Joni: Surge: Intricate Things and Dangerous Tools

Saturday, March 23rd at 8pm and 9pm, ISSUE is pleased to present Surge: Intricate Things and Dangerous Tools, the first commission from 2024 Artist-In-Residence Joni. The artist will present work-in-progress showings and new compositions of incredibly revealing, intimate and visceral sound work, alongside new ceramic pieces.  

Joni will journey through three stages of dismemberment, reconnection, and control over the course of her year-long residency. This Winter, between phases of renovation, ISSUE returns to our 22 Boerum Pl. theater for a series of limited capacity Artist-In-Residence and Fellowship events.

By way of live sampling, Joni explores loops as sound and memory; creating new arrangements for the body to exist within. Mirroring total dismemberment with live reassembly, Surge reworks sounds recorded in a state of complete unconsciousness and vulnerability. 

Joni is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Joni’s works weave sound, image and word with performances that are concerned with the physicality of desire and control, the monumental, and the multitude of histories within the body. Through body movement and misplacement of sound, Joni’s practice seeks to decode inheritance systems and the uncontrollable reflexes within them. Traveling between Darbuka drums and glitch, magic and endurance, Joni presents work that scratches wounds in hopes for water rather than blood. Joni has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts (NY), and works within art and nightlife spaces. Joni is the Founder of Intima, a trans led Brooklyn based collective focusing on fusing art and performance into nightlife spaces and raves. Created to carve a space for the trans queer community that brings, Intima brought together thousands of queer trans people over the past year, with Joni organizing and curating all parties and events. Joni is currently on MoMa PS1’s Warm Up 2023 host committee and a contributor to the festival's curation. Joni has presented solo works as a performer and electronic musician at spaces such as Nowadays, Elsewhere, H0l0, Market Hotel, The Palace, Otion Front Studio, Chaos Computer, HERE Arts, 3 Dollar bill, Times Square Arts. She completed a residency at Otion Front Studio in March 2023. Joni is currently the nightlife manager of Brooklyn venue Market Hotel.