The Kitchen Announces Winter/Spring 2023 Programming Featuring DANCE AND PROCESS & More

The Kitchen has announced its Winter/Spring 2023 programming, resulting from durational engagements that give experimental artists and collectives an abundance of time and organizational support to pursue their ideas. Within and beyond The Kitchen's temporary home in the West Side Loft at Westbeth Artists Housing (163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft, New York), the organization features culminating presentations from two 12-month residencies in conversation with The Kitchen's archive and new media roots; an exhibition reexamining formative multimedia concerts from the early days of The Kitchen; the retrospective continuation of a bold and generative 24-year series of commissioned music; and more. The Kitchen continues this season to untether performance from the finite realm of one-evening presentations (and often from finite space), with works evolving through process, accumulation, and recontextualization.

Legacy Russell, Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen said, "This season focuses on experimental definitions of collective practices, avant-garde collaboration, and pedagogical exchange. Defying the mythology of creative work advanced individually by solo practitioners, these artists show us how to embed the world in the act of making, and model sustainable communities adaptive to the future of art we want to live in. The Kitchen in this way remains a networked site of interdisciplinary and multigenerational transformation."

Following celebrated composer, pianist, vocalist, filmmaker, and multidisciplinary artist Samora Pinderhughes's season-long Fall 2022 GRIEF, a sprawling multimedia presentation including three distinct live performances and screenings of multiple films, The Kitchen, in Winter/Spring 2023, continues to present work that lets audiences into processes of creation and progression. Over the past 10 years, Claire Chase, "perhaps the [flute's] most imaginative living advocate" (The New Yorker), has commissioned and presented new work for solo flute to build a bold repertory for the instrument, with new contributions being added annually for 24 years. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Density 2036 project, Chase will perform eight performances at The Kitchen at Westbeth and at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall (in residence May 1-18; free performances: May 19 & 20, 23 & 24 at The Kitchen at Westbeth as part of Carnegie Hall Citywide, May 18 and 25 at Zankel Hall), revisiting the pieces the project has generated, and debuting a new composition from Craig Taborn.

Two 12-month residencies continue with boundary-pushing presentations in Spring 2023. In a collaboration with the Simons Foundation-whose Outreach, Education, and Engagement division seeks to provide opportunities for people to forge a connection to science-The Kitchen launched in Fall 2022 a year-long L.A.B Research Residency focused on the histories of art, science, and technology represented in The Kitchen's archive. For this inaugural year of the program through Fall 2023, the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) is in residence. Working collaboratively with The Kitchen, SFPC has brought together four Research Groups to pursue collective study using archival materials. Public programs resulting from this process will be announced in Spring/Summer 2023. Experimental broadcasting and performance platform Montez Press Radio has similarly been in residence since Fall 2022, exploring questions of narrative in relation to place through a series of offsite productions, transmitting both The Kitchen and Montez Press Radio beyond the respective walls within which they're based. They will present a series of performances throughout Spring 2023, from Salome Oggenfuss and The Working Theater (March), writer and harpist Esther Sibiude with a five-musician ensemble (June), singer-songwriter Mat Kastella (May), and LAMB (Nala Duma) (June).

This year, The Kitchen's longest-running series, Dance and Process, becomes the site of an exciting collaboration with American Academy of Arts and Letters, who will host participating dance artists-in-residence Martita Abril, Jonathan González, and Anh Vo as they engage in a group process of creation and feedback, culminating with performances on June 3 and 4. Dance and Process is organized by Moriah Evans and Yve Laris Cohen-two visionary artists whose work challenges the industry, exigencies, and corrosive norms of dance-with Matthew Lyons, Curator, and Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant.

From March 7-April 29, in Westbeth's West Side Loft-a space that recalls The Kitchen's original locations at the Mercer Arts Center and, later, the loft it occupied on the corner Wooster and Broome Streets-the organization will present an exhibition recognizing the 50th anniversary of the "multimedia concerts" organized by the multicultural, female-led coalition Red, White, Yellow, and Black: 1972-73 (conceived by Shigeko Kubota, Mary Lucier, Cecilia Sandoval and Charlotte Warren) at The Kitchen in 1972 and 1973. On June 7, a group of artists presents readings and responses to Ethan Philbrick's forthcoming book Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence, which examines ways artists engage with the group as a medium-including a focus on several case studies of group works created at The Kitchen over the years. The evening program will feature solo contributions from Morgan Bassichis and Mariana Valencia and responses from collaborative duos Lauren Bakst and Niall Jones and Brandon Lopez and Fred Moten.

