Suzanne Fiol
Encyclopedia
Suzanne Fiol ,"an impresario of avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 culture in New York" founded the performance space ISSUE Project Room
ISSUE Project Room
The ISSUE Project Room is a music venue in Brooklyn, New York founded in 2003 by Suzanne Fiol. Located in The Old American Can Factory in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, the venue supports a wide variety of contemporary performance, specializing in presenting experimental and avant-garde music...

 in 2003 and oversaw its growth from the fringes of the New York new music scene into what The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...


, The Brooklyn Borough President
Borough president
Borough President is an elective office in each of the five boroughs of New York City.-Reasons for establishment:...

, and Fiol herself predicted will become the "Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 for the avant-garde" when it opens its downtown Brooklyn location in 2011. Fiol's goal in life "was to create a dynamic environment for music, performance, readings, and the development of new work, and she succeeded; the organization has become a reference for experimental art in New York City….(S)he devoted her life to the promotion of experimental culture."

A fixture of the downtown experimental performing art scene for twenty years, she was an early supporter of composer Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions...

, experimental musicians like Alan Licht
Alan Licht
Alan Licht is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. He is also a writer and journalist.-Biography:Licht was born in New Jersey in 1968...

 and Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer...

, Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

, the reclusive Texas musician Jandek
Jandek
Jandek is the musical project of an anonymous outsider musician who operates out of Houston, Texas. Since 1978, Jandek has self-released over 60 albums of unusual, often emotionally dissolute folk and blues songs without ever granting more than the occasional interview or providing any biographical...

, drummer Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori
, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...

, and "new-music regulars like Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...

, Anthony Coleman
Anthony Coleman
Anthony Coleman is an American musician. Coleman is a piano and keys player, trombonist and vocalist mainly working within the free improvised and avant-garde jazz scenes in downtown New York during the late 1970s through to the present day.His greatest impact was during the 80s and 90s when he...

 and Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...

",
numbers of teenage and obscure bands, (for instance "Nautical Almanac
Nautical Almanac
Nautical Almanac can refer to:* Nautical almanac - a publication describing the positions and movements of celestial bodies* American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac - first published in 1852* U.S...

, the hyper-obscure Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

 noise duo " as well as established groups like Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...

, which provided a fundraiser appearance for ISSUE Project Room. In addition to her leadership role in the performing arts, Fiol was a respected photographer whose work was exhibited nationally and internationally and appears in the permanent collections at The Art Institute of Chicago, The Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....

, The Queens Museum
Queens Museum of Art
The Queens Museum of Art is an art museum and educational center located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States.-Overview:...

, and the Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee Art Museum
The Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions...

. Fiol died of lung and brain cancer in October, 2009.

Life

A native of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Fiol attended the experimental Antioch College
Antioch College
Antioch College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States. It was the founder and the flagship institution of the six-campus Antioch University system. Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1853 with politician and...

 in Yellow Springs, Ohio
Yellow Springs, Ohio
Yellow Springs is a village in Greene County, Ohio, United States, and is the location of Antioch College and Antioch University Midwest. The population was 3,487 at the 2010 census...

, where she told classmates in 1978 that she wanted "to devote my life to experimental culture." She then attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a BFA. She earned her MFA degree from Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 in 1983. She worked as a gallerist in SoHo including Donald Wren, Marcuse Pfeifer and Brent Sikkema galleries. where she was a successful art dealer. Married to Joaquin Fiol, whom she met at the Mudd Club
Mudd Club
The Mudd Club was a TriBeCa nightclub that was opened in October 1978 by Steve Mass, art curator Diego Cortez and Anya Phillips, a figure in the downtown punk scene...

, in 1991 she chose for several years to be a stay-at-home mother and pursued a career as a multi-media painter-photographer "cultivating a style that superimposed layers of paint over her original photos in an attempt to capture the 'ecstatic moment' of her subject material." She returned to the avant-garde community when she and her husband divorced, and was a fixture of the avant-jazz club Tonic on the Lower East Side. In 2001 she created the cover of Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...

