Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase tickets

*Advance tickets for this performance are currently sold out. An in-person wait list will open at 7 P.M.

Utilizing the poetics of longing and erosion, Birdsong is a multimedia performance work which considers the repetition and reverberation of trauma and the ways that grief and resignation vibrate within us. Working with a variety of materials including clay, water, dirt, and industrial fans, and a multi-generational cast captured on film across several seasons in Prospect Park, this workshop presentation will explore the scaffolding of the work. After generating material and building performances in CPR’s spaces for nearly a decade, including as an Artist-in-Residence in 2015 and 2016, this performance is a record of Emily Wexler’s process in and with CPR, and offers a space for reflection, feedback, and public engagement.

The work features a solo performance by Wexler, with on-camera appearances by Chip Alexandria, Courtney Cooke, Canyon Carroll, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Niall Jones, Rachel Orji, Rebecca Pantano, Arabia Richardson, and Song Tucker, costumes by Lily Shell, and a clay sculpture by Jena Gilbert-Merrill.

View the Program

Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase tickets

*advance tickets for this performance are currently sold out. an in-person wait list will open at 2:30 PM.


noposition nolocation is a text-based movement piece including three performers who articulate queer surrealism through kaleidoscopic combinations of sound, body, and language. Through visual tableaus that integrate written absurdist non-sequiturs with symbolic performative gestures, Barnett Cohen, a queer artist who shapeshifts between poet, performance maker, painter, and activist, creates experiential constellations of voice and movement that highlight the persistence of anxious forces, neurotic tendencies, and unremitting violence within dominant ideologies.

Originally curated as part of CPR’s Fall Movement in 2022, but canceled due to Covid-19, Cohen will present an expanded version of the work as it has evolved since December. A chapbook of the text created in connection with the work will be available at the performance.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.


Please join us for a toast and light refreshments after the performance in celebration of CPR’s 2023 Spring Season opening! Wine provided by Vine Wine and snacks by chef James Bailey.

Listening Installation (with live activations)
Fri, November 11 | 6:00–9:00 P.M.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets

Listening Installation (gallery hours)
Sat, November 12 | 12:00–6:00 P.M.
Free and open to the public


If You Look At Something It’s Always Moving is a series of questions and answers that compose a dance. Created by choreographers Londs Reuter and marion storm, the work distills and uplifts the early moments of boundless imagining inside the creative process. Collaging voice, caption, and fantasy, the listening installation features a dynamic system of questions that form an imaginary dance—free of constraints like budgets or gravity or scheduling—in dialogue with artists and thinkers including Kayla Hamilton, Tess Dworman, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Luara Raio, Stephanie Acosta, Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, and Fritz Buehner, and captioning by Corvyn Dostie.

The work is an extension of Londs and storm’s project CONFERENCE CALL, which was presented by CPR in May 2021, and during Londs’s residency as a 2020-21 AiR. Over three Sundays, small groups convened on Zoom with their cameras off and their microphones on, guided through a series of scores involving listening, responding, cacophony/silence, and presence. If You Look At Something It’s Always Moving is a distillation of one of these scores, amplifying and paying tribute to descriptive practices (like audio description) that communicate a dance, where what you perceive is real.

On Friday, November 11 from 6–9 P.M., the Listening Installation will have live activations throughout the evening, and then will be open to the public with gallery hours on Saturday, November 12 from 12–6 P.M.


If You Look At Something It’s Always Moving is supported, in part, by a Late Stage Stipend from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

Important note about visiting CPR:
CPR requires all visitors, artists, and staff to provide documentation of full vaccination against Covid-19 as well as a vaccine booster (if eligible), along with a photo ID, to enter CPR. For more information about booster eligibility, please visit the CDC's website. Masks must also be worn at all times inside CPR.

Listening Installation (with live activations)
Fri, November 11 | 6:00–9:00 P.M.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets

Listening Installation (gallery hours)
Sat, November 12 | 12:00–6:00 P.M.
Free and open to the public


If You Look At Something It’s Always Moving is a series of questions and answers that compose a dance. Created by choreographers Londs Reuter and marion storm, the work distills and uplifts the early moments of boundless imagining inside the creative process. Collaging voice, caption, and fantasy, the listening installation features a dynamic system of questions that form an imaginary dance—free of constraints like budgets or gravity or scheduling—in dialogue with artists and thinkers including Kayla Hamilton, Tess Dworman, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Luara Raio, Stephanie Acosta, Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, and Fritz Buehner, and captioning by Corvyn Dostie.

The work is an extension of Londs and storm’s project CONFERENCE CALL, which was presented by CPR in May 2021, and during Londs’s residency as a 2020-21 AiR. Over three Sundays, small groups convened on Zoom with their cameras off and their microphones on, guided through a series of scores involving listening, responding, cacophony/silence, and presence. If You Look At Something It’s Always Moving is a distillation of one of these scores, amplifying and paying tribute to descriptive practices (like audio description) that communicate a dance, where what you perceive is real.

