TAK Ensemble presents works by Tyshawn Sorey, Ashkan Behzadi, Eric Wubbels, Bethany Younge, and their first group composition on October 19. They also guide a workshop on October 20.

On October 19, TAK Ensemble—Laura Cocks, flute; Madison Greenstone, clarinet; Charlotte Mundy, voice; Marina Kifferstein, violin; and Ellery Trafford, percussion—perform Tyshawn Sorey’s For Jaimie Branch (2022); Ashkan Behzadi’s Deseo, from Love, Crystal and Stone (2017); Eric Wubbels’ Root and Vein, from Interbeing (2023); Bethany Younge’s at midnight I walked into the middle of the desert (2019); and Artefacts (2024), composed by TAK Ensemble.

Founded in 2013, the New York-based TAK ensemble has premiered hundreds of works to date, including work by composers such as Ashkan Behzadi, David Bird, Taylor Brook, Ann Cleare, Seth Cluett, Jessie Cox, Natacha Diels, Erin Gee, Bryan Jacobs, Brandon Lopez, Michelle Lou, Jessie Marino, Elaine Mitchener, Weston Olencki, Tyshawn Sorey, Eric Wubbels, Bethany Younge, and many others. They have released seven albums, including Oor (2019), which launched their in-house media label, TAK Editions. TAK has conducted residencies at Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, New York University, Oberlin Conservatory, Stanford University, and Wesleyan University. The ensemble has also collaborated with the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program and Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. From 2022-­23, TAK served as the Long-Term Visiting Ensemble in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

Since 2010, the Graham Foundation has partnered with Lampo to produce an international performance series held at the Madlener House. Lampo, founded in 1997, is a nonprofit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

Additional support for this program is provided by New Music USA’s New Music Inc program and the Farny R. Wurlitzer Foundation Fund.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

Visit the Graham Foundation Bookshop during the closing week of our current exhibition, Cally Spooner: Deadtime, an anatomy study. Purchases will be 20% off, with select titles discounted up to 50% off.

SALE HOURS

Saturday, June 22 12–5 p.m.
Wednesday, June 26 12–5 p.m.
Thursday, June 27 12–5 p.m.
Friday, June 28 12–6 p.m.
Saturday, June 29 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

The Graham Foundation Bookshop features a selection of publications on architecture, art, design, and related fields—many titles by the Foundation’s international network of grantees working on ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.

Designed by Ania Jaworska, the bookshop is located in the former dining room of the Madlener House, a 1902 Prairie-style mansion designed by Richard E. Schmidt and Hugh M. G. Garden in the Gold Coast neighborhood.

Image: Assaf Evron

During this presentation, photographer Virginia Hanusik discusses her first book, Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2024).

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water—and the history of controlling it—is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry—past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

The book includes texts by Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

The presentation will be followed by a reception and book signing. A limited amount of copies of Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana will be available for purchase at the Graham Foundation bookshop.

Presented in partnership with MAS Context

Virginia Hanusik is an artist whose projects explore the relationship between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her work has been exhibited internationally, featured in The New Yorker, National Geographic, British Journal of Photography, Domus, Places Journal, The Atlantic, MAS Context, and Oxford American among others, and supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation, Pulitzer Center, Graham Foundation, Landmark Columbus Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. She regularly writes and speaks on landscape representation and the visual narrative of climate change, and is on the board of directors of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans where she coordinates multi-disciplinary projects on the climate crisis. She received her BA from Bard College and lives in New Orleans.

RELATED GRAHAM FOUNDATION GRANTS:
Virginia Hanusik, A Receding Coast: The Architecture and Infrastructure of South Louisiana, 2017 research grant

MAS Context shares ideas and facilitates discourse about urban design and the built environment. Deeply rooted in Chicago but with a global reach, MAS Context nurtures an inclusive community of creative thinkers across disciplines who are interested in the future of cities.

In Music for laptops, speakers and mechanical instruments, Michelle Lou and Bryan Jacobs create a hybrid synthetic sonic space, made up of both digital synthesized and physical acoustic sound-making devices. The performance offers a potentially dizzying, at times playful experience for listeners in the round.

Lou and Jacobs follow a large-scale structure from which they explore, respond, and react—improvising on each of their own custom-designed performance systems—Lou on a laptop and 8 channels of speakers, and Jacobs on computer-controlled DIY musical devices.

Reflecting on their work, Lou and Jacobs write, “Sound is at the limit of materiality; it touches things, it’s modulated by surfaces, by bodies, by objects and architecture. It’s only heard if it enters your body and triggers a mechanical response. It’s terrestrial in that it requires so much stuff to travel that it can’t travel through the vacuum of space, and yet it’s immaterial in most other ways."

