Issue Project Room

Name: Issue Project Room
Address: 22 Boerum Place, New York, NY, 11201, US
Telephone: +17183300313
Price range: $
Rating: 4.7

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Issue Project Room

Pioneering performance center based in Downtown Brooklyn
http://issueprojectroom.org/events

ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering performance center, presenting projects by both emerging and established experimental artists that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue about art and culture in the broader community. ISSUE plays a vital role in NYC’s cultural ecology, facilitating the commission and premiere of new works and presenting a diverse array of art

ists working across the disciplines of music, sound, dance, performance and literature. Programming places a special focus on bringing recognition to artists whose important contributions to the creative field have been underrecognized, often as a result of gender, sexuality, or geographic location. Through the cultivation of innovative new work, ISSUE performs an essential research and development function that stimulates a constant influx of ideas into the local, national, and international creative landscape.

01/15/2025

Upcoming February programs will take place at 22 Boerum Pl. We are fortunate to have access to our home theater through Spring 2025 with increased capacity due to a temporary permit. ISSUE looks forward to welcoming the public back to the theater, and is invested in community participation to ensure the building reflects the diverse needs and priorities of our artists, audiences and staff.

Just Announced!
🏠 2/6 Leila Hassan / Bergsonist
🏠 2/15 Jackson-Pratt: The Microscope's Slide: Live Painting Music No. 8 (for T.M.)
🏠 2/21 Qiujiang Levi Lu (卢秋江): Metanoia
🏠 2/27 Zosha Warpeha: Shadow

Doors 7:30pm
Events 8pm

01/13/2025

"The future does not lie ahead but is behind us, something we carry." –Rafael Lubner for Bellona Mag on Chuquimamani-Condori

Thanks to all those who joined us last month for our Season Close concert with Embaci and CM-C at the church. We will carry it with us❣️ Upcoming 2025 programs announced soon! See you next weekend at Brooklyn Music School - free with RSVP.

📸 by Cameron Kelly McLeod

01/02/2025

Happy New Year from ISSUE! 🥂

Wanted to start the year by sending a huge 'thank you' to everyone who participated in our year-end campaign. Your support is vital to our mission, and it’s because of you that we can continue to present the groundbreaking work of experimental, risk-taking artists. See you in the new season!

[s/o all of our SFCF past and present - (pictured): Richard Kamerman of Q***r Trash, Sami Hopkins, Kenneth Jimenez & Theodore (ted) Kerr]

12/23/2024

Some favorite 2024 ISSUE Artists-In-Residence snapshots 🤳🏽

And many thanks to

12/18/2024

Don’t miss out: catch up on this year’s incredible programs anytime with our free online archive. Link in bio!

[Slide 1&2 - ASA-CHANG & Junray soundsystem. Alma Laprida playing her custom tromba marina. 📸 by Aaron Rosenblum. Oct 23, 2024.
Slide 3 - heartsleeves artist talk with LoVid & Ka Baird moderated by Kelly Heaton. 📸 by Aaron Rosenblum. Oct 30, 2024.
Slide 4 - ISSUE’s Fall Opening with Frankie Mann. 📸 by Cameron Kelly McLeod. Sep 7, 2024.
Slide 5 - 🟥 Exorcism = Liberation Long Table. 📸 by Noele Contreras. Sep 21, 2024.
Slide 6 - New Release! Henry Flynt’s Everlovin’ Game On remastered by Bob Bellerue, 2019/2024.]

12/12/2024

📣 ISSUE Project Room’s 2025 Winter Season Opening concert co-presented with Brooklyn Music School brings together Ethiopian-born Swedish experimental vocalist Sofia Jernberg and American composer-cellist Tomeka Reid .

Building on their first collaboration in 2021–Meditations for Voice & Cello, a digital commission for ISSUE’s Distant Pairs series–the duo reunites for their first-ever live collaboration in the US. The season opening event will also feature Jernberg and Reid in a unique quartet, joined by NYC-based pianist Craig Taborn and Norwegian bassist Ole Morten Vågan . Free with RSVP - tickets at link in bio.

All ISSUE Members will receive two (2) free drink tickets to redeem at the 2025 Winter Opening concert. Please sign up as an ISSUE Member any time before the event to access this and other membership perks!

