ISSUE Project Room is pleased to announce the selection of New York-based curator, media theorist and writer DeForrest Brown Jr. as the 2017 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, who will present new projects in the 2017 season. A new initiative, the Fellowship commissions emerging New York curators to organize challenging time-based projects, serving a central role in fulfilling ISSUE’s mission to support and cultivate innovative art within the local community. In its first year, the Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellowship will support one emerging curator in realizing ambitious new projects that will significantly transform their own artistic practice, move their work in new directions, and enable them to gain exposure to a broader audience.
Named for ISSUE’s visionary founder Suzanne Fiol, the program mentors a curatorial fellow by providing them with financial, technical and marketing support as they work to cultivate, incubate and present innovative music and performance projects.
The curatorial fellowship complements and builds upon ISSUE’s Artists-In-Residence Program (AIR), which celebrated its 10th Anniversary in 2016. Both ISSUE’s AIR and Fellowship programs provide artists and curators with an opportunity to develop significant new works in partnership with ISSUE over the course of a year by offering a stipend as well as access to rehearsal space and facilities, equipment, documentation, pr/marketing, curatorial mentorship and technical expertise.
Suzanne Fiol was an extraordinary spirit, a force of nature and a prominent figure in the visual and performing arts worlds. As both a visionary artist and the founder of ISSUE Project Room, she created one of New York City’s premiere destinations for experimental culture and avant-garde performing arts— a legacy that will resonate for decades to come.
Applications are accepted upon nomination by members of ISSUE’s Artistic Advisory Board, curators, staff and selected organizational partners. The Curatorial Fellow will be chosen by a Committee comprised of ISSUE’s Artistic Advisory Board members and current ISSUE curators.
DeForrest Brown Jr. is a New York-based music writer, media theorist and curator. He has previously worked with publications such as Triple Canopy, Tiny Mix Tapes and Mixmag, and has contributed writing to NPR Music, FACT, Rhizome, The Quietus and Avant Magazine. His work is concerned with speculative futures in performative contexts, intersections with technology and algorithm in music, the continued history of electronic hardware and synthesizer music, and an enduring interest in pushing electronic music into ever-more radical and multimedia presentations. His work outside of publishing involves extensive collaboration across expertise and format. He has also participated in Trace Programme’s Nottingham group exhibition Aspirational Living, contributed text to the Swiss organization Zweikommasieben, and co-managed Rhizome’s Futures Along the Blockchain. His most recent work consists of a three suite short film and sound work entitled Absent Personae presented with producer Kepla and artist Chris Boyd, a companion book for J.G. Biberkopf’s Ecologies II: Ecosystems of Excess (Knives, Planet Mu) and Outwardly Coiling Context Collapse, an audiovisual work produced in collaboration with global collective Quantum Natives.