’s 2001 album,'Saints
Saints (Marc Ribot album)
Saints is a 2001 album of solo guitar recorded by Marc Ribot. It features several interpretations of compositions by Albert Ayler, as well as traditional spirituals, jazz standards, showtunes, and a song by The Beatles.-Reception:...

.' and in the same year she co-launched Issue Management, an agency to represent photographers in a former garage on 6th Street between Avenues B and C in the East Village. The space allowed the earliest incarnation of ISSUE Project Room, which attracted artists needing space for presentation of experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...

 and multi-disciplinary performances. Fiol's new venue quickly established a place in the small circuit of downtown clubs and makeshift theaters that specialize in the fringes of contemporary music As the reviewer for 'The New Yorker' magazine put it, "Cagean
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

 conceptualists rubbed shoulders with free-jazz virtuosos, indie-rock sound terrorists, and diehard modernists."

ISSUE Project Room became the focus of the rest of her professional life.

Growth of ISSUE Project Room

As the costs of real estate rose in the Lower East Side, many marginal businesses were forced to fold, but Fiol adapted. “We lost a lot of creative space [in the city] — the Cooler went under, Tonic went under, but Suzanne provided a space for creative art that challenged and pushed the limits,” Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

 co-founder Lee Ranaldo
Lee Ranaldo
Lee M. Ranaldo is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth...

 told The Brooklyn Paper
The Brooklyn Paper
The Brooklyn Paper is a small, weekly broadsheet that covers news related exclusively to the New York City borough of Brooklyn. In existence for twenty-nine years, The Brooklyn Paper covers news and cultural events that have taken place throughout the borough, using different mastheads for...

. “She was an incredibly dynamic and creative mover and shaker.”

Fiol moved her operation to Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, finding space in the largely vacant industrial area along the Gowanus Canal
Gowanus Canal
The Gowanus Canal, also known as the Gowanus Creek Canal, is a canal in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, geographically on the westernmost portion of Long Island...

. Composer Stephan Moore designed, built and donated a signature 16-channel speaker system for Fiol. The space attracted downtown musicians, and "the raw, bare space became a hot house of loud noise, strange sounds and electronic connections to another world." Fiol said she attracted "the downtown improvisers, the experimental musicians, the sound artists, people making new chamber music. …When I worked in my studio, this is what I listened to. All sorts of new, weird music."

Although "Fiol was known for her innovative transformation of unlikely spaces into performance spaces recognized for their warmth and great sound," the Brooklyn neighborhood into which Fiol transplanted her avant-garde hipster culture has its own unvarnished quality. One reviewer described the experience of approaching the current facility:
To get to the Issue Project Room, proceed past Carroll Street's red brick row houses and their wrought iron gratings, past the building marked NYC 2WAY INT.L, until you come, right before the canal, to a medieval-sized gate made of bent iron rods. Duck through the inset door (be careful not to slam it) and make your way through the dirt and grass lot, weaving through the bare winter trees and past the covered-up boat that lies plowed into the ground, as if deposited there by a flood. Look up and you'll see the circular turret of an abandoned oil silo rising high above the canal, concrete and round. Scale the slippery iron steps and look through the glass door: You might see a troupe of matronly women and gray men banging gamelans or bowing zithers; you might see a white man from Harlem with a long beard, a pink bandana, and a black hat hiding his eyes, on his knees, screaming; or you might see, because it's there to see most every night, a marginally well-heeled crowd of men and women, glasses predominate, eyes closed, often cross-legged on the carpet, slowly nodding in empathy at the spectacle before them.


Performers at ISSUE Project Room range across the musical spectrum, from high-profile Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...

 to "Peter Walker
Peter Walker (guitarist)
Peter Walker is an American folk guitarist noted for dextrous instrumental pieces that reference the Indian classical and Spanish flamenco traditions...

—the 1960s Village legend who once served as Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...