The Kitchen's Video Viewing Room similarly hearkens back to The Kitchen's past, when between 1975 and the 1990s, its buildings featured a designated space for video presentations. The Video Viewing Room, which now makes new and recent video works and archival recordings available online, as of January 27 features a new work from Brian Fuata. Video Viewing Room premieres for Spring 2023 will be announced soon.

Programming Schedule and Descriptions

Red, White, Yellow, and Black: 1972-73

March 7-April 29, 2023

Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am-6pm

The Kitchen at Westbeth

Free

In December 1972 and April 1973, Shigeko Kubota, Mary Lucier, Cecilia Sandoval, and Charlotte Warren conceived of "multimedia concerts" at The Kitchen under the coalition Red, White, Yellow and Black-a name that explicitly associated each member with their cultural identity. Exemplifying their individual activities and backgrounds rather than act as a collective, the four women presented multimedia work which has notably dematerialized after the concerts, and has since been reconstructed only through scholarly text. In recognition of the 50th anniversary of these performances, this exhibition will bring together rarely seen archival material from the evenings in addition to the restaging of Kubota's first video sculpture, Riverrun- Video Water Poem (1972), and Lucier and Sandoval's The Occasion of Her First Dance and How She Looked (1973). The living members of the collective will gather for a public program on March 11 to reflect on the legacy of the performances and the divergent directions their lives took afterwards.

Red, White, Yellow, and Black: 1972-73 is organized by Lumi Tan, former Senior Curator, The Kitchen, and Lia Robinson, Director of Programs and Research, Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, with Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant, The Kitchen; Alex Waterman, Archivist, The Kitchen; and Matthew Lyons, Curator, The Kitchen. This exhibition was made possible with support from the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation.

Claire Chase: Density @ 10

In Residence May 1-18, 2023

Performances May 18-25, 2023

The Kitchen at Westbeth (presented in partnership with Carnegie Hall Citywide) (May 19 & 20, 23 & 24) and Carnegie Hall (May 18 and 25)

Free with RSVP

Density 2036 is a 24-year project begun by Claire Chase in 2013 to commission a new body of repertory for solo flute each year until the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse's groundbreaking 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. Chase will commission and premiere a new program of flute music every year until 2036. Each piece in the project will expand the boundaries of the instrument. For the ten-year anniversary of Density 2036, Chase performs all Density commissions up to the present in a series of concerts at Carnegie's Zankel Hall and in free performances at The Kitchen's Westbeth loft space as part of Carnegie Hall Citywide. The final two programs will be the world premieres of Density 2036: part ix, a piece by Craig Taborn performed in collaboration with the composer, and Density 2036: part x, a piece by Anna Thorvaldsdottir performed with a small ensemble, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

Claire Chase: Density @ 10 is organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator, with Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant.

Dance and Process: Martita Abril, Jonathan González, and Anh Vo

June 3-4, 2023

American Academy of Arts and Letters

Dance and Process stages an interrogation of methods of choreographic and dance practice, whereby artists challenge default structures in their own work and the field at large. For this iteration of Dance and Process, The Kitchen partners with the American Academy of Arts and Letters who will host the program during the Spring of 2023. While in residence at the Academy, a cohort of artists Martita Abril, Jonathan González, and Anh Vo will engage in a group process of sharing work in progress and receiving feedback, culminating in public performances of new works on June 3-4 2023. Initiated first in 1990 under the name Working in The Kitchen, Dance and Process is The Kitchen's longest running series and is currently organized by Moriah Evans and Yve Laris Cohen, with Matthew Lyons, Curator, and Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant.

