The Kitchen Sets Fall 2014 Season, Featuring Music, Theater & More
By: Tyler Peterson Aug. 06, 2014
Since 1971, The Kitchen has served as an important catalyst for a broad community of groundbreaking artists working across disciplines-a mission uniquely attuned to contemporary efforts by artists and arts institutions alike to collaborate and generate new contexts for the continuing evolution of multi-disciplinary art. In fact, as a smaller-scale organization, The Kitchen is unique today for providing artists of both emerging and established statures with a hot-house environment for the presentation and discussion of their work, supporting and seeking to foster a vibrant, living dialogue among artists from every field and area of culture. The institution's fall 2014 season, September 5-December 13, exemplifies this commitment.
The season begins September 4-5 with the U.S. premiere of Berlin-Based artist Lothar Hempel's Mäusebunker, a science-fictional film in the vein of Chris Marker, featuring figures from the Berlin art scene and presented with live dance. The piece marks Hempel's Kitchen debut. Genre-blurring art continues with "Metal," a collaboration between Vietnamese conceptual artist Danh Vo and Los Angeles-based musician Jamie Stewart. The landmark exhibition, running September 27-October 18, features two Thai gold leaf pounders, working alongside Stewart and two percussionists from his band, Xiu Xiu. The Kitchen will also present the first American institutional consideration of the under-recognized Swiss-born artist and filmmaker Klaus Lutz (1940-2009). On view October 30-November 20, the exhibition will feature a selection of Lutz's 16mm film loops, as well as some of his meticulous work on paper and artist books.
On September 24-25, The Kitchen presents the U.S. premiere of French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour's Gaïa Global Circus, a one-of-kind theatrical experiment that attempts to unpack society's ambivalence toward mankind's greatest threat: global warming.Lothar Hempel
Mäusebunker (U.S. premiere)
September 5-6 at 8pm; $15 Named after one of Germany's most notorious architectural structures, the Institute of Experimental Medicine, the film Mäusebunker (Mice Bunker) employs figures from the Berlin art scene to portray a parallel universe where only women exist. The piece also features a live dance performance and will be continually updated by the artist. It is, as the artist puts it, a film without final shape. Lothar Hempel (b. 1966) is a Berlin-based artist who has exhibited his work regularly since 1991, including the Venice Biennale; Tate Liverpool, ICA, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MoMA P.S.1, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; Secession, Vienna; and Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris. Lothar Hempel: Mäusebunker is made possible with support from Joe Barron and Susan & Michael Hort.MUSIC
Synth Nights: Laurel Halo
September 9 at 8pm; $15 Laurel Halo is a live electronic musician and producer from Ann Arbor, Michigan now based in Berlin, whose fluid hierarchies of rhythm, focus, moodiness, and chaos generate new club ecologies and outer space ambience. She has released two full-length albums, Chance of Rain (2013) and Quaratine (2012), for the London-based label Hyperdub Records. Curated by Tim Griffin.DANCE
Trajal Harrell
Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church: THE SERIES (U.S. premiere)
Co-presented with FIAF's Crossing the Line 2014
(XS); September 14 at 4pm, 5pm, 7pm and 8pm
(S); September 15 at 8pm
(M)imosa; September 16 at 8pm
(jr) Antigone Jr.; September 17 at 8pm
(Plus) Antigone Jr. ++; September 17 at 9:30pm
(L) Antigone Sr.; September 19 at 8pm
(M2M) Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem; September 20 at 8pm
$20 for each event "What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing ballroom scene in Harlem had come downtown to perform alongside the early postmoderns at Judson Church?" In the five years since he posed this provocative question, New York choreographer Trajal Harrell has meshed the parallel traditions of postmodern dance and voguing, revealing sharp perspectives on race, gender, and notions of identity. Over the course of one week (September 14 - 20), for the first time in the U.S., The Kitchen and FIAF's Crossing the Line 2014 will give audiences the chance to experience the whole performance series-from extra small (XS) to made-to-measure (M2M)-with Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church: THE SERIES.PERFORMANCE / THEATER
Bruno Latour
Gaïa Global Circus (U.S. premiere)
