ISSUE Project Room's 20th Anniversary Series

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of work commissioned for our Isolated Field Recordings Series (2020), which engaged nineteen artists to create new audio field recordings, with associated visuals, in response to COVID-19’s impact on public assembly.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of work commissioned for The Steve Circuit (2020), an episodic series of videos and digital artwork dedicated to the late beloved poet Steve Dalachinsky developed by his wife, painter and poet Yuko Otomo, and interdisciplinary artist and 2010 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence (AIR), Matt Mottel.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of work commissioned from Heroes Are Gang Leaders, a literary free jazz ensemble of writers, artists and musicians. The performance titled The Day We Gave The Globes Back, A Sing Along!, was recorded and streamed as a part of the 2020 Brooklyn Book Festival featuring an expansive fourteen-member band that included the full group’s lineup as well as multiple embedded solos and ensemble formations of the group’s various members.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of eight audio-visual works commissioned for our Distant Pairs Series (2020-2022). During three years, the Series engaged thirty-six artists, across eighteen programs that paired artists in disparate locations who could not work together in “traditional” ways over the past three years. The Distant Pairs series examined the collaborative process, methods of working, and partnership amidst the constrained conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of work commissioned for our With Womens Work Series (2021), which engaged fourteen artists to create new works inspired by scores included in Womens Work, a magazine edited and self-published by Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood in NYC. Originally published in 1975, Womens Work sought to highlight the overlooked work of female artists working at the cusp of the visual arts, music, and performance and is a collection of performance scores.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room, recorded for his 90th Birthday Celebration, presented by ISSUE in May 2021. The evening includes versions of Lucier’s paradigmatic 1969 work I am sitting in a room from Joan La Barbara, Abigail Levine & James McNew all created during isolated stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, plus Lucier himself recorded live at ISSUE’s Boerum theater in 2017. The evening will also feature a panel conversation with La Barbara, Levine and McNew focusing on their presentations and Lucier’s legacy, moderated by James Fei.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary with a restaging of the installation of electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel’s piece A Harmonic Algorithm 2020, coordinated in collaboration with composer and artist Seth Cluett. Working in dialogue with Spiegel on the multi-channel loudspeaker array at NOKIA Bell Labs, Seth Cluett restages a new diffusion of the work that takes advantage of the unique acoustics of the Boerum Pl. theater.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary with two evenings featuring work from influential composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies. Each presentation will feature a showing of Hennies short film Passing plus the premiere of a new collaborative work with bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause.

ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary by welcoming acclaimed sonicist, composer, and biologist Francisco López’s presentation VirtuAural Electro-Mechanics. Internationally acclaimed for the intensity, richness and astonishing audio detail of his live immersive surround performances, López’s work is presented in multi-channel sound, in the dark, on two special evenings to a limited-capacity blindfolded audience in his New York home, ISSUE Project Room.

ISSUE celebrates the exact day of the organization’s 20th Anniversary with yours in dentistry, a specially produced final program from 2023 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow evil dentist (Alice Gerlach & David Farrow). This culminating Fellowship project brings together artists blurring the boundaries between life/work and art/work.