Playing The Auditorium
Kabir Carter
October 2, 2019, 5:00 PM to 6:15 PM
The Auditorium (Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall)
The New School, 66 West 12th Street, New York
Register Here: https://sched.co/TsD1
This event celebrates the sonic possibilities of one of The New School’s oldest and most stunning spaces. Designed in the 1930s by legendary architect Joseph Urban, The Auditorium has served as the venue for notable lectures and performances including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 speech “The Summer of Our Discontent.” In a 2004 article, the New York Times described the auditorium as “one of the city’s great modern interiors,” an “egg-shaped room [that] focuses on a broad, arched proscenium,” with a “delicate, layered ceiling” “painted in nine tones of gray.”
Contemporary sound artist Kabir Carter will evoke the architecture and history of this auditorium in performing a unique sound composition, using the space not simply as a site for performance but as an instrument to be played. Sound technicians who have worked at the auditorium over the years have been invited to participate in the performance.
Kabir Carter has physically interrogated and spatially expanded the acoustic and durational limits of performing with microphones. He has installed temporary sound works in a variety of indoor and outdoor locations in several cities. His interests include architectural acoustics, the transmission of sound across medium boundaries, and the affective potentialities of sound-in-space. Carter has been a fellow at Hochschule Für Bildende Kunste Braunschweig and resident at Aalto Acoustics Lab at Aalto University, and LMCC Workspace Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. His work has been presented and exhibited at: Nokia Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ; HKW – Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. He holds an MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.
Organized By: Caroline Dionne & Sreshta Rit Premnath
AV and Technical Support: Brian Kase & Sylvan Simon