ISSUE Project Room is pleased to announce the selection of multidisciplinary artist James K, improviser and composer Brandon Lopez, choreographer, writer and performer Will Rawls, and artist and experimental musician Julia Santoli as Artists-In-Residence presenting new works in the 2018 season.
Founded by Suzanne Fiol, ISSUE’s Artist-in-Residence program has provided a support structure for New York-based musical ensembles, composers, choreographers and sound artists since 2006. The 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.
James K is a New York native multi-disciplinary artist who has honed her peculiar aesthetic to include a fusion of visual and sonic elements. Deeply rooted in a conscious art practice and a mythology of her own, her sound is a combination of organic and electronic elements hybridizing enchanted samples, ripped, broken, morphed rhythms, and voice -- forming a multi-faceted identity. She received her BFA in Printmaking from The Rhode Island School of Design, where she developed a critical multidisciplinary art practice shaped by feminist theory and writing. She has established herself within the Providence, New York, and Berlin scenes of experimental artists and musicians. Since 2012, she has been represented by Loyal Gallery, where she has exhibited solo work in both their Malmo and Stockholm locations, in addition to showing at Miami Art Basel, NY Frieze, and LA Art Contemporary. She has released her music with labels PAN, Dial, 1080p, UNO NYC, and her own label, She Rocks! She has toured through the US and Europe extensively, performing and DJing for a variety of audiences; from underground spaces, established galleries, and museums, to well established venues, festivals, and theaters, such as the Münchner Kammerspiele, Moma PS1, Berlin Biennale, Kunsthalle Bern, and Red Bull Music Academy. She is currently working towards her MFA at Bard College, and will release her follow up full-length LP on PAN in 2018.
Brandon Lopez is a Puerto Rican/American Improviser/Composer/Multi-instrumentalist who works primarily in the field of far left music. He was raised in the wilds of Northwestern New Jersey, a place where suburban sprawl meets appalachian splendor, and worked summers as a gravedigger in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge. He’s maintained an obsessive study of noise, free improvisation, non-western art musics, western art musics, new music, and early western art musics. All of the mentioned inform the work, as with everything else. He’s had the pleasure of working with some great noisemakers: He’s a current member of Nate Wooley’s knknighgh quartet and works regularly with William Parker, Paul Lytton, Jooklo Duo, Leila Bordreuil, Mette Rasmussen, Justice Yeldham, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Gerald Cleaver, Man Forever, Joe Morris and many others. He currently leads his own ensemble, The Mess with Chris Corsano and Sam Yulsman which will release its debut record in September on the manchester based Tombed Visions label, and works extensively as a soloist.
Will Rawls is a choreographer, writer and performer. His practice engages dance, language, image, architecture, sound and dance, to pose non-disciplinary inquiries into humanity and social inscription. He pits the performer against the racialized codes of art space, to unravel systems of technique and power through the personal. Rawls has shown work at The Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, ImPulsTanz, MoMA PS1, Performa 15 and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. He is recipient of a 2017-2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant 2015, the Casinos Austria 2016 Prix Jardin d’Europe, and a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency 2017. His writing has been published by Artforum, Triple Canopy, les presses du réel, The Museum of Modern Art, and he co-curated the 2016 Danspace Platform: Lost and Found with Ishmael Houston-Jones.
Julia Santoli is a Brooklyn-based artist and experimental musician. Creating immersive and precarious environments with voice, feedback, electronics, and installation, her work deals with intergenerational hauntings and reclamation through the body. She has presented solo and collaborative works at Queens Museum, Flux Factory, Issue Project Room, New York Live Arts, Judson Memorial Church, LUMP, Disjecta, Widow Jane Mine cave, GRACE Exhibition Space, Panoply Performance Laboratory; as well as presented and taught workshops during a 5-month residency in Spinnerei, Leipzig, DE.
Applications for residencies are by nomination only from members of ISSUE’s Artistic Advisory Board, curators, staff and organizational partners. AIRs are chosen by a Selection Committee comprised of curators with input from past resident artists and ISSUE staff.
