Sydney Spann & Kiera Mulhern

Thursday, December 1st at 8pm ET, sound artist and musician Sydney Spann presents their final presentation as an ISSUE Artist-In-Residence with a live performance alongside poet and musician Kiera Mulhern at MITU580 in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Spann and Mulhern have had a longstanding collaborative relationship and friendship, and this performance will be the first formal presentation of their musical collaboration.

Using field recordings from the Battery Park City ferry dock, spoken and sung voice, synthesis, and electronics, Spann and Mulhern—a nanny and a therapist—will make music that enlists their individual vocal styles and engages their intersecting interests in care work, expanded notions of the maternal, and psychoanalysis.

Sydney Spann, originally from Baltimore, MD, is a sound artist and musician based in New York. They work with synthesis, electronics, and voice to intervene within a personal archive of field recordings, culminating in long form compositions and improvised live performances. Their music lately engages the private experiences that shape domestic and public spaces, and the affective dynamics within childcare work. They have released albums with She Rocks! (NYC), and Reading Group (NYC), with a full-length release forthcoming on Recital. They have performed at the High Zero Festival of Experimental Free Improvised Music, Bar Laika by e-flux, Performance Space New York, Center for Performance Research, Cafe OTO (London), KM28 (Berlin), and in diy spaces and galleries throughout the US. Recent commissioned works include Attached/Detached (partial disappearance) for ISSUE Project Room’s With Womens Work Series, and original music for artist Nile Koetting’s installation Downtime Salon at Musik Installationen in Nuremberg. They are a 2022 Artist in Residence at ISSUE Project Room and an MFA candidate in Music/Sound at Bard College.

Kiera Mulhern (b.1992) is a poet and musician living in New York. Mulhern works with field recording, electronic sound, and text. Her work engages with concepts of memory and attention, language's mark on the body, and basal feelings of aliveness and death.