On Friday, November 11 from 6–9 P.M., the Listening Installation will have live activations throughout the evening, and then will be open to the public with gallery hours on Saturday, November 12 from 12–6 P.M.


If You Look At Something It’s Always Moving is supported, in part, by a Late Stage Stipend from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

Important note about visiting CPR:
CPR requires all visitors, artists, and staff to provide documentation of full vaccination against Covid-19 as well as a vaccine booster (if eligible), along with a photo ID, to enter CPR. For more information about booster eligibility, please visit the CDC's website. Masks must also be worn at all times inside CPR.

Tickets: $0–$25, pay what you can
Purchase Tickets

Co-presented with TheREDprojectNYC and extending from Johnnie Cruise Mercer’s research as a CPR 2022 Artist-in-Residence, Umbilicus marks the seventh volume within Process memoir 7: Volumes on Black Philosophy, Othered Possibility, and Freedom (through Rest, Unrestricted Thought thus Imagination), and is part of Johnnie Cruise Mercer's six-year project, “A Process Anthology: The Decade from Hell and the Decade that Followed Suite.” Unlike other process memoirs, this chapter renders its goals completely outside of the context of performing; embracing rest's ability to find alternate ways to view, produce, and take on work.  At CPR, Johnnie surrenders to a team of collaborators, as they together curate a set of responses to inner wisdom, change, and home, sharing music, theater, and dance in a TED Talk-like variety concert.

“A Process Anthology: The Decade from Hell and the Decade that Followed Suite.” is a ten-chapter anthology of process forward works/doings, a series of abstract stories inspired by the memories of the “21st Century.” Built by a team of artists from various mediums over time, Johnnie Cruise Mercer and TheREDprojectNYC set out to chart and embody the years 2000 to 2020 in search for what's beyond the contemporary, our current imagined realities.

This sharing/volume will include excerpts and raw makings from "The Decade from Hell…", one of two large-scale culminating works in the process anthology. "The Decade from Hell…" is set to premiere in June 2023 at Gibney Dance Center.

Important note about visiting CPR:
CPR requires all visitors, artists, and staff to provide documentation of full vaccination against Covid-19 as well as a vaccine booster (if eligible), along with a photo ID, to enter CPR. For more information about booster eligibility, please visit the CDC's website. Masks must also be worn at all times inside CPR.

RSVP ($10 suggested donation)

If you wish to forego the donation please contact nick@issueprojectroom.org to RSVP.


Co-presented with ISSUE Project Room and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, multi-disciplinary artist, musician, designer and 2022 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Selwa Abd (Bergsonist) performs a new work titled As If Reality? Following her previous work-in-progress presentations of the piece on Governors Island and online in June 2022, Bergonist is presenting a new iteration alongside projections of 360 footage and visual fragments captured in Morocco in the summer of 2022.

Selwa Abd’s Bergsonist project follows a creative approach based on intuition & fragment-based systems. Her new works are interested in building worlds (sonic & visual) as simulations set up for extending creative research and speculations on the future that awaits us. Selwa has noted that “I've always been working in fragments, whether in design or music,” and her work often delves into a prolific archive of hours of sonic and visual exploration. Often working with micro-drafts that become essential toward assembling later works, Selwa focuses on a conceptual use of fragments and intuition as ways of altering scales of perception to further understand sonic and visual mediums. These fragments are explorations scaled within the tensions between the actual/virtual that have become a signature of the Bergsonist project.


Selwa Abd is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician & designer living in NYC (originally from Morocco). Under the guise of Bergsonist, she uses a variety of media to investigate social resonance through divergent conceptual aesthetics (minimalism and musique concrète to name a few). Selwa’s extended creative practice uses intuition & fragment-based systems as legitimate and only modi operandi. Through her work, she explores notions of identity, memory, and social politics. She is the founder of the community resource Pick Up The Flow. She hosts a monthly music show on NTS Radio and a podcast featuring inspiring creatives from the PUTF community and beyond. In 2020, her first full length album / sonic autobiography: “Middle Ouest” was released via Optimo Music. She also scored the award winning film “Jmar” by Samy Sidali which got featured at the Brooklyn Film Festival in 2022.


Selwa Abd’s ISSUE Project Room residency was supported by Harvestworks’ Technology Immersion Program for artists (TIP) and is part of an ongoing program collaboration between ISSUE and Harvestworks, two organizations that are committed to supporting the creation and presentation of experimental performance practices while sharing resources.

ISSUE Project Room residency events are free to the public. Due to limited capacity at many venues, and to ensure RSVP attendance, ISSUE requests a $10 suggested donation is coordinated in order to secure the RSVP. In the instance that an audience member wishes to forego the donation please contact nick@issueprojectroom.org.