12/05/2024

ISSUE is pleased to announce 2025 Artists-In-Residence!
lu1 (卢秋江) is a NYC-based performance artist, improviser, composer, and educator. Their work transforms the body into a sonic object through interactions with movements and audio technology exploring identity, sound, and space. Lu designs customized feedback systems with cyborg-like body augmentations inspired by Objectophilia/animism. Their works have been featured at international festivals and venues such as MATA Festival, High Zero Festival, IRCAM Forum, SEAMUS conference, E-Flux, and NIME conference. 📸 by Aijia Yao

is a multimedia artist based in Queens. Over the last decade, Seany (under the moniker Jackson-Pratt) has honed a body of work focused on highly dynamic, saturation-based audio. He also creates large-scale paintings and visual works that coincide with audio performance. His current focus is to draw an obtainable line between extreme audio/sound/music works, (albeit noise or otherwise) and the visual language. 📸 by Walter Wlodarczyk

works in composition, sculpture, community organizing, towards possibilities of Sick Music making and listening. For a decade, she toured with her research-based ballad project, Anna & Elizabeth, their 2018 Smithsonian Folkways album called a “radical expansion of what folk songs are supposed to do”(The New Yorker). She is a member of RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities), and cofounder of AIRNYC (Artists In Resistance NYC) which operates a free lending library of air purifiers. 📸 close up, self-portrait of Anna laying in bed

is a composer-performer working in a meditative space at the intersection of contemporary improvisation and folk traditions. Using bowed stringed instruments alongside her own voice, her long-form compositions and freely improvised performances explore transformations of time and tonality. She performs primarily on Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed relative of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, and her current work is heavily informed by the cyclical forms, rhythmic elasticity, and the physical momentum of Nordic folk music. 📸 by Kenneth Jiménez

11/24/2024

Happy Birthday ❤️

Yvonne Rainer’s ‘Remembering and Dismembering Trio A’ with Brittany Bailey at with ISSUE, April 6, 2022.

11/16/2024

Yesterday, the ISSUE Project Room Board responded to the open letter in circulation. https://issueprojectroom.org/2024-
board-letter

11/06/2024

🗣️ JUST ANNOUNCED: ISSUE DECEMBER PROGRAMS

12/6 CONTROL SCHEME 👀 by Axine M
(2024 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE) at The Emily Harvey Foundation
Limited Capacity! Free with RSVP

12/14 CHUQUIMAMANI-CONDORI / Embaci
at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn
(a homecoming🪴)

10/17/2024

Just announced: November Programs with ISSUE Artists-In-Residence Kwami Winfield, Joni and Katie Porter. FREE!

ISSUE and Harvestworks are pleased to present Up, within a subset (11/7). Using audio reactive instruments built by Kwami Winfield, the artist will generate and influence sound and light across the reverberant cavern at 22 Boerum Pl. As a participatory experiment, Winfield invites the audience to BYOI (bring-your-own-instrument of any kind)!

Co-presented by ISSUE and Irondale, Joni’s Surge (11/15) project builds to its conclusion. Reworking recordings taken during surgeries by her doctors - per her request - Joni reinterprets the material to create an entirely new “body” of sound.

The composer/clarinetist Katie Porter will return to the organization’s 22 Boerum Pl. theater to present Collaborations ex-situ (11/23), three ongoing collaborations with artists Patricia Alessandrini (electronics, thunder sheet, feedback boxes), Katherine Liberovskaya (live video), and anne penders (voice, text, film). Ex-situ is the idea of an experiment happening off-site, out of its original place and time - just as each of these collaborations took root due to different chance meetings.

10/15/2024

Don’t miss this✨Wednesday, October 23rd at 8pm, ISSUE and are pleased to present esteemed Japanese band ASA-CHANG & Junray .info for their debut U.S. performance at The Invisible Dog Art Center. Drawing on material from the project’s entire discography, they perform as a trio: ASA-CHANG (percussion), Yoshihiro Goseki (saxophone, flute), Sena Oshima (violin), and the “Junray Tronics” soundsystem.

In the early 2000s, his group was met with worldwide acclaim from the success of debut international album Tsu Gi Ne Pu and the single “Hana,” a revelry of tabla, overlapping vocals, strings, and electronic elaborations that stands as an achievement of early-aughts innovation between pop and avant-garde sensibilities.

