ISSUE PROJECT ROOM and SAGIndie present “ACTOR AS AUTEUR” with STEVE BUSCEMI
John Hockenberry Leads Brunchtime Conversation
To Benefit ISSUE Project Room
Actor, writer, film director and ISSUE board member Steve Buscemi will talk with Emmy Award-winning journalist and Co-Host of WNYC Radio and PRI’s The Takeaway, John Hockenberry, about creating unforgettable characters that ultimately drive a film’s narrative and impact. The brunch which is presented in collaboration with SAGIndie, an organization that unites working thespians of the world with passionate filmmaking mavericks who buck the system. The afternoon will feature film clips from the actor’s career and will be held at Bussaco located in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Actor as Auteur – There are numerous iconic characters in film history, from The Little Tramp to Charles Foster Kane to Colonel Kurtz to Travis Bickle, all of them well drawn and directed. However, had Chaplin, Welles, Brando or DeNiro not played these roles would the film had the same powerful impact on our culture? Can a case be made for actor as auteur?
It is difficult to imagine Buscemi’s roles and their indelible effect on each film without his personal, stylized approach in bringing them to life. They emit essential energies striking a balance between deeply held neuroses and outward bombast. From lead roles in films like Fargo, Resevoir Dogs, Living in Oblivion, Trees Lounge, and Ghost World to supporting roles and cameos in films such as The Big Lebowski, and Barton Fink, his presence breathes life into every corner of a film. “Buscemi is a quiet tyrant of artistic fury who threatens to overrun every frame he’s in with the inner desperation he projects even in his most subtle performances,” says Hockenberry.
An active Board Member of ISSUE Project Room, Buscemi began his career in, and continues to support experimental theater, writing and performance. All proceeds from the event will benefit ISSUE Project Room, one of the country’s preeminent centers for experimental culture.
“Actor as Auteur” Brunch To Benefit ISSUE Project Room, Presented in Collaboration With SAGIndie
Sunday, June 6, 12 pm – 2 pm
Bussaco, 833 Union Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
$125 Per Person ($95 tax-deductible, three-course brunch is included.)
SEATING IS LIMITED. Buy Tickets
For more information please call 718-330-0313.
POETRY TO THE INFINITIVE POWER(S)
Join us for an evening in celebration of ISSUE Project Room featuring dozens of literature’s finest poets followed by a bacchanalian celebration and performance by These Are Powers.
Proceeds will benefit ISSUE Project Room’s move to 110 Livingston.
At 7pm — The Way of the Word
Poetry Extravaganza curated by Bob Holman, Suzanne Fiol, and Kenneth Goldsmith
featuring the amazing poets:
Bob Holman
Ken Goldmith
Jonas Mekas
Anne Waldman
Judith Malina
Abiodoun Oyewole (of the Last Poets)
Hettie Jones
Jeff Wright
Esther K. Smith
Georgia Luna Faust
Michael Carter
Kathy Engel
Kimiko Hahn
Beau Sia
Holly Anderson
Max Blagg
Frank Lima
Betsey Andrews
Mike Topp
Steve Dalachinsky
Yuko Otumo
and the FLARF POETS:
Gary Sullivan
Sharon Mesmer
Drew Gardner
Katie Degentesh
Jordan Davis
Brandon Downing
Nada Gordon
At 9:00pm — These Are Powers Dance Party
Live performance by These Are Powers with debut screening of their new music video for “Candyman”, featuring the new single off of their forthcoming release with RVNG Intl. Filmed at ISSUE’s future home, the Beaux-Arts 110 Livingston, “Candyman” is a surrealist dinner party where every course served consists entirely of sugar and the guests overindulge in an alternately comedic and nightmarish story. Conceptualized by These Are Powers and director Joseph Krings, the video was produced by a team assembled by Knowmore resulting in a bizarre, fun and colorful video that makes a perfect companion piece to an already infectious song.
TAP’s live performance will feature live AV projections by SECRET PROJECT ROBOT and will be followed by DJ sets by Ryan Sawyer, and Matthew Radune and Jeremy Campbell. Opening the event, immediately after the way of the word, is the duo Lone Wolf and Cub (drummer Ryan Sawyer and trapeze artist Suzanne Rogalsky).
