ISSUE Project Room is pleased to announce the selection of experimental musicians Leila Bordreuil, Keith Connolly, and author/actress Cecilia Corrigan as Artists-In-Residence, to present new works in the 2016 season. Established in 2006, ISSUE's residency program commissions emerging New York artists to create challenging time-based works, serving a central role in fulfilling ISSUE’s mission to support and cultivate artists within the local community.
Leila Bordreuil is a Brooklyn-based cellist and composer from France. Her cello playing is often improvised, and focuses on the relationship between the human body and the inherent sonic qualities of her instrument. Essential to her musical aesthetic is the expression of humans’ neuro-somatic imperfections, which she chooses to magnify through extreme amplification of very quiet playing, revealing microscopic gestures that are otherwise inaudible to the human ear. Her composed works draw from a similar aesthetic but also focus on sound through space and the distortion that arises from spatially organized sound sources. Leila’s collaborative projects include duos with Michael Foster and Tamio Shiraishi, a trio with Sean Ali and Joanna Mattrey, and the no-wave band “Signal Break” with Austin Jullian (Sediment Club) and Evin Huguenin (Sects). She has performed at the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, The Stone, MoMA PS1, Roulette, the Performa Biennale, Ftarri (Tokyo, JP), the Heresy Series for Women in Sound (Manila, PHL), and many basements across the U.S.
Keith Connolly is a New York-based artist born in Brooklyn. Under the alias L. GRAY, Connolly has performed solo and with a range of collaborators including Tom Thayer, Chie Mukai and others. In 1992, he dropped out of SUNY Buffalo, abandoning studies in English literature to form No-Neck Blues Band with Jason Meagher and Pat Murano. For over 20 years NNCK explored simultaneity through improvised performance and encrypted documentation, performed extensively throughout the US, Canada and Europe, and published more than 50 LPs, CDs and singles. He has appeared in theatrical productions by the Wooster Group, and is a member of the New York City Players. As an organizer, he runs the label HALATERN, etc., and co-created the Numina Lente performance festival with Jay Sanders in 2011. He is a contributing music editor for BOMB magazine.
Cecilia Corrigan is a writer and actor based in New York. Her live performances blend poetry, monologue, and comedy. She has presented her work in New York, Los Angeles, and internationally, at spaces such as Swiss Institute, Artists Space, Company Gallery, LaMama Galleria, and at IMT Gallery in London. Her first book, Titanic (2013), won the Plonsker Prize. In 2015, she exhibited three new pieces commissioned by Samuel Draxler for NYPAC. Upcoming projects include a new book, Cream, for Capricious Press, illustrated by Jocelyn Spaar, and the short film Crush, co-created with Katherine Bernard.
ISSUE Project Room's annual Artist-in-Residence program provides New York-based emerging artists with a year of support, offering artists access to facilities, equipment, documentation, pr/marketing, curatorial and technical expertise to develop and present significant new works, reach the next stage in their artistic development, and gain exposure to a broad public audience.
During the spring of 2016, ISSUE also presented new works by 2015 Artists-In-Residence Evan Calder Williams, Lea Bertucci, Kim Brandt, and Dawn Kasper.
