Aug 18, 2015

Choreographer koosil-ja and her collaborator Geoff Matters spoke with Assistant Curator and Archive Manager Katy Dammers about their new piece I am capitalism premiering at The Kitchen this fall. They consider the origins of this work and its place within koosil-ja’s long history at The Kitchen. Katy Dammers: What brought you to consider capitalism in this piece? Koosil-ja: Over the past ten years, looking for my identity was the driving force behind my work, and I wasn’t really going anywhere with it. Then I read Gilles Deleuze and felt an opening. He thinks being is a process and identity is a crappy concept, because it puts our existence inferior to the idea that exists before us. He opened me up to a new plateau. While I was searching for the meaning and name of my existence, my... Read On

Aug 17, 2015

On the evening of November 3, three days before the 1984 presidential election between the incumbent President Ronald Reagan and former Vice President Walter Mondale, Republican candidate Reagan made a grand appearance on the New York City skyline. Or rather, his hand did, extracted from an image of him swearing the Pledge of Allegiance. This disembodied appendage was projected onto the North and West facades of the AT&T Long Lines Building at Thomas Street and Broadway in a spectacle designed by Krzysztof Wodiczko and realized through the institutional support of The Kitchen. Although The Kitchen functioned most frequently as a performance venue and exhibition space, the services provided in anticipation of the November 3 projection indicate The Kitchen’s effort to expand its prese... Read On

Aug 10, 2015

The acclaimed And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid by Jeff Weiss & Richard C. Martinez was presented at The Kitchen on July 14-16. Director Brooke O’Harra spoke with Curatorial Intern Kayla Fanelli about the thrilling and complex experience of reengaging this long-running, serial work. Kayla Fanelli: When did you first encounter And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid? Brooke O'Harra: I first encountered Jeff Weiss as an individual, not the serial drama. I moved to New York in 1999 and immediately started doing work at The Club at La MaMa. The Club is curated by Nicky Paraiso, who is a really close friend of Jeff’s and performed with him for twenty-five years. Nicky was one of the first people to perform with Jeff in And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid and Hot Keys. My company, The Theatr... Read On

Apr 17, 2015

The scores of Eliane Radigue invite you to listen carefully and deeply particularly as the French electronic music composer creates a sonic ambience that seems to move as a continual, nuanced flow around the listener. In her performances at The Kitchen during the 1970s and 80s, however, Radigue employed various unconventional strategies to pull her audience’s minds, ears, and hearts close to her soundscapes sometimes using the written space of a press release as a platform to present her work to the public, and occasionally incorporating sounds appropriated from her personal life. For Radigue, the act of listening carefully to her compositions inevitably pointed back to, and asked for, such sensitivity in everyday experience. Her first show at The Kitchen was in 1973, featuring Phi 84... Read On

Mar 24, 2015

Naked, posed unapologetically on an auction block, Robbie McCauley stood and called on the audience to hear the brutal tale of her great-great-grandmother Sally’s rape. “Bid ‘em in!” bellowed her performance partner Jeannie Hutchins. The audience shifted uneasily in their seats as the uncanny discomfort of history settled over them. Were they being asked to repeat after Hutchins – to implicate themselves in this reenactment of the slave trade? Hutchins urged the spectators to participate. Arms outstretched and fingers pointing, she reached to drag the words from the guts of a shocked audience. Behind her McCauley was still standing, tall and trembling, detailing exactly what Sally’s white master did to her those years back. “Bid ‘em in,” mumbled a smattering of viewers as McCauley’s han... Read On