ISSUE Project Room is pleased to announce the selection of our 2015 Artists-in-Residence: Lea Bertucci, Kim Brandt, Dawn Kasper, Mariana Valencia, Evan Calder Williams, and C. Spencer Yeh.
Founded in 2005 by Suzanne Fiol, ISSUE Project Room’s 2015 Artist-in-Residence program provides a support structure for six New York-based artists working in time-based media. Offering access to rehearsal space and facilities, equipment, documentation, pr/marketing, curatorial and technical expertise, the AIR program provides artists an opportunity to develop significant new works in partnership with ISSUE over the course of the year, cultivating long-term relationships within the organization and greater cultural community. Artists are given a stipend to support a series of events occurring throughout the 2015 calendar year.
Kim Brandt will investigate applications of choreographic method, formal and ideological systems to the body in a new dance work. Brandt has presented her work at The Kitchen, Danspace Project, Movement Research, P.S. 122, AUNTS, La Mama ETC, The Chocolate Factory, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Jack, Dixon Place and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and at galleries including Elizabeth Dee, Josee Bienvenue, Industry City, Airplane, Five Myles and The Laundromat. She has also participated in group shows at The Ice Box, AUX/VOX Populi, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Flux Gallery, Barber Shop Gallery and Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery, Philadelphia, UWM Union Art Gallery, Milwaukee, and at the Hampshire College Gallery, Amherst.
Dawn Kasper will create Music For Matter, a new visual score for bells, drums and layered analog sound. Inspired by the encounter of particles and antiparticles as theorized in particle physics, this proposed work aims to culminate into the generative development of a sculptural environment as performative composition. Performance artist Dawn Kasper’s work has been exhibited widely; The Migros Museum, Zurich, Tramway, Glasgow, Human Resources, Los Angeles, 2012 Whitney Biennial and David Lewis, New York.
Mariana Valencia will develop ORIGINATORS, a movement structure for five performers denoting texture, echo, light, color, and weight. With these themes as base, ORIGINATORS can become a structure, a landscape, a commune, a voice and a vision. A dance, costume, installation and zine artist, Valencia’s work has been presented in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Massachusetts and Los Angeles. During 2014, Mariana was Artist-in-Residence at Chez Bushwick, New York Live Arts, Show Box L.A. and Pieter Pasd. Her choreography and research have been supported by funds from the Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation from 2010-13 and she is a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow for 2014-16, which will take her to Mexico City to research the queer subculture of Cumbia Sonidera. She has costumed for Jen Rosenblit, Vanessa Anspaugh, Geo Wyeth and Lauren Bakst. As a performer, collaborators include musician Jules Gimbrone, dance artist Kim Brandt and video artists Elizabeth Orr and Kate Brandt.
C. Spencer Yeh will realize new projects traversing modes of improvisation, composition, and installation. Recognized for his interdisciplinary activities and collaborations as a sound artist, as well as his music project Burning Star Core, Yeh’s work has recently been presented at the Liverpool Biennial, MoMA, Performa 13, the ICA Philadelphia, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Pérez Art Museum, Electronic Arts Intermix, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Roulette. Yeh also collaborated with Triple Canopy for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Recent recorded works include Ambient, with Robert Piotrowicz, 1975, Transitions, and Wake Up Awesome, with Okkyung Lee and Lasse Marhaug. A collection of voice-based works will be published by Primary Information in 2015. Beginning in 2015, his video works will be distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix.
Evan Calder Williams will focus on the dual histories of empire and ornament, developing new research-based performance and video works titled The Grammar of Ornament. Evan Calder Williams works in multiple formats on the intertwined histories of capitalism, landscape, technology, and horror. He has collaborated with artists, musicians, and writers, such as Taku Unami, Robert A.A. Lowe, Erika Vogt, China Miéville, Rosa Barba, and Alberto Toscano, and presented films, performance, and audio at the Serpentine Gallery, the Whitney Museum, Tramway, Artists Space, Images Festival, the Montreal International Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, and ISSUE Project Room. He was a Fulbright Fellow for his research on cinema, industry, and revolt. He is the author of Combined and Uneven Apocalypse, Roman Letters, and two books forthcoming in 2015, Against the Flood: The Italian Critique of Gender and Capital and Donkey Time.
