ISSUE Project Room and WSB100 present a celebration of the legacy of William S. Burroughs during the 100th anniversary of the writer's birth in 1914. Actor, director, and writer Steve Buscemi and composer/multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp continue their collaboration, last seen at ISSUE Project Room for Elliott Sharp's E#@60 celebration. The duo create a collage of sound and words integrating texts by William S. Burroughs with Elliott Sharp's vast soundworlds, which since the 1970s have careened from Delta blues to Fibonacci numbers and into previously unknown territories. Buscemi, who has a screenplay for Burroughs' 'Queer' in development and spent much time with the writer in his later years, will lend his distinctive delivery and style to texts from throughout Burroughs's diverse body of work.
RSVP (sold out!) guarantees entry until 8pm, after 8pm doors will be opened to capacity.
Steve Buscemi began his career in, and continues to support experimental theater, writing and performance. From lead roles in television series like Boardwalk Empire to films like Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, Living in Oblivion, Trees Lounge and Ghost World to supporting roles and cameos in films such as The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink, his presence breathes life into every corner of an artwork. Buscemi is a member of ISSUE Project Room's Board of Directors.
Elliott Sharp is a central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City of over thirty years and a long-time supporter of ISSUE Project Room. Winner of the 2015 Berlin Prize in Music composition, he leads the projects Carbon,Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplane, and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. His collaborators have included Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Radio-Symphony of Frankfurt; Debbie Harry; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette, and Sonny Sharrock; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka, Morocco. Sharp's work was featured in the New Music Stockholm festival (2008), at the Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale (2007) and the Venice Biennale (2003, 2007, 2012).
Writer, philosopher, artist, and co-founder of the Beat Generation, William S. Burroughs continues to be a vital cultural force today, 100 years after his birth, and 17 years after his passing in 1997. Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961-64). Burroughs, along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, staged a cultural and literary revolution in the mid- 20th Century. In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his lifelong subversion of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
