Matana Roberts / Ben Vida with Sara Magenheimer

ISSUE Project Room celebrates the 20th Anniversary of its Artists-In-Residence (AIR) program throughout 2026 with performances by current residents and returning alumni. This anniversary season highlights AIRs whose work reflects the ongoing evolution of a much broader community of experimental artists who have helped shape ISSUE for over twenty years.

Saturday, July 18th at 8pm, ISSUE closes the summer season with the return of Matana Roberts (2009 AIR). Opening the evening, Ben Vida (2013 AIR) will perform music from his 2026 release, Oblivion Seekers with vocalist Sara Magenheimer.

Roberts has maintained a longtime presence within ISSUE’s history, from early presentations of their Coin Coin cycle during their 2009 residency to community-oriented gatherings such as the LISTENING THROUGH THE FIRE town hall in 2025. For this appearance, Roberts returns to the 22 Boerum Pl. theater in a live performance format, presenting solo work rooted in improvisation, sonic experimentation, and spontaneous composition. Stripped of the multimedia elements they are known for, the performance will center on the immediacy of sound and acoustic space, while continuing ongoing investigations into resonance, perception, and collective listening.

Fellow comrades in narrative art, Vida and Magenheimer, present a live collaboration expanding on material from Vida’s newest release, Oblivion Seekers. Following 2023’s collaboration with new music ensemble Yarn/Wire, it focuses on spoken word duets with instrumental compositions that have the casual flow of dialogue, conversational but subdued. Evoking novel confluences of music and speech, from Neil Tennant and the Pet Shop Boys’ spoken verses, to “the entire history of hip hop,” Vida gently and playfully breaks down language’s hierarchy of meaning and sound until they exist in egalitarian harmony.