09/02 @ 8:00pm - Meredith Drum and Alison Ward

Admission: $10

Meredith Drum and Alison Ward

8 PM; Admission $10

Meredith Drum presents three low-ball sci-fi video works that form a loose trilogy, "The Tower", "The Formula" and "The Double". The narratives combine elements from old stories of conflict between feminine and masculine and interior and exterior loss and fulfillment. All three were filmed in the same feral park and graced by actress Juliana Francis Kelly.

Alison Ward explores the ideas and motivations behind her piece the Beastly Beauty in the form of a performance as slide lecture. She will re-envision her spectacular performance, an on-going farcical battle that most recently occurred on Coney Island's beach and boardwalk in late August. The Punch and Judy battle between two characters embodying different elements of beauty and the grotesque features elaborate Baroque style costumes, one set adorned with pink ribbons and lace, the other with garbage bags and filth. Each are backed by six cheerleaders in armor, who taunt each other with chants that merge cheerleading rallies with traditional battle cries and King Kong-style beating of the chest. The battle is comical with each side flirting and fighting, hitting and kissing, much like two lovers in a fierce fight. The choreography combines wrestling moves with traditional dance and burlesque to create a spectacle that is simultaneously violent, sexual, and humorous. The idea behind The Beastly Beauty, is an effort to comment through use of physical humor and public performance, on the nature of violence, and to upend notions of traditional roles of the masculine and feminine.

Artist Bios:

Meredith Drum is a cinema artist who makes both experimental fiction and nonfiction as well as more conventional documentary. Her videos have recently shown at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Galapagos Art Space, Monkey Town, Fales Library and Archive at NYU and been published online on Good Magazine and the New York Times Tmagazine. Recent honors include a Flaherty Film Seminar fellowship, an Artists-in-the-Marketplace residency and an award from the Experimental Television Center. Also, she was named an "artist to watch" by art critic Ken Johnson in his New York Times review of the AIM 29 show. Of late she has worked with Patrick Bensard, the director of the Cinémathéque de la Danse in Paris, on a portrait of Lucinda Childs and with artist / choreographer Grisha Coleman on a piece about artists and health care for Levering Investments in Creativity (LINC).

Alison Ward is an artist whose work incorporates performance, video and sculptural installation. She focuses on issues of identity interpreted through physical and slapstick humour. Exhibitions include Haven Arts, The Dumbo Arts Center, and the Bronx Museum as well as the CCCB Museum in Spain, RAW Space Gallery in Australia and Castlefield Gallery in England. She has done residencies at Raw Space in Australia, The Artist in the Marketplace Program, and the LMCC studio program. Currently she is an artist partner on board The Waterpod Project in New York City, and is an artist in resident in LMCC's Swing Space Program.

Selected Films by Meredith Drum and Alison Ward

Meredith Drum presents three low-ball sci-fi video works that form a loose trilogy, "The Tower", "The Formula" and "The Double". The narratives combine elements from old stories of conflict between feminine and masculine and interior and exterior loss and fulfillment. All three were filmed in the same feral park and graced by actress Juliana Francis Kelly.

Alison Ward explores the ideas and motivations behind her piece the Beastly Beauty in the form of a performance as slide lecture. She will re-envision her spectacular performance, an on-going farcical battle that most recently occurred on Coney Island's beach and boardwalk in late August. The Punch and Judy battle between two characters embodying different elements of beauty and the grotesque features elaborate Baroque style costumes, one set adorned with pink ribbons and lace, the other with garbage bags and filth. Each are backed by six cheerleaders in armor, who taunt each other with chants that merge cheerleading rallies with traditional battle cries and King Kong-style beating of the chest. The battle is comical with each side flirting and fighting, hitting and kissing, much like two lovers in a fierce fight. The choreography combines wrestling moves with traditional dance and burlesque to create a spectacle that is simultaneously violent, sexual, and humorous. The idea behind The Beastly Beauty, is an effort to comment through use of physical humor and public performance, on the nature of violence, and to upend notions of traditional roles of the masculine and feminine.

Artist Bios:

09/03 @ 8:00pm - Scott Draves - Dreams in High Fidelity

Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot is a visual and software artist living in New York City. Draves is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 60,000 daily participants.

