Visual music defends a most sublime impossibility—that the eyes may be seduced to hear. The concept has served as a useful analogy for the creation of art since at least the Renaissance … The synesthetic origins of The Kitchen are noticeably in the context of downtown theater. But nothing quite like it had ever truly existed—a room full of TV sets, where each night a different audience would assemble and make applause for a medium they could just as easily watch at home. The difference was in the communities it brought together…

Featuring an experimental video by Na Mira, Tesseract (test) (2020) with related archival images from a 1982 screening at The Kitchen of a work by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. These are accompanied by an introductory text by Kathy Cho, 2020–2021 Curatorial Fellow and a narrative written by Mira on the process of creating Tesseract.

Featuring recordings of selected performances and events by four artists who have presented literature or language-based programming at The Kitchen between 1976 and the present day—Constance DeJong, Jessica Hagedorn, Carl Hancock Rux, and Matvei Yankelevich of Ugly Duckling Presse—alongside images and ephemera from The Kitchen’s archive and an introductory text.

Featuring two videos and a performance by SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, along with accompanying text by Kathy Cho, 2020–2021 Curatorial Fellow.

Featuring a selection of videos produced by Carlota Schoolman and her production company Fifi Corday Productions, and projects she produced while working for The Kitchen. Also included are an introductory text contextualizing Schoolman’s tenure as The Kitchen’s Video Director from 1974–1977 and Associate Director for Television Production from 1978–1986, transcribed excerpts from an oral history with Schoolman, images, and ephemera.

Featuring two videos from Fawn Krieger’s mixed media work Property Acts (2012), which was commissioned for the 2012 exhibition Matter Out of Place. Also included are introductory texts by Curator Lumi Tan and Krieger, an interview between the artist and Sacha Yanow, and a variety of studies, reference materials, and installation views.

As early as the 1980s, Ralph Lemon has presented work at The Kitchen, which has proven a setting uniquely suited for his interdisciplinary practice merging mediums such as dance, visual art, performance, and writing…

On September 22, 2020, The Kitchen published a Video Viewing Room featuring a performance recording of Beau Bree Rhee’s work Performance Paysage (translation Performance as Landscape) (2020) alongside images and a new artist’s text. With the aim of further animating Performance Paysage’s multilayered temporality, Rhee envisioned a second element that would complement the Video Viewing Room—a postscript that is also a beginning in its own right…

As part of our ongoing research into The Kitchen’s dance program in the 1980s and 1990s, our curators will be speaking to choreographers who worked with The Kitchen in these years. The third in this series of oral histories features Cynthia Hedstrom, The Kitchen’s Dance Curator from 1986–1990…

Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty are interdisciplinary artists who work collaboratively on projects that range from installations and performances to experimental films and interactive video scores. Their collaboration also extends in some cases into their efforts as teaching artists: for instance, Irons and Petty have contributed jointly to The Kitchen’s education programs at Liberty High School Academy for Newcomers for roughly ten years…

Density 2036 is a twenty-four-year project begun by Claire Chase in 2013 to commission an entirely new body of repertory for solo flute each year until the 100th Anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s groundbreaking 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. For Density 2036: part vii, Chase commissioned Australian composer Liza Lim to create new work…

Baseera Khan was in residence through The Kitchen at Queenslab from September 11–October 11, 2020, working on producing a pilot for their television show, By Faith. On October 8, Khan, Curator Lumi Tan, Director/Producer Ethan Weinstock, and Cinematographer Chris Wairegi were in conversation for a virtual wrap party…

Featuring a recording of the live television broadcast We Interrupt This Program (1991), along with ephemera and a video conversation between the director of the show, Charles Atlas; scholar Roderick Ferguson; art historian and former Visual AIDS Program Director Alex Fialho; and one of the participating artists, Robbie McCauley.

Featuring a recording of Jill Kroesen’s performance Stanley Oil and His Mother: A Systems Portrait of the Western World (1977), along with archival images, ephemera, and a new interview between Kroesen and Alison Burstein, Curator, Media and Engagement.

Between September 2019 and February 2020, we convened five L.A.B. programs around the term “regeneration.” Come March, we postponed the sixth L.A.B. of the year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we began to rethink how it would be possible to preserve the spirit of the series within the digital realm. What follows is the result of our invitation to three individuals—artists Martin Beck and Narcissister and art historian and critic Jeannine Tang—to write texts that would be shared with one another…

Featuring a performance recording of Richard Kennedy’s opera Fubu Fukú (2020), along with images and an accompanying text by the artist.