Two new pieces inspired by urban sound data collected by SONYC will be premiered at ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn, NY this summer. 2019 Harvestworks Resident artist Natacha Diels presents Sad Music for Lonely People, on Friday July 19th at 8pm, while 2019 Harvestworks Resident artist Ursula Scherrer & composer Michael Schumacher present Exotica on Saturday 20th July at 8pm. Both shown in conjunction with Michael Morley: Music for The Never Quartet.
Sad Music for Lonely People, is a series of recent works involving inspirational quotes, messages from another world, and a step-by-step guide to using heavy machinery in healing rituals. It draws from corporatized meditation practices, dark comedy, the absurdity of life/love/politics, and faith in the universal stream of consciousness. Altogether, the set is conceived as an attempted erasure of the disconnect between art and life experience, while maintaining a foothold in the abstract and the tragically ridiculous.
The origin point for “Exotica” was a statement made by a visitor to Ursula’s apartment who compared the obtrusive sounds of the city to “being in the rainforest and hearing exotic birds”. In “Exotica”, the artists have taken this idea and imagined creating a parallel place, within the confines of ISSUE’s theater, that uses the sonic and visual tropes of the city – sirens, alarms, jackhammers, abruptly altered vistas, myriad architectural styles, grid structures – as a basis for the creation of content and form. Within ISSUE, within “Exotica”, the audience will be immersed “in the city”, but in a strange, transposed, deconstructed version.
Michael Morley’s Music for The Never Quartet is a performative installation for a quartet of bowed acoustic guitars placed on solid wooden furniture. The guitar bodies amplify the bowed strings, which the furniture further amplifies, creating a lush and generous sound field. The quartet modifies the collective sound with the addition of wooden blocks, bowls, and rods placed atop and underneath the instruments.
Michael Morley: Music for The Never Quartet / Natacha Diels: Sad Music for Lonely People. Friday July 19th, 8pm.
Michael Morley: Music for The Never Quartet / Ursula Scherrer & Michael Schumacher: Exotica. Saturday July 20th, 8pm.
ISSUE Project Room 22 Boerum, Brooklyn, NY 11201
$15 / $12 ISSUE Members + Students