Dec 17, 2018

Among the most fulfilling aspects of working at The Kitchen is a sense of offering artists not only a platform for their work and ideas, but also, maybe more important, a home. In other words, there is a sense of belonging here, and of being part of a continuing history, made palpable every day. As one artist recently told me after their production ended, “It was like being part of a temporary family.” That fundamental authenticity has been a hallmark of The Kitchen since the 1970s, and propels artists to create productions that continually take new risks. And audiences see work here that they would not experience anywhere else. Just during the past year, such highlights have included Charles Atlas’s video installation The Past Is Here, The Futures are Coming and incredible theater p... Read On

Dec 10, 2018

Artist Jibade-Khalil Huffman has been working in, around, and between the worlds of video and literature for much of his adult life. As a child, however, all he wanted was to be a DJ. And the significance of this childhood fantasy becomes abundantly clear when one speaks with Huffman regarding his show, Tempo, on view at The Kitchen through this Saturday, December 15. With twenty years of perspective, he readily contemplates his early encounters with popular culture, acknowledging how much of that same pop culture persists today, albeit in a different frame. As he observes, “The show is about music; it’s about a particular black male experience and how music informs that.” A video titled Black Twitter in the Hour of Chaos provides the core of Tempo. The single-channel version is proje... Read On

Nov 20, 2018

Leila Bordreuil is a composer and cellist whose current work is based in noise music and improvisation. In 2012, Bordreuil received her BA in Electronic Music and Electronic Arts from Bard College, where she studied with Marina Rosenfeld and Richard Teitelbaum. Bordreuil has previously performed at The Kitchen with Eli Keszler. She now returns to present her own composition, Piece for Cello and Double Bass Ensemble II, the debut of this iteration in her most recent series. This piece will feature Leila’s largest ensemble yet, using six bassists to create dense texture and physical sensation. We had the opportunity to ask Leila a few questions regarding her influences and thought processes surrounding her upcoming performance. Leila Bordreuil will perform Piece for Cello and Double Ba... Read On

Aug 28, 2018

For decades at The Kitchen, artists have challenged habits and convention through art, reweaving and reorienting our culture–often while bringing together, with a nearly utopian impulse, under-recognized histories and the most urgent contemporary issues. This season is no exception, opening with a solo exhibition by Chitra Ganesh, who takes up turn-of-the-century social reformer Begum Rokeya Sakhawat's sci-fi novel Sultana's Dream (1905) to reimagine the roles of the individual and the collective during periods of societal turbulence. Following Ganesh in our gallery will be a video and sound installation by Jibade-Khalil Huffman engaging the legacy of black music as a tool of resistance and, as pointedly, considering how societal conditions often ask for a performance of identity e... Read On

Jun 11, 2018

Through your support this season, so many artists at The Kitchen have created and presented incredible artwork, both making history and forging new connections with it: from the warped video of Meriem Bennani to the cavernous sound of Camae Ayewa/Moor Mother and Catherine Lamb, and from the legendary chords of The Raincoats to the giant steps of the Jazz Passengers. And this is to say nothing of an unprecedented performance program celebrating the legacy of Julius Eastman , with an exhibition curated by Tiona Nekkia McClodden; the continually radical choreographies of Sarah Michelson and Stanley Love; and a genre-redefining installation and cabaret by Charles Atlas with Julianna Barwick, The Illustrious Blacks , and IMMA, among so many others. It has been a remarkable season. Ye... Read On