Monarch Butterfly by rocío sánchez (2026 AIR) features Melissa Almaguer (tap dance and percussion) and Kenneth Jiménez (double bass). Together, the trio explores the elusive monarch’s migratory journey through sound and movement, with each instrument articulating distinct states of motion.
Isabella Thorpe-Woods presents "Envelop/e," her second program as ISSUE’s 2026 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow. Bringing together choreographers Jade Manns and Ella Dawn W-S for site-specific duets, they navigate presence and absence, repetition and rupture, and the tension between inherited geometries and shifting landscapes.
"Spiriting Off" is a new solo work by luthier Webb Crawford (2026 AIR) for electric guitar, tenor banjo, and five-string banjo.
ISSUE closes the summer season with the return of Matana Roberts (2009 AIR). Opening the evening, Ben Vida (2013 AIR) will perform music from his 2026 release, "Oblivion Seekers" with vocalist Sara Magenheimer.
Japanese artists Takahiro Kawaguchi and Makoto Oshiro use homemade devices and everyday objects to create sounds with discrete relationships to performance spaces. Kawaguchi performs with handmade acoustic horns and small objects, Oshiro improvises with diverse materials including electronics and household products.
Active since the 1960s, Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki's intensive involvement with the phenomena of pulse and echo led him to develop his own instruments, many of which employ quotidian and modest objects. In this acoustic solo performance, he reprises four pieces from his late 70s series "Conceptual Soundwork".
Artists-In-Residence 2015
Williams' final residency presentation is a collaborative textile, video, sonic, and linguistic work that centers on the intersections between a screen and its projection and on the unseen gestures that vanish into the surface of images they create.
Cellist Okkyung Lee and trumpeter Amir ElSaffar are distinguished instrumentalists with formidable reputations for their exploratory performance techniques and genre-blurring approach to musical styles. This acoustic performance features Lee and ElSaffar each performing solo sets, and in their first collaborative duo.
Keith Connolly, aka L.GRAY opens his ISSUE Project Room residency with A BLACKSTAR VALENTINE. A love letter in sound and vision to the Duke and the Baron, the event features PAPASHEROS (L.GRAY, JF Ryan, and Lala Ryan), Pigeons, and a very special appearance by legendary Japanese singer-songwriter Morio Agata.
ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Mariana Valencia’s Originators is a choreography and lecture shaped from the language of history and dance. This dense activation of content doesn't claim itself to a genre— rather, Originators proposes a new space where blended mediums meet without a hierarchy of value.
Korean filmmaker Hangjun Lee and improvising musician Chulki Hong have collaborated since 2006 as the audiovisual research project “Expanded Celluloid, Extended Phonograph”. Their practice has explored the performativity of the darkroom, the screening room, the private studio, and here in live performance.
ISSUE Members are welcomed for a sneak peek at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater at this invitation-only Year-End Celebration. Artist-In-Residence Dawn Kasper premieres "Not There", a new improvisational score inspired by the Lakota myth of Iktomi that illustrates a tale of deception. Preceded by an open-bar reception.