Improvisation as Trust, Presence, and Expression: Stnic at the 2026 Brink Exhibition

Re:View by clay scofield

Winter 2026

RE:VIEW

At Brink, we’re excited to present Stnic, the Iowa City experimental musicians featured at this year’s Brink Exhibition. The Brink Exhibition is an annual fundraiser supporting independent literary publishing, and this year’s event explores the intersection of Art + Sanctum. I discussed Stnic’s performance and process to get a glimpse into what we will witness Saturday, February 28th, at Old Brick in Iowa City.

Stnic (pronounced “Saint-Nic,” or “Satan-ic”) is an experimental music project from Iowa City, IA. Based in a regular practice of free improvisation, musicians Patrick O’Connor, Levi Brown, Jordan Decker, and Charlotte Leung defy categorization by choosing to play without predetermined styles or goals; there is a constant sense of searching shared by the performers and audience. Embracing absurdity, their music carries elements of noise and postmodern collage while maintaining, or attempting to maintain, sincerity of expression. They emphasize the creative documentation of their process, recording all their sessions on tape and experimenting with different forms of media and production.

clay: You’ll be performing at the Brink Exhibition on February 28. Can you tell us a little bit about what that experience will be like?

Stnic: We’re really excited for the Exhibition, it will be a unique and memorable event. We’ll be providing a dreamscape alongside immersive work from other artists.

c: I’d love to learn more about your unique instrumentation and setup.

Stnic: There are a lot of different instruments that get brought into each performance, but it essentially comes down to electronics, acoustics, saxophone, and voice.

c: Can you talk about the perhaps precarious horizon between accessibility and experimentation in your process or music?

Stnic: Our whole approach is “no goals” and our sounds are reflective of our personal interests and ideas. Our tastes are all unique and express a range of accessibility, we just do whatever we feel like with no goals and that in itself is experimental.

c: I was thinking about the words “power derived from observing impulses” that appear in one of your songs. To me, it could be a short manifesto for improvisation. How do you develop your craft in improvisation as a group?

Stnic: To Jordan, it’s always been about how much we can trust each other while also trusting that we can express ourselves however we feel. That in itself contributes to a more honest improvisation.

c: What is critical to you about the role of improvisation?

Stnic: This one was hard for us to agree on but each answer is somewhat similar. To Charlotte, it’s about the freedom and the room for creativity. To Levi, improvisation is practice for being present and making decisions in the moment. To Pat, it’s about honesty and expressing oneself without a filter or an edit.

c: What’s it been like bringing a new member into the band?

Stnic: So far, so good. We were interested in including guests, but Charlotte fit with us so naturally that we asked her to join. It’s been great and removes a lot of pressure from Pat to no longer be the sole provider of melody.

c: What are you currently listening to or reading?

Stnic: Pat is reading Iris Murdoch and listening to Australian ambient from the 80s. Levi is listening to Charlie Crockett and just finished reading a book about improvisation called Free Play. Charlotte is reading a murder mystery called Malice by Keigo Higashino and listening to a lot of Canton-pop (a recent favorite is Lai Ying). Jordan just finished reading Graffiti on Low or No Dollars by Elberto Mueller and has been listening to Tropical Fuck Storm.

c: Where can readers find out more about Stnic and listen to your music?

Stnic: We’re on all the things — eBay, Bandcamp, YouTube. (Also, this podcast interview with iHearIC.)

c: What’s coming up next for Stnic?

Stnic: We don’t know, this might be it for us. Just kidding, we’re all very committed and actually really excited about possibly signing with an obscure German e-label called difelshtiken, which is the daughter label of Higher Octave from the 90s that put out all the greatest stuff of the non-wave movement that we like. But before you'd go down any of those rabbit holes, we'd like to thank Nina and the Brink team for inviting us to perform at this year’s Brink Exhibition (along with the opportunity to answer these wonderful questions from clay). The one thing we promise is that we won’t let you down! :)

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Tickets are still available for Saturday’s event. More information here.