ISSUE Project Room is pleased to announce the selection of sound artist and musician Sydney Spann, producer, DJ, and artist Dion McKenzie (TYGAPAW), and choreographer and composer Tatyana Tenenbaum as Artists-In-Residence presenting new works in the 2022 season.
Founded by Suzanne Fiol, since 2006, ISSUE’s Artist-in-Residence series has served a central role in fulfilling ISSUE’s mission to support artists in the local community. The program encourages selected NYC-based artists to take unprecedented creative risks in reaching the next stage in their artistic development, providing residents with a stipend plus production, marketing and curatorial support to create and present up to three new works over the course of a year.
Sydney Spann, originally from Baltimore, MD, is a sound artist and musician based in New York. She works with synthesis, chance operations, recursive compositional processes and voice to intervene within a personal archive of field recordings, culminating in long form compositions and improvised performances. Her music engages the private experiences that shape public spaces, and the affective dynamics within childcare work. She has released albums with Ehse Records (Baltimore), She Rocks! (NYC), and Reading Group (NYC), with a full-length release forthcoming on Recital in 2022. She has performed at the High Zero Festival of Experimental Free Improvised Music, The Walters Art Museum, Bar Laika by e-flux, and in diy spaces and galleries throughout the US. Recent works for streaming include Sending up a Spiral of on Montez Press Radio and Attached/Detached (partial disappearance) for ISSUE Project Room’s With Womens Work Series.
Dion McKenzie known as TYGAPAW, is a Producer, DJ and Artist, originally from Mandeville, Jamaica, and based in Brooklyn, New York. A polymathic artist injecting their Jamaican heritage into techno, TYGAPAW operates at the intersections of their musical and cultural roots. Released via influential Mexico City imprint N.A.A.F.I., debut album ‘GET FREE’, features singles ‘Run 2 U’ and ‘Facety’ with vocal features from Mandy Harris Williams and TYGAPAW. An 11-track collection of hard-hitting, cathartic energy, the project explores black joy, the active dismantling of imagined limitations, and the eradication of self doubt using techno landscapes. Most recent release ‘Diffusus’ (Tresor) was part of Tresor’s 30th Anniversary compilation and featured songs by Jeff Mills, Helena Hauff, LSDXOXO, Robert Hood, Juan Atkins and more. Previous releases ‘Ode To Black Trans Lives’ and ‘Handle With Care’ saw TYGAPAW release via Fake Accent, their own imprint and club night. Live highlights include MoMA PS1, The Hydra (London), Boiler Room (Toronto, LA), RBMA Weekender (Montreal, LA), AFROPUNK, Toronto Pride, Moonshine (Montreal), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, Miami), alongside NYC institutions Webster Hall, Knockdown Center, Brooklyn Museum, Bossa Nova Civic Club, Elsewhere, Nowadays and more. TYGAPAW has also embarked on tours in Asia, Australia and Europe, playing shows in London, Paris, Basel, Vienna, Berlin, Oslo, Seoul, Shanghai, Melbourne, Chippendale and Leipzig. Having premiered at TIFF in 2020, TYGAPAW features as a lead alongside the likes of Sherelle and TOKiMONSTA in music documentary UNDERPLAYED. Directed by Stacey Lee, the film explores gender, ethnic and sexual equality issues in dance music and was released worldwide via Amazon. TYGAPAW has future releases slated for NYC imprint Mister Saturday Night. A multidisciplinary artist resolute in reminding the world of dance music’s revolutionary black roots, 2022 is set to further cement TYGAPAW as one of the techno trailblazers to watch.
Choreographer/composer Tatyana Tenenbaum employs breath, voice, fascia and musculature to excavate spaces of memory, power and transformation. Her work sits at the juncture of experimental music and dance and has been described as “rich polyphony” (The New Yorker) and “transcending the fraught history between utterance and stance through an exacting inquiry” (Critical Correspondence). She has been commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, Temple University, Movement Research, School for Contemporary Dance & Thought, and Danspace Project, and Pliegues y Despliegues festival in Bogotá, Colombia. In collaboration with curator Lydia Bell and artist Jasmine Hearn she co-organized the collective terrain/s platform on voice and body at Danspace Project. She has graciously performed with and learned from Yoshiko Chuma & the School of Hard Knocks, Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik, Jennifer Monson/iLAND, Emily Johnson/CATALYST, Okwui Okpokwasili & Peter Born, and Hadar Ahuvia, among others. Tatyana and Hadar received a 2021 New Jewish Culture Fellowship for their collaborative work. Tatyana sees her multidisciplinary work within a lineage of musical theater; a cultural site of assimilation, invention, violence, and resiliency for her Jewish ancestors who settled in New York City/Lenapehoking.
Selwa Abd is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician & designer living in NYC (originally from Morocco). Under the guise of Bergsonist, she uses a variety of media to investigate social resonance through divergent conceptual aesthetics (minimalism and musique concrète to name a few). Through her work, she explores notions of identity, memory, and social politics. She is the founder of the community resource Pick Up The Flow. She hosts a monthly music show on NTS Radio and a podcast featuring inspiring creatives from the PUTF community and beyond. She holds a BFA in Communication Design from The New School. She has performed at Basilica Hudson, ISSUE Project Room, Fridman Gallery, Dartmouth College and Boston Museum Of Fine Arts to name a few.
