Next Kitchen L.A.B. Set for Today

The Kitchen L.A.B. is a new program devoted to presenting, discussing, and developing interdisciplinary works revolving around themes of common interest to artists in different fields-and, more specifically, considering the meaning and uses of specific words in contemporary art.

Throughout its 40-year history, The Kitchen has been committed to a spirit of innovation across disciplines and, in this regard, hosts an incredibly diverse audience. And yet this audience today is also surprisingly atomized.

To wit, art communities see art, dance communities see dance, music communities see music, and so on. Such disjuncture pervades the contemporary cultural field even while there is an increasing interest among artists in interdisciplinarity. Thus, the same words often carry very different meanings for artists in different fields, and the same maneuvers signify in different ways.

The Kitchen L.A.B.-its acronym stands for "language," "art," bodies"-invites artists to unpack such vocabularies by responding to them both in conversation and artworks, creating hybrid events that will underline not only points of commonality among disciplines but also, as important, real differences.

The series began in September with a conversation among Shannon Jackson, Elad Lassry, Tere O'Connor, and Lynne Tillman (moderated by Tim Griffin) against the backdrop of Lassry's exhibition Untitled (Presence), for which he collaborated with dancers from the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater in The Kitchen theater space, aiming to consider changing relationships between performance, photographic reproduction, and perception.

Further details for The Kitchen L.A.B. in 2013 will be announced soon.