The Kitchen L.A.B. Research Residency x Simons Foundation, in partnership with the School for Poetic Computation

September 13, 2022 - September 20, 2023

Information on public programs to be announced in forthcoming months

The Kitchen's L.A.B. Research Residency continues this spring through support from the Simons Foundation. The 12-month cycle (Fall 2022-Fall 2023) pays homage to The Kitchen's new media roots by exploring the histories of art, science, and technology represented in the institution's archive. This program is motivated by a recognition that the future of art is one that embeds itself in the world and requires "lab critical thinking" to test with care the critical theories that will help art, science, and technology grow and succeed.

For the initial year of this program, The Kitchen has invited a collective to be in residence: NYC-based School for Poetic Computation (SFPC), an organization that supports interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. SFPC's programs facilitate unlearning and learning, and challenge the capitalistic, heteronormative, and patriarchal canon of social and computer sciences. The Kitchen and SFPC have worked together to form four Research Groups comprising Primary Researchers and Advisors to pursue research inquiries throughout the residency. Over the course of the Winter/Spring season, the Research Groups will be engaging with archival materials to develop new ideas and projects. Programs resulting from these explorations are forthcoming in Spring and Summer, with details to be announced in future months. The Research Groups include Primary Researcher Lillian-Yvonne Bertram with Advisors Melanie Hoff, Erik Loyer, and Eileen Isagon Skyers; Primary Researcher fields harrington with Advisors Zainab Aliyu, mayfield brooks, and Sebastián Morales Prado; Primary Researcher Romi Ron Morrison with Advisors Neta Bomani, Ryan C. Clarke, and Mendi Obadike; and Primary Researcher Asha Tamirisa with Advisors Galen Macdonald, Chakeiya Richmond, Tiri Kananuruk. Three additional artists-American Artist, Taylor Levy, and Che-Wei Wang-are participating as General Advisors to offer feedback across all four Research Groups.

The Kitchen L.A.B. Residency x Simons Foundation, in partnership with School for Poetic Computation Co-Directors Zainab Aliyu, Todd Anderson, American Artist, Neta Bomani, Melanie Hoff, Galen Macdonald, and Celine Wong Katzman, is organized by Alison Burstein, Curator and Daniella Brito, The Kitchen L.A.B. Research Residency x Simons Foundation Fellow, with Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant.

The Kitchen x Montez Press Radio

September 13, 2022 - September 20, 2023

The Kitchen at Westbeth, and Offsite Locations

For their residency, Montez Press Radio will think beyond not only the walls of The Kitchen, but the walls of Montez Press Radio's home base of 46 Canal Street, to explore the disparate relationship between the face-to-face nature of live performance and the diffuse nature of online distribution. Does broadcasting as a medium for recorded and live audio projects have the ability to convey the here and now beyond the here and now? The efforts of Montez Press Radio's ongoing research, dialogue, and exchange will come more fully into focus with The Kitchen and Montez Press Radio teaming up to co-present a series of performances throughout Spring 2023: a short radio play staged in a lobby, directed by Salome Oggenfuss, written by doorman and playwright Carlos Cotto, and produced in collaboration with the The Working Theater (March); the debut of new songs off singer-songwriter, bedroom pop sensation, and prolific public performer Mat Kastella's upcoming self-titled EP, live with back-up dancers (May); The Song of Dirt Stammers our Tongue, a radio operetta directed by its librettist Esther Sibiude, semi-staged and performed by a five-player ensemble live and in costume (June); and Cape, a muso-poetical play by LAMB (Nala Duma) following characters in the early-1500s who discover a portal that allows them to travel great distances (June). Montez Press Radio will also conduct a series of oral histories with artists, collaborators and practitioners within The Kitchen's community, and create ongoing radio segments that engage the organization's institutional archive.

The Kitchen x Montez Press Radio is organized by Legacy Russell, Executive Director & Chief Curator, with Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant.

Ethan Philbrick: Re:Group Works

June 7, 2023, 8pm

The Kitchen at Westbeth

Free with RSVP

The Kitchen hosts a night of readings and artistic responses to cellist and writer Ethan Philbrick's forthcoming book Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence (Fordham University Press, April 2023).