The evening will also feature Argentinian artist Alma Laprida . Using a custom made two-string marine trumpet, voice, and electronic processing the ‘tromba marina’ will be amplified by a self-made contact mic and then processed by pedals. Laprida will also feature elements from her work “Japan,” an electronic piece created for B***A (analogic sounding circuit by Jorge Crowe) commissioned by The Toy Lab.

Slide 1: MV still from “Hana”
Slide 2: Alma Laprida by Estafania Landesmann

10/05/2024

Remembering Suzanne today (1960-2009) 💙💚

10/03/2024

ISSUE Project Room is pleased to announce the selection of Kenneth Jiménez as 2025 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow. The artist will present a curated series of events that engage artists from the Caribbean, Central and South America, discussing music and folklore's complex relationship to tradition and genre.

Jiménez notes, "Historically, New York has been characterized by hosting people from all over the world. This process has generated the creation of identities that seek to define themselves again and again, mixing social imaginaries, cultural contexts and life stories loaded with endless complexities." Throughout 2025, his goal is to present different artists whose work has been historically marginalized by the art world, and create opportunities for them to share their most recent explorations and collaborations.

Named for ISSUE’s visionary founder Suzanne Fiol, the program mentors a Curatorial Fellow by providing them with financial, technical and marketing support. Through a commitment to the professional development of the selected curator, they work to cultivate, incubate and present innovative music and performance projects.

09/24/2024

Starting this Thursday, experience Jo Andres’ Black Kites (9/26) & Dreaming Out Loud (10/4) at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl.

“Magic and science: two seemingly opposing versions of reality, one based on illusion and myth, the other on fact-based conjecture and theory, measurement, and observation. In the work and life of Jo Andres, bricoleur supreme, the celestial opposition of magic and science disintegrates. Jo’s art literally dances on the fine line between order and chaos, the archaic and the futuristic, deep solemnity and slapstick humor. Never didactic nor predictable, her work reveals DNA from her passion for optics and experimental film, movement from non-Western cultures, quantum physics, visual art from the Paleolithic to the contemporary, shamanic healing, and the Divine Feminine....the list goes on and on…”
— E #, September 2024
balint .m

📷🎞️ Jo Andres courtesy of

08/27/2024

Join ISSUE on September 21st at 2pm for a Long Table discussion around the public art project, Exorcism = Liberation, by Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based artist and choreographer Yanira Castro. During this year’s critical American election, “I came here to weep” is but one of several slogans in the project’s call-to-action. Limited Capacity!

The Long Table is a dinner party structured by etiquette, where conversation is the only course. The Long Table - developed by Lois Weaver - is inspired by Marleen Gorris’s film Antonia’s Line, and brings what might often be seen as ‘outside’ in. Everyone in the room has the power (and imperative, with the communal interest for a more satisfying discussion) to shift the direction of conversation, to mediate moments of tension and to make space for voices less easily heard.

When to use a long table:
to invite community knowledge around difficult conversations
to break down institutional barriers for knowledge
to cultivate community
to share in dialogue with artists from across ISSUE’s history including Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste , Sami Hopkins & Theodore (ted) Kerr

Thanks Split Britches NYC for this history on the Long Table. ISSUE Members receive free access with their online code! Engage with the full project here: http://exorcism-liberation.net/

📸: Masks from ‘I came here to weep’ courtesy and

08/20/2024

Free with RSVP at next month, 2024 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Axine M brings together an incredible ensemble & speaks about Sold Licker Glass (9/12):

Áslaug Magnúsdóttir, Clarinet, .magnusd
Bridget Ferrill, Harp,
Cal Fish, Flute, ._.fish
Kwami Winfield, Trumpet,
Leila Bordreuil, Cello,

“The withering music industry demands that artists volunteer embodied information, sometimes biometric data, as recorded audio. Likenesses are routinely stolen and repurposed. What was once a fantastical nightmare is now barely newsworthy, as voices, faces, and personas are used to warp the statements of strangers. Writing for an ensemble is a means for me to invert that and have others embody my ideas. In this case, it’s a group of trusted friends. I’m thinking about transmitting a musical idea as cheaply and compressed as possible and reclaiming worthlessness. Sheet music divorces my body from distribution, and its experience requires the recipient’s physical participation.

