Isolated Field Recordings Series

In response to COVID-19’s impact on public assembly, ISSUE Project Room is commissioning artists to produce field recordings to be streamed over the course of this challenging and isolated time. This series will support artists directly in an unprecedented moment of uncertainty, struggle, and financial risk and emphasize the solidarity of artists working in a situation where everyday life is confined and separated. Focusing on recordings from artists’ current conditions, the series will broadly approach the field recording as an expanded form and open invitation to experiment with home audio recording during this period of social distancing.

The series focuses on both emerging artists and many from across the organization’s history: ISSUE Artists-In-Residence and artists who call New York City home, composers, sound artists, choreographers, filmmakers, and interdisciplinary artists in the experimental arts community.



Schedule

Lary 7: Thursday, April 16th
Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste: Thursday, April 23rd
QUALIATIK: Wednesday, April 29th
Shelley Hirsch: Thursday, April 30th
Bergsonist: Wednesday, May 6th
Andrew Lampert: Thursday, May 7th
Derek Baron: Wednesday, May 13th
Jules Gimbrone: Thursday, May 14th
Kim Brandt: Wednesday, May 20th
LoVid: Wednesday, June 10th
Dawn Kasper: Thursday, June 11th
Rachelle Rahmé: Wednesday, June 17th
Peter Zummo: Thursday, June 18th
C. Spencer Yeh: Wednesday, June 24th
Voice Training: Thursday, June 25th
Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves: Wednesday, July 1st
James K: Thursday, July 2nd
Laura Ortman: Wednesday, July 8th
Aki Onda Wednesday, July 15th



*All times 8pm EST

The projects streamed on ISSUE's event webpages and Vimeo account, and are now accessible on our Archive page. Additional commentary about the projects are also available on Montez Press Radio. Each field recording project features an original audio recording by an artist, along with commentary on its process.

Field recordings have long been a part of the history of experimental art—not just as a primary form of music in its own right—but as a unique documentarian and archival strategy underpinning modes of experimental film, dance, performance, and the artistic process generally. During 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering (1966) organized by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan, John Cage premiered “Variations VII,” (re-staged at ISSUE in 2016 by Ed Bear). Cage and his collaborators manipulated two long tables of devices and dialed sonic feeds from apartments and locations around the city, including the kitchen of Lüchow’s Restaurant, New York Times printing presses, the aviary at the Zoo, a dog pound, a Sanitation Department depot, and Terry Riley’s turtle tank.

In this spirit of an “expanded” field of recording, this series will serve as a specific, if ephemeral, portrait of our current time, and a view of artists working under isolated conditions. We hope these recordings will reveal an expressive spectrum of the varied approaches of artists, and a partial view into our current veiled lives during the COVID-19 outbreak.

This initiative will complement ISSUE’s current work publishing archival documentation on online platforms currently collected and streamable on our expansive Archive page on the ISSUE website. ISSUE currently maintains a publicly accessible archive of hundreds of published video and audio recordings. These materials are a freely accessible collection of performance documentation that spans our recent and historic work.

ISSUE Project Room's Isolated Field Recording Series is supported, in part, by the NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund in The New York Community Trust and Café Royal Cultural Foundation.

As a part of ISSUE Project Room’s ongoing 2020 Spring Season, this series is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. ISSUE gratefully acknowledges additional 2020 Spring Season support from NOKIA Bell Labs, The Golden Rule Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and TD Charitable Foundation.

Waiting room music is Tony Conrad's "Three Loops for Performers and Tape Recorders (1961)" performed by Lary 7 + Masami Tomihisa, Mia Theodoradus, Karen Waltuch, Paige Sarlin, Laura Ortman, and Delphine Griffith at ISSUE in 2017. Visuals are from ISSUE's AIR Alumni Collaborations performed by Bradley Eros & MV Carbon in 2017.