About the TAP Dance Party artists:
These Are Powers
These Are Powers take the familiar and channel it back from the future primitive. We are a language all our own. It is club beats played live, found sounds, pulses, blips, collage, oscillations, electronic watercolor, decay, regeneration and every vibration in between. Whatever it sounds like is not what you think. Look twice. These Are Powers hail from the dual ports of Brooklyn, NY and Chicago, IL.
We are Anna Barie (sings, electronics), Pat Noecker (prepared bass, sings), and Bill Salas (electroacoustic drums, sings). We create movement in freedom, infinity in possibility.
Secret Project Robot
http://www.secretprojectrobot.org/
Secret Project Robot: Art Experiment is a not for profit dedicated to the documentation and proliferation of contemporary art and current cultural trends in music, performance, dance, the party and social theory.
Lone Wolf and Cub
http://www.myspace.com/ryanlonewolfsawyer
Listen to Bob Holman perform his Spoken Word Poem “Walking Brooklyn Bridge” for the Urbana 10th Anniversary party at the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC Oct 2007
ISSUE Soundwalk-a-thon in the New Yorker
Two Sundays before Make Music New York, the Brooklyn-based venue Issue Project Room, an indispensable site of offbeat programming, organized its own sonic jamboree. Twenty-one musicians led groups on “soundwalks” around Brooklyn and other boroughs, treating the city either as an audio source or as a stage for their work. (The term “soundwalk” was popularized by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, who, in the spirit of Ives and John Cage, has long blurred distinctions between composed music and ambient sounds.) Two dozen people signed up for a soundwalk with Betsey Biggs, a young Princeton-trained composer and interdisciplinary artist who often creates site-specific performances. Beforehand, Biggs directed participants to a Web site where they could download “Detox Project,” an electronic piece that she had assembled for the occasion. It consisted largely of sounds recorded in and around the murky old Gowanus Canal, in Brooklyn: machine noises, trucks backing up, the bell of a rising drawbridge, sirens, pedestrian chatter, and, for a long while, a voice softly humming a childlike, three-note melody.
Late in the afternoon, we met at a boarded-up house at the corner of Third Street and Third Avenue and began following Biggs’s lead, listening to “Detox Project” on earphones. The streets were deserted, except for a few hipsters pushing strollers. It was unsettling to hear loud sounds without seeing their source. Conversely, certain noises that seemed to emanate from the soundtrack actually came from real life: I was surprised to see live birds in a dead tree. The experience proved to be psychologically complex, exposing how we orient ourselves with our ears. And, as Biggs notes in her Princeton dissertation, this kind of work plays off Internet-era listening habits—the use of manicured playlists to create what she calls a “cinematic lull,” a “solitary dream state.” When the walk curled through the quiet streets of Carroll Gardens, the collage of noises subsided and the human voice took over. Biggs began banging on a tin drum that she’d brought along, and a friend played an accordion. An electronically mediated experience veered toward old-time music-making. At the end, we stood on the Third Street drawbridge and applauded the composer, who smiled bashfully, nodding toward the strangely beautiful ruined landscape behind her. ♦
Lethem, Auster and Borough President Markowitz support ISSUE Project Room and Brooklyn Culture
paul auster reading at "grocery"
On Saturday, Feb 7, Authors and ISSUE Project Room Art Advisory Board Members Jonathan Lethem and Paul Auster, provided a rare treat for St. Ann’s parents: intimate readings from “The Collector” and “Brooklyn Follies” at Grocery on Smith Street. Marty Markowitz said a few words at the start of the event and we couldn’t have been more pleased to have him join us.
alex waterman performing at 110 Livingston
The lunch was followed by the first public tour of ISSUE’s future home at 110 Livingston with a special performance by Alex Waterman and talk on the unique acoustic characteristics of the room by Raj Patel of one of the world’s leading engineering firms, ARUP.
Interested in seeing the new space? Contact us, we’d love to share it with you!
celebrity t-shirt endorsements
Check out Jonathan Kane sporting the new limited edition ISSUE Project Room T-Shirt designed by Rogues Gallery!