I wrote this song cycle out of habit, working through feelings of detachment and physical alienation, not realizing that I was simulating solid, liquid, and gas. The melodies now threaded through it affirm all the ways I was being, melting, evaporating.”

08/06/2024

ISSUE’s 2024 Membership Campaign continues! Join as a Member during the campaign, and receive a free ticket to our 2024 Fall Opening concert on September 7th!

Your ISSUE Membership directly contributes to:
✨Building a diverse community of artists who explore some of the most pressing issues and questions of our time
✨Supporting the development of emerging and underrecognized projects and practices
✨Sustaining both room for dialogue and a permanent home at 22 Boerum Pl. for our robust network of artists, audience, and staff

Up to $10,000 of new and renewing memberships will be matched during ISSUE’s 2024 Summer Membership Campaign. This offer is due to the generosity of the ISSUE Board and a number of people within ISSUE’s community, including: Kathy Brew, Claire Chase, Gisela Gamper, Thomas Hamilton, Joan La Barbara & Morton Subotnick, Steve Milton, Stephan Moore, Amy Schwartzman, plus two anonymous donors. THANK YOU!

Address

22 Boerum Place
New York, NY
11201

Telephone

+17183300313

Website

https://issueprojectroom.org/

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Videos

For over 20 years, ISSUE’s community has been a home to the work of artists, performers, and musicians who elude expectation. As we look to 2025, your engagement remains as vital as ever. Your generosity has fueled incredible impact this year - here’s a look back at the work you made possible! #thankyou #giveback #makeanimpact #givingtuesday2024

This Saturday! @kpkatieclarinet Katie Porter’s final ISSUE residency event - inspired by Nancy Holt’s large-scale Sun Tunnels installation - leaves us to consider “how we make our art in our lives, in our minds, in our pasts, and in the tumultuous present.” Limited Capacity Remains! Free with RSVP 8pm at 22 Boerum Pl. featuring @patricia.alessandrini @kat_liberovskaya @_poien_ 📹: Clip from Collecting Rocks From The Places We’ve Been - Music In Time & Space by Katie Porter with Nomi Epstein, Jennie Gottschalk & Teodora Stepančić, June 18, 2024. Moving Image and Live Drawings on sculpture by Claudia Schmitz. Thanks to @_nightshiftnurse_ @kihclavok @megmcdermott_phototography

Today! ISSUE celebrates experimental performance and honors Jo Andres at our 2024 Gala. This year’s Gala is co-curated by Laurie Berg, and recognizes Jo on the heels of “Jo Andres: Before Your Eyes” - a solo exhibition spanning 40 years, presented by SPRING/BREAK Art Show. Promoting the first expansive exhibition of the artist’s work, check out this clip from ISSUE’S co-presentation of the Liquid TV salon this past May✨ @wakingstephanie @lbergyberg @mimilgab @lenaengelstein

🚨New 2024 Media! Now Online🚨 This season’s archive update captures the impact of deep collaboration. You can revisit presentations from this year so far, and look forward to upcoming events during our 2024 Fall Season. New and renewing ISSUE Members receive a free ticket to our Fall Opening concert on September 7th. Members also get free access to Yanira Castro’s Exorcism = Liberation and heartsleeves: LoVid & Ka Baird at 22 Boerum Pl. by using your unique Member code at checkout. 📹 clip from Paula Matthusen at Brooklyn Music School with Elliott Sharp, Matthew Evan Taylor & video by Tom Snelgrove. May 16, 2024. Thanks @_nightshiftnurse_ @kihclavok @megmcdermott_phototography

In advance of ISSUE’s Fall Opening concert next month with pioneering composer Frankie Mann, @roulette_intermedium shared this RTV episode with us to celebrate her return to NYC! The composer last performed I Land at Roulette in 2000 (digitally released in 2010). Noted for the humorous social commentaries of her live electronic and computer music (eg. “I Was a Hero” from The Mayan Debutante Revue, and “How To Be Very Very Popular”), Mann is a skilled programmer who has built her own electronic performance instruments since high school. She began her career in the 1970s when the shift from analog to digital technologies was quickly evolving, requiring her to (quite literally) write her way into the male dominated history of electronic music composition. Please join us on September 7th at First Unitarian to welcome Frankie Mann alongside Sarah Hennies, David Behrman, Allison Easter & John King for the premiere of Descent. Join as an ISSUE Member during our Summer Membership Campaign to receive a free ticket to the event 🎟️🎟️🎟️ The full RTV episode featuring performances of I Land and The Brown Mountain Lights is available at roulette.org.

