in New York in the early 1980s, Andres and choreographer/performer Lucy Sexton, who studied modern dance together at Ohio University, found their compositions amidst the backdrop of NYC nightlife. By the 1990s, Andres had turned her sights to film, and began focusing on her multimedia strategy wedding dance, film, performance and visual art. Unsurprisingly, this landed her at the now historic Performing Garage (permanent home of experimental theater company, The Wooster Group) to stage Dreaming Out Loud with Elliott Sharp, pioneering musician and composer for the original film. Lisa Rinzler, another frequent collaborator and cinematographer across Andres’ filmography, was integral to the making of a number of her multidimensional film performances. Rinzler is also noted for “When The Curtain Comes Down,” a beautifully conceived film (featuring actor Steve Buscemi) for Diana Krall’s 2012 album Glad Rag Doll. This served as an overture to many of Krall’s live performances, further amplifying Andres’ gift of translating stage to film. For this special event, these artists come together to celebrate the innovations of Andres, and to discuss her ongoing legacy.
This Fall, the organization honors the renowned performance & visual artist at our 2024 Gala, recognizing her on the heels of Jo Andres: Before Your Eyes, the first expansive exhibition of the artist’s work spanning 40 years, including ISSUE’S co-presentation of the Liquid TV salon this past Spring.
Jo Andres (1954-2019) first became known on the kinetic downtown New York performance scene of the 1980s for her film/dance/light performances. Her works were shown at the reigning venues of the era, among them The Performing Garage, La Mama E.T.C., P.S. 122, St. Marks Danspace, and the Collective for Living Cinema. Black Kites, Andres’ 1996 award-winning film, aired on PBS, RAI Italian TV and screened in Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, London and Human Rights Watch Film Festivals. Andres directed music and art videos, as well as her own film performance works. Andres was a dance consultant to the acclaimed Wooster Group. She was an artist in residence at leading universities, museums and art colonies, including Yaddo and The Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.
Jo was extremely important to the founding of ISSUE, and an active member of ISSUE's Board of Directors. She was passionate about supporting artists, and played a pivotal role in the realization of the organization’s mission alongside its founder, Suzanne Fiol. She later joined the Artistic Advisory Council, on which she remains a member ‘In Memoriam.’
Jennifer Reeves has made 25+ film-works since 1990; from avant-garde shorts to expanded cinema performances and experimental features. Reeves’ work has shown extensively from the Berlin, Toronto, and Hong Kong Film Festivals to the Museum of Modern Art, universities, and microcinemas worldwide. Reeves’ acclaimed visceral and personal works immerse viewers in intricate, unfamiliar cinematic territory. Her work elucidates themes of mental health, feminism and sexuality and the natural world. Reeves' latest film PIGMENT-DISPERSION SYNDROME is making the festival rounds since the world premiere at Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival in July 2022. The film recently received a Director’s Choice award from The Thomas Edison Film Festival. Reeves currently has two long form films in the works. She continues to do her own writing, cinematography, editing, and sound design. Her subjective and personal films push the boundaries of film through optical-printing and direct-on-film techniques. Since 2003 Reeves has collaborated with celebrated composers/ performers, including Marc Ribot, Skúli Sverrisson, Elliott Sharp, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Burr and Eyvind Kang. Reeves has taught film and animation courses at The Cooper Union School of Art since 2005.
Lisa Rinzler is an award-winning cinematographer who has shot feature films, documentaries, and short projects. Recent projects include Oscar-winning Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl), Sundance Audience Award winner The Infiltrators and Pope Francis: A Man of His Word. She is also known for her moody lighting and dynamic camerawork on films such as Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, Pollock and The Soul of a Man. Rinzler has worked with notable directors such as Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, and Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra. Rinzler received two Independent Spirit Awards for Best Cinematography, a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography, among others. She was a subject of the documentary Visions of Light.
Lucy Sexton is a Brooklyn born producer, administrator, and performing artist who has worked in the fields of dance, performance, film, and public advocacy. She has served as Executive Director of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, building them for the first time into an independent organization. From 2013-16 she worked as a Consulting Associate Artistic Director of the planned performing arts center at the World Trade Center, and she currently leads the cultural advocacy coalition New Yorkers for Culture & Arts. As a dance artist she works with Anne Iobst creating and performing the dance performance duo DANCENOISE which was founded in 1983, had a retrospective exhibit and performance at the Whitney Museum in 2015, and premiered a new piece at NY Live Arts in 2018. She has also directed and dramaturged plays by Spalding Gray, Tom Murrin, Nora Burns, and Heather Litteer; and produced documentaries by Charles Atlas for the BBC and Arte.
Elliott Sharp is an American composer, performer, author and visual artist who has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. He leads the projects SysOrk, Terraplane and Tectonics and has received Berlin Prize and Guggenheim fellowships. Sharp's collaborators have included the RadioSinfonie Frankfurt, Cecil Taylor, Nusrat Fateh-Ali Khan, Ensemble Modern, blues legend Hubert Sumlin, Christian Marclay, JACK Quartet, and violinist Hilary Hahn. Sharp is a longtime member of ISSUE’s Artistic Advisory Council.
Axine M is the moniker of Maxine de las Pozas, a music artist residing in Brooklyn, NY. The Ancient Greek Axenos, or "inhospitable place," is a name for the Black Sea before nautical technology was advanced enough to safely traverse the water. Axine M is a vessel for musical inquiries and creative impulses across multiple genres and sentiments, carving out a space for itself against the grain of the dystopian imaginary. A recent self-released tape, USUSUSESESERERER (pronounced "user"), is a songwriterly exploration of interpersonal relationships under late-capitalism. Axine has published tapes with Summer Isle and Embalming Lately, a label she co-founded. As a DJ, Axine has mixed for c-, BIZAARBAZAAR, DUST, Hong Kong Community Radio, and The Lot Radio, among others. Maxine holds a master's degree in Music Technology from NYU Steinhardt, where she focused on the design of novel music controllers for live performance. Versions of her thesis were published in the proceedings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2020) and International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2021). Maxine is a 2024 Artist-In-Residence at ISSUE Project Room, and a collective member and sound engineer for Chaos Computer. She works as an Audiovisual Technician.