Group Works is an exciting new reflection on the role of artistic collaboration, collectivism, and the politics of group formation in the neoliberal era. Written against both phobic and romantic accounts of collectivity, Group Works contends that the group emerges as a medium for artists when established forms of collective life break down. Philbrick engages with this subject by pairing group pieces in dance, literature, film, and music from the 1960s and 1970s downtown Manhattan scene with a series of recent group experiments: Simone Forti's dance construction, Huddle (1961), is put into relation with contemporary re-performances of Forti's score and huddling as a feminist political tactic; Samuel Delany's memoir of communal living, Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love (1969/78), speaks to performance artist Morgan Bassichis's 2017 communal musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell's 1977 text, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions; Lizzie Borden's experimental documentary of feminist collectivity, Regrouping (1976), sits alongside visual artist Sharon Hayes's 2014 piece on Manhattan's Pier 54, Women of the World Unite! they said; and Julius Eastman's insurgent piece of chamber music for four pianos, Gay Guerrilla (1979), resonates alongside contemporary projects that take up Eastman's legacy by artists such as Tiona Nekkia McClodden.

Many of the artists featured in Group Works have histories of engagement with The Kitchen, including Forti, Eastman, Bassichis, and McClodden. Highlighting these legacies as they relate to The Kitchen's founding ethos as a site for collective experimentation, Philbrick convenes a small assembly of artists to respond to his book during Re:Group Works. In addition to solo contributions from Morgan Bassichis and Mariana Valencia, the evening will feature presentations by two collaborative duos: Lauren Bakst and Niall Jones, and Brandon Lopez and Fred Moten.

Ethan Philbrick: Re:Group Works is organized by Alison Burstein, Curator, and presented in partnership with Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory.

Spring Video Viewing Rooms

The Kitchen OnScreen, Online Video Viewing Room

Brian Fuata

Premiered January 27; Online Now

This Video Viewing Room features a work entitled of a house besieged (preposition tweaked) (2020) by Brian Fuata, a Samoan artist from Aotearoa / New Zealand currently working in Sydney, Australia who works primarily with structured improvisation in performance. Beginning in July 2019 and continuing for nearly a year, Australia's worst fire season on record affected huge tracts of land with devastating loss of non-human and human life. As this climate emergency transpired, the pandemic took hold and the uprising for Black lives reverberated around the globe. It is against this unprecedented backdrop that Brian Fuata's first video work came into being. Fuata was given access to a gallery in the nearly shuttered museum to film an improvisation for camera, and he brought to the project a short story he had long admired by the literary miniaturist Lydia Davis called In a House Besieged. Fuata's improvisatory action and nonsensical utterances contrast with his plainspoken introduction and the text on screen. As a kind of didactic guide, the text fragments were choreographed to complicate the univocality of single-camera documentation. Marking a moment of transition in Fuata's practice, this work became an initial exploration of what he is calling post-improvisation film.

Brian Fuata: of a house besieged (preposition tweaked) is organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator.

Additional Video Viewing Rooms to be announced in Spring 2023.

About The Kitchen

As one of New York City's oldest nonprofit alternative art centers (founded as an artist collective in 1971 and formalized as a 501c3 in 1973), The Kitchen is dedicated to offering emerging and established artists opportunities to create and present new work within, and across, the disciplines of dance, film, literature, music, theater, video, and visual art. Recognizing its longstanding legacy for innovation, The Kitchen remains devoted to fostering a community of artists and audiences, offering artists the opportunity to make-and for audiences to engage with-work that pushes the boundaries of artistic disciplines and strengthens meaningful dialogues between the arts and larger culture.

Among the artists who have presented significant work at The Kitchen are Muhal Richard Abrams, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Robert Ashley, Charles Atlas, Kevin Beasley, Beastie Boys, Gretchen Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Julius Eastman, Philip Glass, Leslie Hewitt, Darius James, Joan Jonas, Bill T. Jones, Devin Kenny, Simone Leigh, Ralph Lemon, George Lewis, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sarah Michelson, Tere O'Connor, Okwui Okpokwasili, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Sondra Perry, Vernon Reid, Arthur Russell, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Spiegel, Talking Heads, Greg Tate, Cecil Taylor, Urban Bush Women, Danh Vō, Lawrence Weiner, Anicka Yi, and many more.

Website: thekitchen.org

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