He created the original Flame algorithm in 1991, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Electric Sheep in 1999. Draves' software artworks are released as open source and distributed via the internet. His latest work, Clade 1, is a rare true high-definition video artwork that runs a 26-minute loop. Dreams in High Fidelity, a moving painting that runs infinitely, is installed in the lobby of Google's headquarters, and has been acquired by corporate and residential collections nationally.

Draves' award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, the Prix Ars Electronica, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor at the Sonar festival in Barcelona.

Dreams in High Fidelity

Considered the piece de resistance of the Draves oeuvres, Dreams in High Fidelity is a captivating presentation of high-resolution design abstractions hand-selected by the artist. Considered "a painting that evolves" as opposed to a video, HiFiDreams is driven by software art that offers an infinite, continuously morphing playback of thousands of sheep.

Scott's real time video will be accompanied by live music by Zach Layton, Shelley Burgon and Michael Evans

09/04 @ 8:00pm - Nate Boyce + Ray Sweeten

BOYCE, NATE

Nate Boyce is a video artist and musician who lives and works in the Bay area. His video work has been widely exhibited in the US as well as Europe. He actively collaborates with Christopher Willits, Eats Tapes, Wobbly and Matmos with whom he has toured extensively.

Eats Tapes - Tenderizer Video by Nate Boyce from EaTs TaPeS on Vimeo.

also Watch: PTERYL - EATS TAPES (dir. NATE BOYCE)

oscilloscope1 Ray Sweeten b.1975. Audio origins begin with antiquated tape experiments based on recorded correspondences between his late father and brother. In '89 he studied classical piano and theory at the University of Rhode Island. In '93 Sweeten entered the TIMARA program (Technology In Music And Related Arts) at Oberlin Conservatory. In '98 he acquired a residency at Fabrica, spa.Italy, where he collaborated with Michael Galasso (ECM), Robert Wilson, Chieko Mori (Tzadik). He also produced music for MTV Japan and Italy, Benetton, and performed frequently throughout Italy and Europe solo and with FabricaMusica, a collaborative ensemble comprised of musicians from diverse cultural and musical backgrounds. Ray moved to New York City in 2000 to work for Children's Television Workshop where he provided music for CD-Rom/Web games, cell phones and broadcast television. He received the Van Lier Residency for experimental electronics and oscilloscope graphics. He was also a member of the Plantains, a multi-media synth-pop outfit, and released work on Suction Records, Kinetic Media, They Shoot Homos Don't They, Ghostly, and Colette. Sweeten has performed and screened at The Kitchen, Monkey Town, Millennium Film Project, The New York Underground Film Festival, CinemaTexas, Liverpool Biennial, Pacific Film Archive, Chicago Filmmakers, Aurora Picture Show and Angel Orensantz.

09/05 @ 8:00pm - SHAPESHIFTER - curated by Michelle Handelman

Admission: $10

Paper Collection by Shannon Plumb

SHAPESHIFTER

works that investigate revolutions of exchange both political and sexual, transfiguration, transmutation and radical distortions of psychological entropy.

a night of film, video and performance
curated by Michelle Handelman

Featuring work by:
Robert Appleton and Brandon Olson
Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin
Jillian Mcdonald
Bjorn Melhus
Shannon Plumb
Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley
Abbey Williams
Tara Matiek

Tonight is the finale of Issue Project Room's Fall Film/Video Series

Curator for SHAPESHIFTER:
Michelle Handelman makes confrontational works that explore the sublime in it's various forms of excess and nothingness. Her recent project DORIAN, a cinematic 4-screen installation premiered at Participant, Inc., NYC and will be featured in the exhibition Virtuoso Illusion, curated by Michael Rush at The MIT List Center for Visual Art (winter 2010). Her videos, performances, and publicworks have shown at Pompidou Centre, Paris; ICA, London; Performa 05; American Film Institute, SF MOMA; and Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. She directed the feature documentary BloodSisters and collaborated for several years with Monte Cazazza, pioneer of the Industrial music scene. Her writing appears in Inappropriate Behaviour (Serpents Tail, London), Apocalypse Culture (Feral House Press, Los Angeles) and Herotica 3 edited by Susie Bright (Plume Books, SF). She lives in New York and is an assistant professor in Film/video dept at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. www.michellehandelman.com

For more information contact

press@issueprojectroom.org

or call zach layton:

347.351.3442

ISSUE Project Room

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brooklyn, ny, 11215