~Free~ Next Week! ISSUE is pleased to present the next stage of 2024 AIR @joni.c0m Joni’s Surge project. “Contour Theater” delves into the dramatics of music in a body-organ-surgeon produced harmony. Join the operating theater at @brooklynmusicschool on June 27th 🩺 📹: from her first residency presentation “Surge: Intricate Things and Dangerous Tools,” full video now available in the online archive. Courtesy of ISSUE Project Room, @_nightshiftnurse_@kihclavok @megmcdermott_phototography

Coming up next week: realized through graphic scores and chance phenomena, 2024 ISSUE AIR @kpkatieclarinet Katie Porter’s second commission continues to ruminate on our ability to perceive change. All June programs are Free with RSVP! 📹: from her first residency presentation “Malosma” with Christine Tavolacci (@leflute), full video available in the online archive. Thanks to @_nightshiftnurse_ @kihclavok @megmcdermott_phototography

A variety of programs were presented in the Spring, each uniquely embodying the theme “thoughtful studies of connection” (from 𝘙𝘌𝘔𝘈𝘐𝘕 by Holland Andrews & Methods Body, April 17, 2024). How do the artists at ISSUE connect to compositional ideas (Christian Wolff & String Noise Sounds), nature and culture (Avant Joik), storytelling and magic (Francesco Cavaliere), and more? Check out the full videos in ISSUE’s online archive for a glimpse, with more Spring performances to be added soon! 📹 clips 1 - Celebrating 90 Years: Christian Wolff 2 - Avant Joik 3 - Francesco Cavaliere: Abyssal Creatures - Body0 Xilema 4 - Holland Andrews & Methods Body Courtesy of ISSUE Project Room. Videography by Yiyang Cao @_nightshiftnurse_. Audio recorded & mixed by Jackson Kovalchik @kihclavok. Video editing by Meg McDermott @megmcdermott_phototography.

Tomorrow! ISSUE is pleased to present the world premiere of REMAIN, a thoughtful study of connection, grief, joy and catharsis developed by vocalist and composer Holland Andrews (2020 ISSUE AIR), with Portland-based sound artists Methods Body (John Niekrasz & Luke Wyland). The piece serves as a living development of their work SPEECHLESS (2022), created for Beacon Sound's forthcoming compilation supporting Palestinian liberation. Andrews’ residency was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, so this occasion marks their return to the ISSUE theater for the first time since their initial residency performance in February 2020. The evening will consist of solo performances by both Methods Body and Andrews, concluding with a collaborative set. Believing that improvisation is an act of love and trust, the artists explore these emotional themes in their collaboration. This limited capacity event at 22 Boerum Pl. is *Free for ISSUE Members* with RSVP, pending availability. Limited Tickets Remain! 📹: clip of Holland Andrews in collaboration with JJJJJerome Ellis (2021 ISSUE AIR) at Weeksville Heritage Center. Sep 18, 2021. Full video available in the ISSUE archive.

Now Available! Visit ISSUE’s free online media archive to check out some of our most recent 2024 Winter Season events: https://issueprojectroom.org/media 📹: Video: Hiromichi Sakamoto at Brooklyn Music School. Feb 2, 2024. @bmsbrooklyn @avantokyo

Clip from our 2024 Winter Opening with Negativland & SUE-C premiering their work WE CAN REALLY FEEL LIKE WE’RE HERE - upcoming Spring tour just announced! Online ISSUE archive update featuring more Winter performances coming soon 👀 @negativlandland @sue_c 📹 @megmcdermott_phototography 🔈 @kihclavok

Clips from ISSUE’s 20th Anniversary season close performance, “An Improvisational Symphony” coordinated by our longtime friend Suzanne Langille. Full video is now available in our free online archive✨ Videography by Yiyang Cao. Audio recorded & mixed by Jackson Kovalchik. Video editing by Meg McDermott. December 16, 2023.