Paul de Jong with Beth Daunis: Light of Day

ISSUE Project Room closes its 2025 season with Light of Day, a new work-in-progress by cellist and co-founder of the Books, Paul de Jong, presented with longtime friend and collaborator Beth Daunis. Returning to ISSUE for the first time since 2018 for an incredibly rare performance, de Jong continues his expansive exploration of sound and image, approaching this new project as an audiovisual inquiry into motion, speech, gesture, light, and sonority. Together, de Jong and Daunis examine how the interplay between contrast and convergence shapes our emotional perception—how fundamental acts of expression can reveal the deeply human within the abstract.

On Saturday, December 13th at 8pm, the premiere performance of Light of Day opens to the public, pulling from de Jong’s vast media archive (the ‘Mall of Found’) of unusual and strangely gripping antique film footage, sound recordings, vernacular photography and typographic fragments. From this dense multimedia collage a narrative emerges that feels at once unfamiliar and comforting. Through interaction, reaction, opposition, and intersection the performers invite audiences to question the boundaries between abstraction and actuality; approaching the act of perception itself with a gentle pursuit of poetry and meaning.

Dutch-American cellist-composer Paul de Jong is probably best known as co-founder of collage-pop eccentrics, the Books. After the band’s breakup in 2011, de Jong embarked on a wild creative trip which to date has produced two solo albums and a single on Temporary Residence, live shows, videos, prints, collaborations, and the unlocking of his vast archive of fringe media aka the ‘Mall of Found’.

Violinist and composer Beth Daunis was raised in classical music, yet shaped by dance music and improvisation. Her life's work resides in the intersection of sound and healing. Beth has explored this subject through a constellation of genres including Americana, flamenco, reggae and rock.