ISSUE Project Room celebrates the 20th Anniversary of its Artists-In-Residence (AIR) program throughout 2026 with performances by current residents and returning alumni. This anniversary season highlights AIRs whose work reflects the ongoing evolution of a much broader community of experimental artists who have helped shape ISSUE for over twenty years.
Thursday, April 2nd, at 8pm, ISSUE presents an evening with Taraka (member of Prince Rama, 2011 AIR) and new music composer Joanna Mattrey (2021 AIR). Across distinct practices, both artists draw on mythic and speculative frameworks to disrupt traditional perceptions of music – embracing spontaneity and unpredictability.
Taraka has spent over fifteen years exploring post-apocalyptic visions and music as a vehicle for utopia. During their ISSUE residency, Prince Rama created space for ritual, focusing on the body as a vehicle for utopian experimentation. This year, inspired by J.G. Ballard’s notion of a “science fiction of the next five minutes,” Rage Peace / Campfire Songs unfolds in an alternate worldline where a dystopian, technocratic AI governance system has banned non-AI concerts, forcing music to survive as clandestine ritual. For this rare solo performance, Taraka explores “campfire songs” as a microcosmic invitation to imagine what forms of togetherness and collective healing are still possible.
The year is 0010110, and after a series of irreparable government scandals, artificial intelligence was ushered into control as an antidote to human failure, making it mandatory for all citizens to merge their neurophysiology with a central intelligence system. A few rogue humans manage to escape and form a secret underground movement known as “Rage Peace.” Disillusioned with society and unable to use technology for fear of being found, they practice telepathy and organize secret worship services in abandoned buildings called “campfire songs,” a primitive ritual and last vestige of the Old World used to reconnect with their humanity. Led by Rage Peace Agent Taraka, participants sit in a circle around a simulated campfire as she plays banned songs on a stolen guitar. All are invited to chime in using random found objects to create improvised sonic textures inspired by John Cage’s vision of a Taoist anarchist society.
Expanding the program’s themes, Joanna Mattrey opens the evening with an improvised solo set highlighting her signature approach to prepared viola. Forging a mostly digital pathway through her 2021 residency (due to the COVID-19 pandemic), ISSUE is pleased to present Mattrey’s music – brutal and beautiful, raucous and reflective – live at the 22 Boerum Pl. theater.
Taraka Larson was born in Houston, Texas on Beethoven’s birthday. Raised in ashrams, she has lived on black metal utopian communes, performed on beds, and lectured from pools of fake blood. As the founder of Prince Rama, she led the band through a genre-defying evolution, blurring rock, performance art, and conceptual experimentation. Signed by Animal Collective, the sister duo became a cult phenomenon, inciting mosh pits while paradoxically reaching #3 on the Billboard New Age charts. Her work explores music as a vehicle for personal and communal utopia, and has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Whitney Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, CPH: DOX Film Festival, and MoMA PS1’s VW Dome, with a recent installation at Spring/Break Art Fair praised by The New York Times and Hyperallergic. Her latest solo album, Welcome to Paradise Lost, was written in isolation with a Sonoran Gopher Snake inside a gallery installation conceived as a post-apocalyptic Garden of Eden fused with her teenage bedroom. Now based in New York, Larson is working on a new record, a poetry book, and hosts Rage Peace Mixtape Parties, an ongoing series of community-driven deep listening happenings exploring the live communal mixtape as a post-digital utopian ritual.
Joanna Mattrey is a violist and composer working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Mattrey is a 2026/27 Crash Ensemble Resident Creator. Recent premieres include Battle Ready II (New Music Dublin, 2025), Battle Ready (Roulette, 2024), Arrhythmia (2023). Mattrey has had residencies with Roulette, Watermill, ISSUE Project Room, Banff, 14th Street Y, Wild Project, and MoMa PS1's ALLGOLD. Mattrey has performed with icons Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Threadgill, Miya Masaoka, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Billy Martin, Elliott Sharp, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Crash Ensemble, and Irish National Opera. Mattrey has released numerous collaborative recordings and solo projects including 'Soulcaster' (Notice Recordings), ‘Dirge’ (Dear Life Recs), 'Veiled’ (Relative Pitch Records) and her works have been reviewed by Citizen Jazz, The Wire, The Chicago Reader, Bandcamp Daily, Noise Not Music, and more. Notable festivals include Newport Jazz Fest, ArtActs, Huddersfield Contemporary Music, and Monheim Trienniale.
