The Aural Kitchen II
The Aural Kitchen II:
An Amplified Cooking Performance + Field Recording of the Kitchen
Four-course Meal | Sonic Environment | Menu-score
Sunday, December 12th
Limited Seating | Kindly RSVP
The Aural Kitchen II is the second performance in a series.
The Aural Kitchen is an amplified cooking performance by artist and 3307 W Washington Blvd director Amanda Martin Katz that takes an ingredient list as the compositional basis of a live field recording. At once performance, meal, and document, this iteration of the project consists of a seated four-course dinner, a sonic environment, and a video projection of Katz’s menu-score. The project has been in workshop with sound artist and engineer Jorge Martin, and features a twelve-channel audio mix utilizing contact microphones, condensers, and a lavalier wedged inside the head of a stethoscope that Katz made to capture her heartbeat. Together, the microphones amplify the minute sounds produced by each kitchen tool, as the audience is asked to negotiate their attention between listening, reading, and socializing. While the audio tracks are being recorded unanimously as a document (the “field recording”), Martin crafts what is audible during the performance (the “composition”) by adjusting the volume outputs in response to Katz’s movements in the kitchen. The projected text of Katz’s menu-score scrolls throughout the evening. This four-paragraph essay connects her longterm cooking practice with a sudden loss of appetite and considers the relationship between utility and grief—particularly how labor, loneliness, and love resound through the activity (or, non-activity) of the kitchen.
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This second performance incorporated lessons from the first: two tables were used this time instead of three (for a group of fourteen), and the menu-score was projected as a scrolling text above Katz as she cooked, a kind of “top note” to her labor. There was no kitchen assistant. For this event Katz walked to the tables and served people herself while mic’d, navigating the cords and audio equipment. This field recording now includes the act of serving and receiving. Like the first iteration of the project, The Aural Kitchen II functioned akin to the practice of theater workshopping, as the work is, in part, being formed and informed through public engagement via the Experimentations series.
The Aural Kitchen II | Food Menu
Warm mini baguettes served with two dips: goat cheese mixed with black pepper, black truffle oil, salt | harissa with meyer lemon olive oil, lemon zest, Aleppo pepper and extra cumin
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Mixed baby lettuces tossed with minced shallots, pomegranate seeds, blackberries, cumin, coriander, black Urfa chili, meyer lemon olive oil, lemongrass vinaigrette
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Chicken thighs baked with zucchini and shallot in a black tea rub, served with navel orange juice, Meyer lemon olive oil, chopped parsley | Zucchini platter for the vegetarians
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Brown butter chocolate chip cookies | Whole Foods Market take and bake
Amanda Martin Katz is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and facilitator based in Los Angeles. She works both independently and collaboratively to produce social, spatial, and performative embodiments of texts, as well as objects, text-objects, video installations, performances, and dialogic facilitations. For the past ten years, she has been designing and operating conceptual residency projects that explore collaborative inquiry and embodied research methodologies (in Katz’s Deli, since 2012, and BOOKSHELVES, since 2016). Recent exhibitions and published or performed works include “The Somatic Library,” Sluice, London (2020), Publishing Against the Grain, Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont, CA (2019), “Non-Disclosure Agreement for Artist-Artist Sexual Relationships,” Foundations Magazine (2017) and Non-Disclosure Agreement: Contract Performance at New Women Space, Brooklyn (2018). She received a BA from Colgate University and a MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.
SOUND ENGINEERING
Jorge Martin is a human genetics and orthopaedic surgery researcher at UCLA by day, who transforms at night into a well-respected sound artist. Though classically trained on piano and clarinet, he is more often heard constructing intricate music by processing the output from his modular analog synthesizer panels through a myriad of effect pedals and feedback. He was one half of the acclaimed duo, Spastic Colon (Downey, CA), and one fifth of the band, Sleestak (Los Angeles). Currently, he is a member of the Southern California Soundscape Ensemble, a collaborative involved in making and playing back field recordings. His frequent collaborations include live performances with Anna Homler, Gregory Lenczycki, Reneé Petropolous, and Joe Potts. His work with Spastic Colon was released recently by Troniks Records, with original album art by John Wiese.
photos and video by Ian Byers-Gamber