's music director …like a long-vanished magician …Other forgotten artists—like Gamelan Son of Lion
Gamelan Son of Lion
Gamelan Son of Lion is a new-music American gamelan ensemble based in New York City. The group was founded in 1976 by Barbara Benary , Philip Corner, and Daniel Goode. It is a composers' collective as well as repertory ensemble...

, a Folkways
Folkways Records
Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...

 recording troupe from the '70s—and relatively new ones—such as the Locust hypno-quintet Function (have performed at ISSUE Project Room, as have)…legendary downtown composer Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions...

 (reunited) with alumni from his storied '70s and early '80s downtown guitar trios, including Kim Gordon
Kim Gordon
Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, vocalist, artist, record producer, video director and actress. She has sung and played bass and guitar in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, and in Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz...

, Thurston Moore
Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label...

, and Lee Ranaldo, of Sonic Youth; vaunted New York artist Robert Longo
Robert Longo
Robert Longo is an American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.-Early life and education:...

; fellow Table of the Elements
Table of the Elements
Table of the Elements is an American record label. It concentrates on re-released and specially recorded experimental music, including many of the great avant garde musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries — John Cale, Tony Conrad and La Monte Young, for instance — as well as...

 recording artists Jonathan Kane and David Daniell; Sir Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls
Sun City Girls
The Sun City Girls were an American experimental rock band, formed in 1979 in Phoenix, Arizona. From 1981 the group consisted of Alan Bishop , his brother Richard Bishop , and the late Charles Gocher . Their name was inspired by Sun City, Arizona, an Arizona retirement community...

 and Harlem's No Neck Blues Band" and Sunburned Hand of the Man
Sunburned Hand of the Man
Sunburned Hand of the Man are a band from Massachusetts that formed in 1997 from the remnants of the Boston psychedelic punk trio Shit Spangled Banner....

." The No Neck Blues Band "hung an armchair upside down from the ceiling and played percussion against the floor, walls, and ceiling while the audience huddled around in a crooked semi-circle until performer and audience were nearly indistinguishable."

Future of ISSUE Project Room

In 2009 Fiol submitted the winning proposal for the development of a prime location in downtown Brooklyn. The building, at 110 Livingston Street
110 Livingston Street
110 Livingston Street is a Beaux Arts-style building located in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States.The building was designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, and was built in 1926 to serve as the headquarters for the Elks organization, including amenities such...

, was designed by the famed beaux arts architectural firm McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1926. It was headquarters of the Board of Education until the Board was dismantled under the administration of mayor Michael Bloomberg. The city sold the building in 2003 to the Brooklyn developer Two Trees Management for more than $45 million.

As part of a deal for the private development of the site, Two Trees agreed to contribute the ground floor space. Fiol received a 20-year rent-free lease on the 4800 square feet (445.9 m²) space, contingent on raising $1.6 million for renovation. At the time of her death in October 2009, she was only slightly short of that goal, largely due to the contribution of a $1.1 million grant from the discretionary funds of Marty Markowitz
Marty Markowitz
Marty Markowitz is the Borough President of Brooklyn, New York City, the most populous borough in New York City with nearly 2.6 million residents. Markowitz was first elected borough president in 2001 after serving 23 years as a New York State Senator...

, the Brooklyn borough president and a fundraising art auction at Phillips de Pury gallery in Chelsea, to which over a hundred well-known artists donated works, raising $350,000.

The Board of Trustees of ISSUE Project Room, which includes actor/director Steve Buscemi
Steve Buscemi
Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemi is an American actor, writer and film director. An associate member of the renowned experimental theater company The Wooster Group, Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films including New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs,...

, musicians Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer...

 and R. Luke DuBois
R. Luke DuBois
Roger Luke DuBois is an American composer, performer, conceptual new media artist, programmer, record producer and pedagogue based in New York City.-Biography:...

, and visual artist Robert Longo
Robert Longo
Robert Longo is an American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.-Early life and education:...

, is continuing with fundraising. An Art Advisory Board is headed by Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

.
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