Suzanne Fiol

Suzanne Fiol (United States, May 9, 1960 – October 5, 2009), "an impresario of avant-garde culture in New York", The Brooklyn Borough President, and Fiol herself

A fixture of the downtown experimental performing art scene for twenty years, she was an early supporter of composer Rhys Chatham, experimental musicians like Alan Licht and Tony Conrad, numbers of teenage and obscure bands, (for instance "Nautical Almanac, the hyper-obscure Baltimore noise duo "

Life A native of New York City, Fiol attended the experimental Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she told classmates in 1978 that she wanted "to devote my life to experimental culture." including Donald Wren, Marcuse Pfeifer and Brent Sikkema galleries. 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." and in the same year she co-launched Issue Management, an agency to represent photographers

Growth of ISSUE Project Room

As the costs of real estate rose on 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 co-founder Lee Ranaldo told The Brooklyn Paper. "She was an incredibly dynamic and creative mover and shaker."

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 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, 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, musicians Tony Conrad and R. Luke DuBois, and visual artist Robert Longo, is continuing with fundraising. An Art Advisory Board is headed by Yoko Ono.