Apr 25, 2014

Part 2: Verb Dance K: Let’s talk about Verb Dance, the piece you did the first weekend. Can you tell me a little bit about how the verbs acted as directives for the dancers? Would you call them dancers? Or would it be performers? R: In Verb Dance we’re working with two highly skilled dancers and their initial task was to not allow movement to become dance in some way.  K: What is movement versus dance?  R: I don’t know if I know. We’re in a theater space, but we didn’t want to create the illusion that the theater commands in some ways. So through many different actions we wanted to be very literal about our presence. This is a black box was the first realization. This is a riser system, this riser system cannot be removed, and it is in fact what largely lodges the sp... Read On

Apr 25, 2014

During their exhibition Timelining, which closed on Saturday April 19, I had the opportunity to talk with Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, the artistic partnership known as Gerard & Kelly, about their work at The Kitchen. In our discussion about time, memory, and movement Brennan and Ryan explained how placing two performers in Timelining beside each other serves as a metaphor for much of their work and personal practices. (K = Katy, B = Brennan, R = Ryan) Part One: Timelining K: Can you describe the score that you worked with for Timelining? I know that you came up with it together, as a score for your own partnership. Can you talk about how it evolved to what you then gave to the various partnerships that are involved in the exhibition? R: Timelining is a performance score to... Read On

Mar 4, 2014

The Kitchen mourns the passing of Robert Ashley (1930–2014), an artist whose work has been fundamental to the space's very existence in both use and ethos. While revolutionizing opera in our time, few if any others explored the possibilities of music and performance across disciplines, genres, and classical and popular cultures with such innovation, savvy, and majesty. We will miss him dearly, and express our deepest condolences to Mimi, Sam, and the entire lovely music family.   The Kitchen commissioned and presented numerous Ashley productions from our very beginnings. His last work here, That Morning Thing, took place in 2011. Photo by Paula Court © [detail]. Read On

Feb 10, 2014

During preparations for their current solo exhibitions (on view through March 1) , Boru O’Brien O’Connell and Luke Stettner traded writing prompts with each other in order to sketch ideas for a collaborative performance on the subject of mediated experiences. (A photograph of these prompts in Boru’s studio is exhibited in the reception area of the gallery.) What follows is an excerpt from their exchanges. Their performance will be staged at The Kitchen on May 9 at 6pm.—LT #2 I listen to Bob Lind in the car. I listen to the music from Ugandan Jews. In here I listen to Bob Martin. These Bobs sing about sad farms and losing but so too do the Uganda Jews (I imagine, in a happier way). I play the sounds of rainfall in here.I see a sign that I sometimes enjoy. It says: “You aren’t stuck... Read On

Dec 27, 2013

A good question to pose of The Kitchen at the end of 2013 is a relatively straightforward one, revolving around the art world’s continuing, even painfully familiar institutionalization of dance and performance. Just where is The Kitchen situated within this context? What are its goals? Along these very specific lines, it’s best first to frame The Kitchen in terms of the past decade’s need to build another language—both in vocabulary and practice—for contemporary art. And this need, if we look at the contemporary landscape more broadly, requires in turn a brief step back from The Kitchen’s mission, in order to recapitulate a contrapuntal relationship between performance and dance in art, and culture more generally. Such a proposition will hardly come as a surprise to anyone rea... Read On