With Womens Work: Annabelle Playe - Arrow & Synchronicity

On Friday, March 21st at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room presents “Arrow & Synchronicity” by French multidisciplinary artist Annabelle Playe. Between March 20-22, the organization will present new, live performance scores at its 22 Boerum Pl. theater as part of ongoing activations of the With Womens Work Series. 

The work that has led to “Arrow & Synchronicity” stretches back between present day and the pandemic, when ISSUE first commissioned Playe for the With Womens Work Series. In 2021, she produced Ad Astra, a series of musical pieces born of the solar system for online streaming inspired by the "ZODIACAL MEDITATION" score by Julie Winter included in the original Womens Work Volume #1, 1975. Her new project serves as a sequel to Ad Astra, taking further inspiration from Winter’s score. Together, these pieces form a diptych, a dramaturgy of time—a musical hourglass refocusing us on our perceptions, a meditation. It will also serve as a response to Winter that weaves a dialogue between two creators echoing all women artists, two continents, and several eras and temporalities. Through powerful drones and textures, “Arrow & Synchronicity” is a way of taking care of the collective through vibration.

In recent years, societies have been gripped by powerful, eruptive and unexpected events, strongly impacting the collective and the individual on a global level. In response to this, Playe asks: are we going through a “phoenix” period involving a profound transformation of our patterns to be reborn collectively to other modes of relationships, and links with living things? “In my opinion, synchronicity is one of the precious modalities of the relationship between beings and living things that we could develop and enhance. This synchronicity crosses time and space, connecting us in a vibrational way, including with the circle of the cosmos, the planets of our solar system, reminding us that we are a part of the whole, at the same time. A quantum mode of relationship!”

The archive is not neutral. At ISSUE, we strive to help artists expose and redress the historical record and structures of power relating to sex and gender. The ongoing With Womens Work Series aims to continuously activate and grow the accounts of women’s experiences and practices in the avant-garde canon, while honoring the legacy of artists who have built and contributed to it over the years. 

Annabelle Playe is a multidisciplinary artist. Her music is oscillating between electroacoustic, drone, and noise. She was an associate composer with “Scènes Croisées de Lozère” (France). She is currently associate composer at the Montpellier Opera in France (2024-26). She is a twice winner of the SACD fund "Musique de Scène" (2018 and 2021). She received the SACD New Talent Music Award 2019. She performed at Avignon Festival (2019-2021) and she was selected by the Face Foundation for a tour in the US (2019), and was also a winner of Biennale Chroniques (2020) and of Diaphonique fund (2022). Annabelle regularly performs internationally.