At Kitchen Gala, Seeking Baking SuppliesThe Kitchen is a forward- thinking arts center in Chelsea, and yet it somehow manages each year to wrangle avant- garde musicians, performance artists, and all manner of downtown freak to a stately, 10021-style benefit gala. At this year’s installment, held this week, the main honoree was experimental-music star Laurie Anderson (it’s her 60th birthday), and serenading her from the stage were several next- generation stars not terribly accustomed to playing over the sound of scraping knives and clinking glasses. Each coped in his own way.
cultural capital
We Understand, and We’re Talking About It
L.A.-based artist and filmmaker Miranda July’s new performance piece, Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About potentially the basis for a new film opened last night at the Kitchen for a sold-out weekend run to an enthusiastic crowd, which included David Byrne. Things, in essence, is a love triangle, a clichéd story you might see on a Saved By the Bell rerun. But July’s gentle charm and engaging use of video, audience participation, and a dead cat demonstrate how the story itself can be much less important than the telling.