Over the past months, we have convened artists, writers, and other practitioners to reflect on the notion of “regeneration” as part of four Kitchen L.A.B. programs. During January’s L.A.B., artist and musician E. Jane, artist Jamian Juliano-Villani, and poet and cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum came together for a spirited exchange…

Richard Maxwell is a playwright and theater director best known for his work with the New York City Players, a company he founded in 1999. Utilizing sparse sets and often laconic acting styles, Maxwell reduces theater to its most essential elements, creating plays that, in the words of critic Hilton Als, oscillate between the “mythic” and the “mundane.” …

Since September 2019, we have convened three L.A.B. events bringing together artists, writers, and other practitioners to reflect on this year’s term, “regeneration,” in relation to both their own work and contemporary social and cultural developments. Our last L.A.B. event of 2019 took place in December with artists Andrea Geyer and Jams Allister Sprang and writer and AIDS historian Sarah Schulman…

This month, choreographer and performance artist Lauren Bakst performs after summer, or not in the kitchen (the bed, the bathroom, the dance floor and other spaces) as the culmination of her residency through The Kitchen at Queenslab. The phrase in the piece’s title—“not in the kitchen”—is a play…

Lauren Bakst is a New York City-based artist and writer working through performance. Her work draws from the materials and relationships of her life to contend with the conditions of intimacy, desire, and affect. She has been in residence…

By virtue of its yearlong format, The Kitchen’s L.A.B. series creates opportunities for sustained, collective thinking around a single term of importance to art in dialogue with broader culture. In November, the second program of the season brought together musicians Chris Eddleton and Avram Fefer, poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and artist Sara Magenheimer…

In collaboration with Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles, The Kitchen will present a historic restaging of Tina Girouard’s Pinwheel (1977) for the inaugural Meridians sector at Art Basel Miami Beach from December 4–8 with daily performances at 3pm. The nearly hour-long piece…

In 2017, Brooklyn-raised multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and tape manipulator Taja Cheek used the moniker L’Rain to release her first eponymous album on Astro Nautico Records. Though this project was dedicated in name and spirit to Cheek’s mother Lorraine,…

Born in Kansas City, Young was trained in both jazz and classical clarinet and began his professional music career in San Francisco in the 1960s as a radio DJ and performer. While in San Francisco, Young recorded albums both with the improvisation ensemble Infinite Sound and as a solo act. Young moved to New York in 1979 and…

Since 2012, The Kitchen’s annual L.A.B. series has created opportunities for practitioners to speak with one another and with audiences while addressing terms that are relevant to our contemporary social, cultural, and artistic landscape. We launched this year’s L.A.B. season on September 18 with a conversation about the term “regeneration” among Taja Cheek, Catherine Damman, and Constance DeJong…

Last week, James Allister Sprang premiered his performance Turning Towards a Radical Listening at The Kitchen. Culminating his five-week residency, this performance in our black box space is the first full realization of a project that the artist has been developing over several years in various contexts. …

Mario Diaz de Leon is a NYC-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, performer, and educator whose work encompasses modern classical, experimental electronic, extreme metal, and creative improvised music. Cycle and Reveal, released in September on Denovali, is his fourth full-length modern classical LP. …

How does language shape—or even program—our lives? What happens to language when it is translated and transcribed through apps or other modes of technology? In what ways are social biases encoded in these translations? These are among the questions James Allister Sprang raises in his ongoing project Turning Towards a Radical Listening. …

For five weeks from today through the end of October, artist James Allister Sprang is in residence in The Kitchen’s first-floor space, developing a new iteration of his ongoing project Turning Towards a Radical Listening. Sprang will begin his residency by organizing a sound-based sculptural installation, which will become a stage for public conversations with poets…

he Kitchen has a history of acting as a hotbed for artistic experimentation: it has staged early exhibitions of numerous artists who later went on to gain prominence. One such artist is John Miller, who is best known as a visual artist and critic and whose artwork is distinguished by a sometimes tongue-in-cheek critique of society and by a subversion of the boundaries between media. Miller’s first exhibition at The Kitchen…

Angie Pittman is a Bessie award-winning dance artist, maker, and educator whose work investigates how her body moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power. A longtime Kitchen friend, Pittman returns to our space June 29 to perform in the final weekend of ASSEMBLY…

Lafawndah is a pop artist whose influences, approaches, and ideologies intentionally and self-proclaimedly defy categorizations of geography and genre. Her first full-length album, ANCESTOR BOY, came out earlier this year. In anticipation of Lafawndah’s June 29 performance at The Kitchen as part of the ASSEMBLY series,…

On April 5 and 6, 2019, Stacy Grossfield presented metamorphosis at The Kitchen as part of Dance and Process. I sat down with Stacy Grossfield, along with performers and collaborators Nola Sporn Smith and Alexandra Albrecht to learn more about their experiences, process, and work.

Musician, composer, and producer Rafiq Bhatia defies any one genre or category. After moving to New York in 2010 post graduating from Oberlin College & Conservatory, Bhatia released a succession of highly-praised, improvisation-driven albums challenging traditional jazz, electronic, and hip-hop composition. From here,…