Artists-In-Residence Alumni Collaborations: Raúl de Nieves & Doron Sadja

Drawing its participants from the first 10 years of ISSUE Project Room’s Artists-In-Residence Program, AIR Alumni Collaborations is a performance that brings together former ISSUE resident artists in striking new combinations. Eccentric, interdisciplinary, and deeply experimental, the new collaborations showcase the wide-range of approaches found within the ISSUE community, amplifying each artist’s personal aesthetics while drawing unexpected parallels between their work.

Thursday, January 19th, ISSUE presents three first-ever collaborative performances by former ISSUE Artists-In-Residence focusing on highlighting their parallel and divergent performance strategies. Cellist, vocalist, and electronics producer Audrey Chen performs alongside two key members of the collaborative ensemble Ne(x)tworks: renowned vocalist Joan La Barbara and composer, improviser and electro-acoustician Miguel Frasconi. Berlin-based composer and synthesist Doron Sadja pairs his particular style of multi-channel spatialized sound, pristine electronics, dense noise, and immersive light projections with multimedia artist Raul De Nieves’ encompassing narrative and multimedia performance style. MV Carbon performs a new collaboration with media artist Bradley Eros sharing the role of manipulating sound and image on a new project called The Mystery of Spiders -- a sound & projection performance conceptualizing scores based on spider webs.

Curated by Lea Bertucci and Chris McIntyre

Doron Sadja is a Berlin based artist, composer, and curator whose work explores modes of perception and the experience of sound, light, and space. Often working with multi-channel spatialized sound, smoke machines, and high intensity lights, Sadja combines pristine electronics with lush romantic synthesizers, dense noise, and immersive light projections to create hyper-emotive sonic architecture. Although each of Sadja’s works are striking in their singular and focused approach, his output is diverse: spanning everything from 25 speaker sound works to stroboscopic smoke and light shows, 360 degree projection pieces, and custom built motorized speaker systems that can precisely track sound around a room. Sadja founded Shinkoyo Records and the West Nile performance space in Brooklyn (RIP), and currently runs the Sound Portraits lecture/listening series in Berlin. Sadja studied Technology in Music and Related Arts at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and received his MFA in Sound Art from Bard College.

Raul De Nieves (b. Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, 1983) is a multi-media artist, performer, and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. His body of work encompasses narrative painting, decadent multimedia performance (often with his band Haribo), large-scale figurative sculpture, live music, ornamentally crafted shoes, and garments. De Nieves has exhibited widely, including at Mendes Wood DM (Sao Paulo), MoMA Ps1, The Museum of Art and Design, Rod Bianco (Oslo), COMPANY, and elsewhere. He has also performed at Artists Space, BOFFO, The Kitchen, MoMA Ps1, Performa 13, Real Fine Arts, and numerous other venues. In 2015, he was included in Ps1’s Greater New York.