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| Issue Project Room | |
|---|---|
| Name | Issue Project Room |
| Type | Nonprofit arts organization |
| Established | 2003 |
| Location | Brooklyn, New York |
| Founder | Steven Backer |
| Genre | Experimental music, interdisciplinary performance |
Issue Project Room is a nonprofit venue and presenter in Brooklyn, New York, devoted to experimental music, sound art, and interdisciplinary performance. Founded in 2003, the organization has hosted performances, festivals, and residencies featuring leading figures from contemporary composition, free improvisation, electronic music, experimental rock, and multimedia art. The institution has been associated with a broad array of artists, venues, festivals, and cultural organizations across New York City and internationally.
The organization was founded by Steven Backer in 2003 and emerged amid a landscape shaped by venues and movements including The Kitchen, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Judson Church, Knitting Factory, and the downtown scenes connected to John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich. Early seasons drew on networks tied to New York University, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, and artist-run spaces such as The Living Theatre and Performance Space New York. The venue’s development paralleled festivals and presenters like Hudson Valley Music Festival, Miller Theatre, Bang on a Can, Red Bull Music Academy, and MoMA PS1, while responding to shifts in cultural policy influenced by offices such as the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and funders including New York State Council on the Arts.
Issue Project Room’s programming history includes collaborations, relocations, and expansions that engaged with institutions such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, Queens Museum, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Carnegie Hall’s contemporary initiatives, and international partnerships with entities like Konzerthaus Berlin, Berliner Festspiele, Nuits Sonores, and Sonar Festival.
The organization’s mission emphasizes support for experimental practitioners across composition, improvisation, electronic music, and interdisciplinary performance, connecting to artist networks associated with John Cage, Morton Feldman, Elliott Carter, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson. Programming spans concert series, festivals, commissions, residencies, and educational events modeled after formats used by Bang on a Can Marathon, Red Hook Labs, and university-based presenters at Juilliard and Mannes School of Music.
Recurring initiatives reference formats common to presenters like Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall contemporary programs, and alternative spaces including Cave Canem, Surflight Theatre, and National Sawdust. The organization presents premieres, retrospectives, and site-specific projects engaging artists such as Matana Roberts, William Basinski, Beck, Thurston Moore, Merzbow, Charlemagne Palestine, and Joanna Newsom.
Located in Brooklyn neighborhoods that have undergone cultural shifts akin to those affecting Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Dumbo, the space offers a flexible black-box auditorium, sound reinforcement systems, and technical infrastructure for analog and digital performance modes similar to setups at National Sawdust, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and The Kitchen. Facilities support electroacoustic setups, multichannel sound diffusion inspired by practices at IRCAM, STEIM, and MATA Festival productions, as well as video projection, lighting rigs, and workshop spaces used by collectives like ThingNY, FUTURENOW, and MOCA satellite programs.
The presenter has hosted and commissioned performances by a wide array of artists linked to scenes around New York Philharmonic contemporary initiatives, downtown improvisers associated with Ornette Coleman’s lineage, and electronic pioneers connected to Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin influences. Notable names include John Zorn, Bill Laswell, Nels Cline, Holly Herndon, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Sunn O))), Glenn Branca, Anthony Braxton, Elliott Sharp, Caroline Shaw, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Annea Lockwood, Julia Wolfe, Ethan McSweeney, Terry Riley, Matana Roberts, Joan La Barbara, William Basinski, Grouper, Merzbow, Charlemagne Palestine, Peter Brotzmann, Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra-related ensembles, and Amiri Baraka-linked poets and musicians. Projects have included multichannel installations, collaborative improvisation marathons, interdisciplinary operas, and archival revivals drawing curatorial parallels with MoMA, New York Historical Society, and Hudson River School-adjacent exhibitions.
The organization has partnered with presenters, festivals, academic departments, and cultural funders such as National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, Brookfield Place cultural programs, and academic partners at Pratt Institute, New York University, Columbia University, CUNY Graduate Center, and Bard College. It has co-presented events with Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts, Miller Theatre, MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art satellite programs, National Sawdust, and international presenters including Konzerthaus Berlin and Berliner Festspiele.
Critics and scholars from outlets and institutions such as The New York Times, Pitchfork, The Wire, The Village Voice, Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, and academic journals in musicology and sound studies have documented the organization’s influence on downtown scenes, experimental pedagogy, and artist-led infrastructure. The venue is frequently cited alongside influential spaces like The Kitchen, Knitting Factory, Tonic, and St. Mark’s Church in discussions of New York’s experimental ecosystems, and its artists have gone on to record for labels including Nonesuch Records, ECM Records, Tzadik, Warp Records, P-VINE, and Thrill Jockey.
Funding sources and governance models mirror those of similar nonprofits supported by National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, private foundations such as Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and individual donors from networks tied to institutions like Carnegie Corporation of New York and Guggenheim Foundation. The organization operates under a board and executive structure typical of arts nonprofits, with advisory relationships to university departments at Columbia University, New York University, and conservatories including Juilliard.
Category:Music venues in Brooklyn