vip in the city

Issue Project Room

Instead of the McEwan film, I hopped the G from Greenpoint Avenue to Carroll Street. In my decades of riding the subway, this was farthest I’d ever ridden on the G, which is the only line in the system that does not enter Manhattan. We emerged in front of the Gowanus Yacht Club, and as we made our way towards the waterfront, picture-perfect brownstones along familiar-looking streets gave way to warehouses, until at last we reached our destination: the non-profit Issue Project Room.

The performance tonight was a last hurrah of sorts for this entirely distinctive performance space off the Carroll Street Bridge; the IPR, which since June 2005 has been devoted to innovative projects and multidisciplinary, experimental art and cultural events, will be closing on June 30 due to landlord issues and a pending shutdown of the canal for cleanup. We entered in through an imposing black metal gate, hung with a wooden arts-and-crafts style sign and entered a field of gravel, grass, weeds and trees alongside the brown-green waters of the Gowanus Canal.

The performance space itself is a two-story converted oil silo; another adjacent silo houses artists studios. We entered the ground floor bar, past the large metal dumpster, where IPR volunteers were pumping out plastic cups of Brooklyn’s finest beer from a keg. No, we were informed emphatically: not Brooklyn Brewery, but Six Point Craft Ales – “We are 100% Brooklyn!”

It was still a bit early for the show, so we joined the others (including Reuters alum TN) in the waning sun.

Showtime: we climbed up an exterior metal staircase to reach a bare circular space, dotted overhead with the most unique sound set-up I’d ever seen. The 16-channel hemispherical speaker system is the brainchild of artist/composer Stephan Moore and tonight it served as the ultimate showcase for IPR’s final series: “Points in a Circle.”

Performing tonight were Ikue Mori (best known as drummer and founder of early 80s no-wave group DNA) and composer/performer Keith Fullerton Whitman (whom I knew under the moniker Hrvåtski from the first mix tape B ever made me.)

Over the next hour and a half, the ceiling-suspended speakers sent waves of familiar and unfamiliar electronic sounds bouncing and radiating through the room. About a hundred people sat immobile in the dimmed space, eyes closed, reveling in the aural experience.

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