Sunday, July 13th at 2pm, ISSUE Project Room hosts a free public town hall organized by sound conceptualist & 2009 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Matana Roberts–the first in a nationwide series of gatherings. As a longtime collaborator with the organization, Roberts has been no stranger to activating the artistic community around urgent political and social questions, including the 2014 emergency meeting This Land Is… Now, following four nights of sonic conjuring and collective focus at The Stone, Roberts invites participants to gather at the 22 Boerum Pl. theater, not as an audience, but as kindred comrades in dialogue.
Notes from Matana Roberts on LISTENING THROUGH THE FIRE:
This town hall is a call to testimony and to witness, to speak, to dream aloud in defiance.
We meet in the aftermath, of sound, of silence, surrounded by unbearable violence to ask:
What does it mean to make art under an empire in decline?
How do we hold each other close while a country forgets how to listen?
In a time of rising nationalism, imperial overreach, and violent displacement, what does it mean to be an American artist/citizen while striving to be a responsible global citizen?
Bring your rage, your grief, your questions, your hearts.
This is not about answers so much as it’s about staying human in the collective conjuring of artistic integrity and conscience.
Together.
We will not be silent.
A dynamic saxophonist, composer, improviser, and mixed media artist, Matana Roberts's artistic practice aims to expose the mystical roots and the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression in her music and art. Her innovative work has forged new conceptual approaches to considering narrativity, history, and political expression within improvisatory structures.
