May 15 - May 24, 2003
Afrofuturistic:
Tracie Morris, Graham Haynes, Laurie Carlos, David Thomson, and Michelle Halsell
Jan 1 - Jan 1, 2003
Los Cybrids La Raza Techno-Crítica:
René García, John Jota Leaños, Praba Pilar
Jan 1 - Jan 1, 2020
Spotlight: Exploring The Point of Intersection Between Race & Technology By Zinariya Ali
The point of intersection between race and technology has been the site for exploration by Kitchen collaborators for the past 20 years. This inquiry sustains relevancy over the years and manifests in many forms, influenced by the archive as well as BIPOC artists’ need for safe spaces to explore identity during times of political insecurity. Tracie Morris and Los Cybrids: *La Raza Techno-Crítica*’s work created in the same year (2003) explore the intersection between race and technology. Both Morris’s *Afrofuturistic* and Los Cybrids’s *Chicano, Chicana, Latino, Latina, Hispano, Hispana: TEch TV* examine the historical impact of technology on their respective communities. The works visually represent themes like surveillance, technology, modernization, futurism, and identity through performance and video art respectively. *Afrofuturistic* presents a genre-bending performance orchestrated by a Black woman envisioning the possibilities of the landscape of an Afrofuturist future, focusing on language and presentation. *TEch TV* is a video piece that mimics the format of a public program episode focusing on Latino advancements within technology and its interruption of the natural existence of humanity. Language and music intertwine in both videos, envisioning futuristic possibilities birthed from the merging of identity and technology. Dually, these inspire hope and provide an escape for people of color who are subjected to the harsh realities of technology’s real-world impact on their communities. This point of intersection resurfaces in The Kitchen’s 2022-23 L.A.B. Residency research project, *Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe*. This residency followed researchers and artists in their attempts to define what the Black Gooey Universe looks like, which encompasses an exploration of programming, technology, and identity. The gooey universe has manifested itself in The Kitchen’s past, before it became a fully fledged concept. The gooey universe transcends time to include all people of color. By Zinariya Ali, 2025 Kitchen Intern.
Spotlight: Christina Augustin on the Mimetic Theory of Desire in The Kitchen's Programmatic History
All desire is the result of imitation. The mimetic theory of desire, originated by French anthropologist René Girard, refers to human desire as a product of a mimetic process in which people imitate models who endow objects with value. Mimetic theory moves through a four-stage process of desire, conflict, scapegoating, and cover-up. This Archival Spotlight by 2024 Curatorial and Archive Intern Christina Augustin brings together three programs in The Kitchen’s archive by artists Lynda Bengalis, Stanton Kaye, Miranda July, and Karen Finley, who, through varying methods of performance, work to break down the social constructions of desire as proposed by mimetic theory. Lynda Benglis and Stanton Kaye explore the resounding violence of gender hierarchy in imitative desire through short film *The Amazing Bow Wow* (1976) when human Babu cuts off the tongue of talking hermaphroditic dog Bow Wow in an aim for the sole affections of companion Rexina. Live-movie *Swan Tool* (2001) by Miranda July tackles desire as an innately isolating social construction when protagonist Lisa Cobb becomes unable to decide whether she wants to live or die, buries herself in her backyard, and then continues to live and work, keeping up appearances. Through monologues on womb envy, and the oppressive nature of motherhood, Karen Finley’s *The Constant State of Desire* (1986) explores social desire by positioning male desirability as a prerequisite for womanhood. In examining, self-objectification, perceived male intrasexual competition, and forced seclusion through the lenses of the second and third wave feminist movements, these Kitchen artists situate mimetic desire as arbiter of a gendered violence in which there is no life or death.
Oct 18 - Oct 20, 1976
The Amazing Bow-Wow:
Lynda Benglis, Stanton Kaye
Dec 5 - Dec 5, 2001
The Swan Tool:
Miranda Juy
Dec 3 - Dec 6, 1986