Saturday, November 9th, ISSUE is thrilled to present an epic, career-spanning eight hour durational performance by longtime ISSUE friend William Basinski. Taking place at ISSUE’s striking 22 Boerum Theater from 6pm until 2am, Basinski takes listeners through a marathon sequence of past, recent, and new work amongst a site-specific light installation from artists Brock Monroe and Seth Kirby. A stalwart advocate of ISSUE and the organization’s founder Suzanne Fiol, Basinski’s performance supports ISSUE during Suzanne Fiol: Ten Years Alive, and exhibition which presents visual works by Fiol.
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The evening is a rare opportunity to see Basinski present his work on such an expansive scale. Presented in 2018 at The Lab in San Francisco and most recently in 2019 at Moogfest in Durham, North Carolina, Basinski’s return to ISSUE marks the first time he will have the opportunity to take a deep dive into his catalogue for eight hours for a New York audience.
Active for over four decades, celebrated composer and process-musician William Basinski has a vast body of haunting and melancholic soundscapes that have secured his place as an icon of contemporary experimental music. Basinski hunts for sounds in places most people would never imagine looking; most recently, he featured the 1.3 billion year-old sounds of colliding black holes, or “two black holes f—ing” as he recently referred to it in an interview for BOMB Magazine, on his 2019 album On Time Out of Time. His 2017 album A Shadow In Time is a eulogy to David Bowie that explores the “two artists’ shared concern with how to make time, change, and death their own.” The album’s two tracks have been described as some of his “his most blissful (“A Shadow in Time”) and sorrowful (“For David Robert Jones”)” work to date, furthering his focused study of mourning, loss, and dedication that has become his signature.
"I'm so honored to be able to present the New York premiere of this long form concert at ISSUE Project Room, at the beautiful 22 Boerum Place Theater Suzanne Fiol championed into being. It is my NY home: The Mothership, I call it. My only regret is that our sparkling den mother, my dear friend Suzanne will not be there with us in person. She gave her life for what she believed in. And what she believed in was us, her artists: her babies and creating a home for all of us. So, together in this beautiful home she created, we will take a long trip through the galaxies searching for her Starlight. Shine on Mother darling. We love you. We'll meet you on the astral plains.” -- William Basinski
William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 40 years in NYC and most recently, California. Employing obsolete technology and analogue tape loops, his haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops received international critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork Media. The Temporary Residence deluxe LP box-set reissue from 2012 was awarded best re-issue of the year and a score of 10 on Pitchfork. Installations and films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker, James Elaine have been presented in festivals and museums internationally, and his concerts are presented to sold out crowds around the world. Basinski was chosen by Music Director, Antony Hegarty to create music for the Robert Wilson opera, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic which had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in July 2011 and toured Europe in 2012 and North America in 2013. Orchestral transcriptions of The Disintegration Loops by Maxim Moston have been performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queen Elizabeth Hall and La Batie Festival in Geneva, Switzerland, Dark Mofo Festival in Hobart Tasmania and most recently Pitchfork Midwinter Festival with the Chicago Philharmonic. Basinski is currently touring the world in support of his latest work, "On Time Out of Time" which was released on March 8th, 2019 on Temporary Residence/2062/USA. Basinski is a member of ISSUE”s Artistic Advisory Board.
