The Kitchen Announces May Online Programming

The Kitchen-one of New York's most enduring non-profits, which has, since 1971, served as an important catalyst for groundbreaking artists working across disciplines-today shares its lineup of Kitchen Broadcast and Video Viewing Room Series online programming in May.

Following the postponement of previously scheduled events in the Winter/Spring season, the organization continues to adapt and respond to our isolating and challenging moment with new modes of connection and ways to experience art. Last month, they introduced Kitchen Broadcast, a series of free livestream performances that invites artists to connect from their homes to audience members' homes, through any form they see fit-which takes place Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm EST; and the Video Viewing Room Series, through which the organization is releasing recent video works and archival performance recordings every Friday.

The Video Viewing Room Series continued at the beginning of May with music videos by Clarice Jensen and Testu Collective (Shared May 1 and on view through May 29). It will also feature footage of recent and archival performances by Lex Brown (available to view May 8 through June 5); Eiko & Koma, with a new response by DonChristian Jones (May 22); and Moriah Evans (May 29). Next week, May 15, it will feature a special tribute to acclaimed music producer Hal Willner (May 15), who in 2019 performed in a benefit performance at The Kitchen with ANOHNI, and who died in April due to complications caused by COVID-19. This engagement includes recorded and written statements from a growing list of contributors that now includes Bill Frisell, Kim Gordon, Arto Lindsay, Christian Marclay, Marcus Miller, Sonny Rollins, Vernon Reid, and Elliott Sharp.

This month, Kitchen Broadcast has already featured The Blow (May 5), the collaboration of Melissa Dyne and Khaela Maricich that has taken various forms over time and manifests in an array of media, employing popular music as a vehicle for broader explorations; and interdisciplinary artist Jeanine Oleson (May 7), in a broadcast timed with the release of her book Conduct Matters, published by Dancing Foxes Press. The series will also include experimental musician and video artist C. Spencer Yeh (Tuesday, May 12); James Allister Sprang, with an ambient and hip-hop DJ set, marking a return to The Kitchen following his Fall 2019 installation/residency Turning Towards a Radical Listening, (Thursday, May 14); Hal Foster speaking with Tim Griffin in conjunction with with the release of Foster's new book, What Comes After Farce?, published by Verso Books (Tuesday, May 19); artist Xavier Cha, performing a guided hypnosis text (Thursday, May 21); sound artist and composer Lea Bertucci and artist and filmmaker Bradley Eros (Tuesday, May 26); and visual artist Ivan Forde on solo organ (Thursday, May 28). Previous Kitchen Broadcasts can be viewed on Vimeo and upcoming performances can be livestreamed via Twitch.

Among other online offerings continuing in May are updates to The Kitchen's blog every Monday, including Kitchen Memories texts (first-hand reflections on past programming written by current and former staff members and artists); and the artwork Chitra Ganesh: The Exquisite Cruelty of Time, commissioned by The Kitchen for FLASH ART #330, April - May 2020 and viewable on The Kitchen's website.

Free Upcoming May 2020 Video Viewing Room and Kitchen Broadcast Programming

Friday, May 8 - Video Viewing Room Series
Lex Brown
Focacciatown: Reloaded

Tuesday, May 12 - Kitchen Broadcast
C. Spencer Yeh

Thursday, May 14 - Kitchen Broadcast
James Allister Sprang

James Allister Sprang will present an ambient and hip-hop DJ set on Kitchen Broadcast.

Friday, May 15 - Video Viewing Room Series
Hal Willner Tribute

Contributors include Bill Frisell, Kim Gordon, Arto Lindsay, Christian Marclay, Marcus Miller, Sonny Rollins, Vernon Reid, Elliott Sharp

Tuesday, May 19 - Kitchen Broadcast
Hal Foster in Conversation with Tim Griffin

Hal Foster's Kitchen Broadcast on Tuesday, May 19 coincides with the release of his new book, What Comes After Farce?, published by Verso Books. In his latest work, Foster probes arts and cultural movements under various regimes since 9/11, asking where the double predicament of a post-truth and post-shame politics leaves artists and critics on the left. He looks at shifts in art, criticism, and fiction under current regimes of war, surveillance, extreme inequality, and media disruption, using the cultural politics of emergency since 9/11-and the neoliberal makeover of art institutions that followed-as one of several case studies. The book also offers an opportunity to think about what happens to art, and satire, under crises such as the current pandemic, when communal experiences are forbidden.

Thursday, May 21 - Kitchen Broadcast
Xavier Cha

For this Broadcast, Xavier Cha will perform a guided hypnosis text she developed in collaboration with a clinical hypnotherapist for her 2019 solo exhibition at Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles. As one part of that exhibition entitled SUB, Cha presented a participatory, immersive sound installation "Hypnobirth," for which she and hypnotherapist Bianca DeGroat developed a text, which was then recorded by DeGroat and accompanied by a soundtrack by Lafawndah. Cha has chosen to revisit this text, reading it herself for this live stream, as part of her ongoing research into the entangled economy of personal agency and external control, especially as it relates to this new enigmatic terrain of physically distanced and highly mediated sociality.

Friday, May 22 - Video Viewing Room Series
Eiko & Koma
Trilogy (1980-1981) and Nurses's Song (1981)
with New Response by DonChristian Jones

Tuesday, May 26 - Kitchen Broadcast
Lea Bertucci and Bradley Eros

Thursday, May 28 - Kitchen Broadcast
Ivan Forde

Friday, May 29 - Video Viewing Room Series
Moriah Evans
Configure (with newly released performance documentation related to the 2018 event)

Previously-Shared, Ongoing Video Viewing Room Series Programming

Through May 8
Jenny Perlin
The Bunker Films

Through May 15
Felix Bernstein and Gabe Rubin
Vomitorium

Through May 22
Lauren Bakst
after summer, or not in the kitchen (the bed, the bathroom, the dance floor and other spaces)

Through May 29
Clarice Jensen and Testu Collective
The experience of repetition as death