September 24-25 at 8pm; $15 The French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist presents a theatrical experiment inspired by a paradox: although we are confronted with global warming and the prospect of mankind's end, we feel almost nothing. Appearing here in its U.S. premiere, Gaïa Global Circus takes place in the gap between the significance of such stakes and the limited repertoire of concepts and feelings with which we attempt to approach them today. Co-presented by The Kitchen and the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. VISUAL ART
Danh Vo and Jamie Stewart
"Metal"
September 27-October 18; Free Conceptual artist Danh Vo collaborates with musician Jamie Stewart for this gallery exhibition conceived as a stage for their work's own production. Vo travels two gold pounders from Thailand-where the gold leaf for many of his pieces is made-to work in the space alongside Stewart and two percussionists from his band, Xiu Xiu. Together they will generate syncopated compositions with the pounders' rhythms. Set against a backdrop of Vo's finished artwork, they will create a new work in real time. Curated by Tim Griffin. Danh Vo and Jamie Stewart: "Metal" is made possible with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Marian Goodman Gallery, Carlo Bronzini Vender & Tanya Traykovski, Thea Westreich & Ethan Wagner, Andrew Ong & George Robertson, and Marco Frignati, with rehearsal space provided by Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation. LECTURE / FILM
Gregory Markopoulos
The Collected Writings
September 29 at 7pm; $10 On the occasion of the recent publication of Film as Film: The Collected Writings of Gregory J. Markopoulos (The Visible Press, 2014), filmmaker Robert Beavers, Daniel Heller-Roazen (Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University), and the publication's editor, Mark Webber, will lead a discussion of Markopoulos' unique vision of film and the film spectator. Film as Film contains some 90 out-of-print or previously unavailable articles by the Greek-American filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos (1928-1992) who, as a contemporary of Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage and Andy Warhol, was at the forefront of a movement that established a truly independent form of cinema. Beginning with his early writings on the American avant-garde and auteurs such as Dreyer, Bresson, and Mizoguchi, it also features numerous essays on Markopoulos' own practice, and on films by Beavers, that were circulated only in journals, self-published editions, or program notes. The texts become increasingly metaphysical and poetic as the filmmaker pursued his ideal of Temenos, an archive and screening space to be located at a remote site in the Peloponnese where his epic final work Eniaios could be viewed in harmony with the Greek landscape. Following the discussion will be a very rare screening of one reel of this magnum opus. MUSIC
Claire Chase
density 2036: part ii (world premiere)
October 2 at 8pm; $15 Flutist and MacArthur Fellow Claire Chase continues her 22-year project to commission an entirely new body of repertory for solo flute each year between 2014 and 2036, the 100th Anniversary of Edgard Varèse's groundbreaking flute solo, Density 21.5. Begun last year with a performance at The Kitchen and an eponymous album, the piece here features a 70-minute program of newly commissioned world premieres by George Lewis, Matthias Pintscher, Felipe Lara, and Du Yun.DANCE
Dean Moss
Johnbrown (world premiere)
October 16-18, 23-25 at 8pm; $15 Multidisciplinary dance artist Dean Moss draws from an intimate and varied history with activism to create a wry meditation on the legacy of the white, 19th-century abolitionist John Brown. The work features live performances by Kacie Chang, Julia Cumming, Cassie Mey, Sari Nordman, Asher Woodworth and Dean Moss, with video performances of a script commissioned from Thomas Bradshaw by Tymberly Canale, Aaron Hodges, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Pete Simpson. It also includes sound and music by Stephen Vitiello, an original song by Julia Cumming and lighting design by Vincent Vigilante, and integrates a number of teenaged production assistants. johnbrown excavates contentious birthrights born of "our peculiar institution" while simultaneously exploring the gendered and generational processes at play in their perception. This world premiere takes place on the 155th anniversary of the radical activist's raid on Harper's Ferry. VISUAL ART / FILM
Klaus Lutz
