ISSUE Project Room : an open and versatile environment in which established and emerging artists conduct, exhibit and perform new and site-specific work

ISSUE was thrilled to host the new Flaming Fire running band this past friday.  The band lined up and ran from carroll gardens all the way down to our location at the old american can factory in Gowanus on 3rd ave and 3rd street.  Patrick Hambrecht called in and we had the sound of the band running through the sound system and a video camera set up following them into the performance space.  At that point Flaming Fire proceeded to tear up the night with their patented kenneth anger inspired insanity...complete with flaming hula hoops.  

Before that we presented a related free improv/psych rock project related to the flaming fire crew...LYDSOD (aka. Live Your Dreams, Stay Off Drugs).  

Check out the free mp3:

Busy times these days at issue project room.  All of April we've been working with our super art advisory board bringing down amazing performances by Elliott Sharp, David Grubbs, Butch Morris & Mark Stewart.  Kate Valk curated an evening featuring fellow Wooster Group member Andrew Schneider...poets Bob Holman and Anne Waldman gave an electrifying performance with music by love of live orchestra leader Peter Gordon, and a lot more has been going down...our artist in residence, Duane Pitre, for example sharing the evening with the awesome Tony Conrad (who's also an ISSUE Project Room board member).  

Tomorrow night, (tuesday 4.21), we're going to have a pretty insane and star studded night curated by Hal Willner.  He's prepared an excellent program featuring readings of texts by the Marquis de Sade, William S. Burroughs and Edgar Allen Poe...read by Steve Buscemi (another member of the IPR board), Chloe Webb (Nancy from "Sid and Nancy"), Richard Hell and music by Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda, Doug Wieselman and many more surprise guests.

Should be out of control and fantastic.  Hopefully we'll have some material from tomorrow's show up on the fma soon.

For now, check out this track from our Art Advisory Board member, Elliott Sharp

APRIL 11th will be ISSUE Project Room's 6th anniversary.  We're amazed at how much has happened in this period of time.  ISSUE started on East 6th street as an impromptu and spontaneous music, experimental cinema and performance venue...quickly gaining attention and expanding from 60 performances a year to over 250.  By 2005, ISSUE had to leave the East Village and migrated to an iconic and beautiful silo along the banks of the Gowanus Canal.  This unusual and extraordinarily fun location was voted "Best Art Bayou" by the village voice and named "New York's Best Kept Secret" by the Whitney Museum.  

Producing amazing performances by Rhys Chatham, Anthony Coleman, Marianne Amancher, Elliott Sharp, Jandek and WFMU's own Kenny G, ISSUE Project Room enjoyed its stay at the silo immensely but then had to move once again.  This time to its current location at the Old American Can Factory at 232 3rd Street in Brooklyn.  This room, the "sanctuary", was formerly a rehearsal studio for a circus troupe.  Instead of trapeze artists, we've now got Stephan Moore's 16 channel hemispherical speaker system hanging from the ceiling, enabling us to move sound over and around the heads of the audience.

This past year we found out that we were awarded a rent free, 20 year lease on the elk's club room at the former Board of Education building at 110 Livingston Street.  It's a pretty amazing room and an amazing opportunity to build a kind of "Carnegie Hall of the Avant Garde" for the next 20 years. It's up to us to bring it up to code and move in, though...so we'll be fundraising for the time being...getting ready for the future.

Throughout the past 6 years some amazing, amazing work has gone on here. We're thrilled to be able to share some of these moments with the WFMU community and beyond here on the Free Music Archive.

Thanks everyone.

ISSUE.