Important note about visiting CPR:
CPR requires all visitors, artists, and staff to provide documentation of full vaccination against Covid-19 as well as a vaccine booster (if eligible), along with a photo ID, to enter CPR. For more information about booster eligibility, please visit the CDC's website. Masks must also be worn at all times inside CPR.

to love the rise/pt.2 [REMNANTS]:
Ogemdi Ude, Kimiko Tanabe, s. lumbert, anna thompson, taylor knight, Symara Johnson, Tara Sheena, Malcolm-x Betts, Athena Kokoronis, Myssi Robinson, HandyQueers, Stephanie Acosta, Iris McCloughan, jess pretty, Theo Armstrong, and marion spencer


Opening and Live Performance
Thursday, September 8, 2022 | 6:00–9:00 P.M.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase tickets

Gallery Hours
Saturday, September 10, 2022 | 12:00–6:00 P.M.
Free and open to the public

View the program


to love the rise/pt.2 is a multimedia dance project grounded in physical practice, collective imagination, and relationships, created by a multidisciplinary group of artists under the direction of marion spencer. Through movement, vocalizations, and carpentry, a new Utopia is composted, built, and traversed, collaging moving and grooving, sensing and sounding, constructing and deconstructing, order and chaos, to arrive together into a transformed ecosystem and alternative order. The collaborative process has developed through an apocalypse previously imagined, and now lived, offering a feminine, feminist vision of a world built from the detritus of our current one. 

Premiering as a process in two parts, to love the rise/pt.2 begins with [REMNANTS], a live performance exhibition at CPR – Center for Performance Research, followed by an evening-length performance presented by Roulette Intermedium in October 2022.

The Opening and Live Performance on Thursday, September 8 will feature a durational activation of the live performance exhibition in CPR’s Storefront Gallery, accompanied by a large-scale video installation in the Large Studio. During Gallery Hours on Saturday, September 10, remnants of the opening will be on view in the Storefront Gallery only, with intermittent embodied activations throughout the day.

we are back
we are composting
we are cracking open
we are meeting in prospect park/Munsee Lenape & Canarsie Land
we are listening
we are taking our time
we are dancing
we are making sounds
we are witness to what is here
we are examining what remains
we are laughing
we are talking
we are talking shit
we are being together
we are still making a dance


to love the rise/pt.2 has been supported through its development by The Chocolate Factory Theater, Mana Contemporary, Gibney Dance Center (for one day before the Covid-19 lockdown), Prospect Park, an Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New Dance Alliance, The Field Center, Catwalk Institute, and Bridge Street Theatre.

Important note about visiting CPR:
CPR requires all visitors, artists, and staff to provide documentation of full vaccination against Covid-19 as well as a vaccine booster (if eligible), along with a photo ID, to enter CPR. For more information about booster eligibility, please visit the CDC's website. Masks must also be worn at all times inside CPR.

to love the rise/pt.2 [REMNANTS]:
Ogemdi Ude, Kimiko Tanabe, s. lumbert, anna thompson, taylor knight, Symara Johnson, Tara Sheena, Malcolm-x Betts, Athena Kokoronis, Myssi Robinson, HandyQueers, Stephanie Acosta, Iris McCloughan, jess pretty, Theo Armstrong, and marion spencer


Opening and Live Performance
Thursday, September 8, 2022 | 6:00–9:00 P.M.
Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can
Purchase tickets

Gallery Hours
Saturday, September 10, 2022 | 12:00–6:00 P.M.
Free and open to the public

View the program


to love the rise/pt.2 is a multimedia dance project grounded in physical practice, collective imagination, and relationships, created by a multidisciplinary group of artists under the direction of marion spencer. Through movement, vocalizations, and carpentry, a new Utopia is composted, built, and traversed, collaging moving and grooving, sensing and sounding, constructing and deconstructing, order and chaos, to arrive together into a transformed ecosystem and alternative order. The collaborative process has developed through an apocalypse previously imagined, and now lived, offering a feminine, feminist vision of a world built from the detritus of our current one. 

Premiering as a process in two parts, to love the rise/pt.2 begins with [REMNANTS], a live performance exhibition at CPR – Center for Performance Research, followed by an evening-length performance presented by Roulette Intermedium in October 2022.

The Opening and Live Performance on Thursday, September 8 will feature a durational activation of the live performance exhibition in CPR’s Storefront Gallery, accompanied by a large-scale video installation in the Large Studio. During Gallery Hours on Saturday, September 10, remnants of the opening will be on view in the Storefront Gallery only, with intermittent embodied activations throughout the day.

we are back
we are composting
we are cracking open
we are meeting in prospect park/Munsee Lenape & Canarsie Land
we are listening
we are taking our time
we are dancing
we are making sounds
we are witness to what is here
we are examining what remains
we are laughing
we are talking
we are talking shit
we are being together
we are still making a dance


to love the rise/pt.2 has been supported through its development by The Chocolate Factory Theater, Mana Contemporary, Gibney Dance Center (for one day before the Covid-19 lockdown), Prospect Park, an Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New Dance Alliance, The Field Center, Catwalk Institute, and Bridge Street Theatre.

Important note about visiting CPR:
CPR requires all visitors, artists, and staff to provide documentation of full vaccination against Covid-19 as well as a vaccine booster (if eligible), along with a photo ID, to enter CPR. For more information about booster eligibility, please visit the CDC's website. Masks must also be worn at all times inside CPR.