October 30-December 20 Swiss-born artist and filmmaker Klaus Lutz (1940-2009) left a remarkable yet under-recognized body of work, characterized by a unique cinematic vision, when he died in New York where he had been based for about 15 years. The first U.S. institutional consideration of Lutz's work, the exhibition will feature a selection of the artist's 16mm film loops, as well as some of his meticulous work on paper and artist books. Shot in 16mm and using animation and multiple exposures, Lutz's films are reminiscent of those of Georges Méliès and the 1920s avant-garde, yet they create a universe of their own. The artist played the protagonist in most films, which were shot almost entirely in his tiny East Village apartment. In exhibitions and screenings, he most often projected these films onto large, white balloons, creating convex, circular images that reframe the strict rectangle common to cinema. Influenced greatly by the terse writings of Robert Walser, each film is a micro-narrative that recalls the struggles of ancient myth while still remaining based in contemporary life and Lutz's own biography. Curated by Matthew Lyons. MUSIC
Samita Sinha
Cipher (New York premiere)
October 31-November 1 at 8pm. $15 A theatricalized music work for live voice and electronics, Cipher deploys sound, silence, light, and body to rewrite notions of power. Cipher's unconventional ensemble features vocalist Sinha with a gritty tabla altered by a DJ, an ektara, microphones, and looping devices. From structured to improvisational, melodic to atonal, the score embraces Sinha's diverse heritage and investigations: North Indian classical forms; American folk and blues; pop and electronic music. Cipher touches on visibility and invisibility, on suffering and its transformation-all within a live, vibrational space that powerfully conveys what it means to be seen and heard.MUSIC/PERFORMANCE
Karlheinz Stockhausen's Originale
November 7-8 at 8pm; $15 Fifty years after its storied New York premiere, Stockhausen's response to the Happening gets a 21st-century staging. Culled from the worlds of contemporary art, performance, and music, a cast of "originals"-the word implying a simultaneous sense of authenticity and eccentricity-convenes to form a community of genuine individuals, whose self-created contributions are accompanied by some of the composer's most noted electroacoustic works, including Kontakte, performed by Iktus Percussion. Originale features Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson (directors), A.L. Steiner (filmmaker), Joe Drew (sound projectionist), and the inimitable Justin Vivian Bond. Curated by Nick Hallett as part of Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire; co-produced by The Kitchen and Goethe-Institut. FILM / MUSIC
Sam Green
The Measure of All Things
With yMusic, November 21 at 7pm and 9pm
With Brendan Canty (Fugazi), T. Griffin, and Catherine McRae, November 22 at 7pm and 9pm
$25 The Measure of All Things is a new 'live documentary' by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green. The piece, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, is a meditation on fate, time, and the outer contours of the human experience. Inspired very loosely by the Guinness Book of World Records, The Measure of All Things will weave together a series of portraits of record-holding people, places, and things including the tallest man (7 feet 9 inches), the oldest living thing (a 5,000 year old Bristlecone Pine in Southern California), the man struck by lightning the most times (seven!), the oldest living person (116), and the woman with the world's longest name, among others. Drawing inspiration equally from old travelogues, the Benshi tradition, and TED talks, The Measure of All Things will be screened with in-person narration by Green with a live soundtrack by yMusic on November 21 and by Brendan Canty (Fugazi), T. Griffin and Catherine McRae on November 22. The Measure of All Things received support from Rooftop Films, DCTV, and the National Endowment for the Arts.MUSIC
Dither
John Zorn's Game Pieces
December 13 at 8pm; $15 The electric guitar quartet Dither presents a raucous evening of John Zorn's game pieces in conjunction with their forthcoming release on Tzadik. Dither is among a new generation of musicians that Zorn has charged with performing and developing these notorious compositions, which run the gamut of sonic worlds and interactive techniques. Each game piece incorporates a set of rules and tactics in order to create a unique improvisational playing field: Ivesian layering of styles in Fencing, twisting impressionistic textures in Curling, fast-paced exchange of musical ideas in Lacrosse, and a musical language reduced to five sounds in Hockey. 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of Zorn's influential game piece Cobra and these earlier pieces dating from the late '70s provide an exciting window into the development of this seminal work.
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