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Kinstillatory Mappings In Light And Dark Matter

  • Abrons Arts Center 466 Grand St New York City, NY 10002-4804 US (map)

The Kinstillatory Fire welcomes us back ✨

The next six months of fire are lightly curated by an incredible collection of individual and collective artist warriors.

March 28, 6-8 pm in the backyard garden at Abrons Arts Center.

Curated by Sugar Vendil with work from Melinda Faylor, Sarah Galdes, treya Iam, Shane Larson ✨

We gather to listen. To fire, to the reverberations of radical empathy, chamber-protest, song. Until we understand solidarity into our bones, under our feet, within our moves, our gatherings - daily, urgent, recurring, mournful, celebratory.

Gather with us✨

Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter is hosted, held, and lightly curated by Emily Johnson and Karyn Recollet. The fire is central and communities are invited to GATHER HERE as artists and organizers articulate our collective futures, our otherwise possibilities. Fireside, we bring practices, grammars and needs forward and through the portals fire allows. The fire itself is process, a way to bring us out of the catastrophe of now. A lot is happening in the time/space envelope of the kinstillatory that is care, that is necessary. This is a practice of provocating. This is an offering of seed, of vessel, of protection, of becomingness.

Sugar Vendil (she/they) is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist who is forging new creative pathways as a second generation Filipinx American and future ancestor.  She started her artistic life as a classical pianist, and after spending nearly a decade searching for her own voice, her practice evolved into making music and performances that integrate sound, movement, and unconventional approaches to the piano. She has a keyboard/synth duo, Vanity Project, with composer Trevor Gureckis. Vendil is based in Lenapehoking, known as Brooklyn, where she lives with her partner and toddler, who she hopes will pursue dance and volleyball but will not force him/them.

Vendil’s work germinates from a kinesthetic and improvisatory approach rooted in lived experiences. Her sense of physicality and artistic autonomy is evident in her work, whether it is music, performance, or visual scores.

Pianist-composer Melinda Faylor weaves together dense and mercurial sound worlds using field recordings, synthesized sound and piano.

For Kinstillatory, Ms. Faylor will be working with recordings of fire, exploring it as a symbol of rebirth, destruction and protection.

Sarah Galdes is a drummer, composer, and music producer born in Australia to Indian / Maltese parents, Sarah is currently based in NYC and engages with a wide variety of artists. She has delved into traditional South Korean Samul Nori drumming and North Indian music traditions to further enrich her rhythmic syntax. 

Sarah performs as a soloist using Sensory Percussion sensors to explore texture, groove, and leafy found sounds.

treya lam is a multi-instrumentalist composer and multidisciplinary creator whose atmospheric voice, fluency on guitar, piano, looped viola, percussion and found sounds culminates in liberation orientedsongwriting and scores throughout their solo work as well as collaborations across mediums. 

otherland is an interdisciplinary grief and regeneration ritual rooted in chamber-protest songs that explores grief as a catalyst for radical empathy, intersectional solidarity and repairing our relationship to the earth.

Shane Larson is a NYC-based movement and video artist, focused on sense memory. 

listening #1 is a two-person exploration about being and seeing inside of the beast—the city and its people, its movements, and its coincidental events.

Kinstillatory Mappings in Light and Dark Matter was created with funding from The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Presented with support from the Mid Atlantic Folk and Traditional Arts – Community Projects program of Mid Atlantic Arts with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.