“With this in mind, one could say that sound may provide a pathway towards accessing unseeable and untouchable interiors. The tension between the seen and the heard, particularly when the two do not align is highlighted through the use of loudspeakers. The tension found in listening also expands to the perception of one’s location: the limits of the actual physical space reaches beyond itself as the imagination stretches, while also collapsing into a singular experience as the body is still sitting in a chair.”

Composer, performer, and sound artist, Bryan Jacobs’ (b.1979, Columbus, OH) work focuses on interactions between live performers, mechanical instruments and computers. His pieces are often theatrical in nature, pitting blabber-mouthed fanciful showoffs against timid reluctants. The sounds are playfully organized and many times mimic patterns found in human dialogue. Hand-built electromechanical instruments controlled by microcontrollers bridge acoustic and electroacoustic sound worlds. These instruments live dual lives as time-based concert works and non-time-based gallery works.

His music has been performed by ensembles such as the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Wet Ink, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, and defunensemble. His music has been featured at many music festivals in Europe and the US. He is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow. He has performed his own compositions for guitar and electronics at The Stone, New York; Miller Theater, New York; and The Wulf, Los Angeles. Jacobs is also a member of the performer/composer collective Ensemble Pamplemousse and is on faculty at the Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University.

Michelle Lou (b.1975, San Diego, CA) composes mainly in the realm of electro-acoustic music, both in hardware and in computer based forms. She has also created large-scale sound installations that are often performative and collaborative. She performs and improvises on acoustic and electric bass, electric guitar, and on laptop and various electronics. Her work has been presented at Wien Modern; Donaueschinger Musiktage; Darmstadt Ferienkurse; Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik; the Festival of New American Music, Sacramento; the MATA Festival, New York; the 66th American Music Festival at the National Gallery in Washington, DC; Rainy Days Festival, Luxembourg; Ultima Festival, Oslo; Chance and Circumstance, Brooklyn; Klub Katarakt, Hamburg; Klangwerkstatt and MaerzMusik, Berlin; among others.

She received degrees in double bass performance and music composition from University of California (UC) San Diego with additional studies at The Conservatorio G. Nicolini in Piacenza, Italy (double bass) and The UDK in Graz, Austria (composition), the latter on a Fulbright Fellowship. Graduate studies culminated in a doctorate in composition from Stanford University. Lou was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and an Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She has been granted commissions from institutions like the Fromm Music Foundation, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, and the Norwegian Arts Council. She has taught as visiting faculty at Dartmouth College, the Akademie für Neue Musik in Boswil, Switzerland, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently on faculty at UC San Diego.

Since 2010, the Graham Foundation has partnered with Lampo to produce an international performance series held at the Madlener House. Lampo, founded in 1997, is a nonprofit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

SATURDAY, MAY 11, 12–5 pm CT
CLICK HERE to register to attend the in-person live-stream in Chicago at the Graham Foundation
CLICK HERE to buy tickets to attend in-person in New York at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to buy tickets to attend in-person in New York (SOLD OUT)
CLICK HERE to register to live-stream the event

Join us to watch the live-stream of the The World Around Summit 2024—a convening of global architecture’s “now, near, and next”—in the Graham Foundation’s ballroom. The World Around Summit is a conference featuring luminaries from architecture, design, and beyond presented online and in-person at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. This all-day program curated by Beatrice Galilee, presents a year of architecture and design in a day, introducing the best of contemporary buildings, and exploring cutting-edge and inspiring new projects and initiatives in landscape, technology, and design—all through the lens of social and ecological justice. The 2024 World Around Summit is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation.

An international and interdisciplinary line-up of speakers will present new approaches to landscape and urbanism, material innovation, synthetic spaces, housing, museums, and community. The World Around's format of short, singular presentations are intended to share the exciting and extraordinary ways in which architects are addressing the critical topics of our time. As part of the nonprofit's mission to make its programming accessible to all, the summit will be live-streamed in partnership with Dezeen.

SESSION ONE: AN EXAMINED WORLD
12 PM CT 
Beatrice Galilee — Welcome
Cyra Levenson
Neri & Hu —  RE:
Germane Barnes — Watch the Tone
Nguyễn Hà — Dao Mau Museum and Temple
Ernesto Picco — Lithium Chronicles
Mae-ling Lokko — The World Around with Coconuts
SO–IL — In Depth
Emanuele Coccia — Homes: How to Design for Our Moral Topography

SESSION TWO: A FLUID TERRITORY
2:30 CT 
Jakob Kudsk Steensen — Ephemeral Lake
Niklas Bildstein Zaar — Manticore
Alexis Sablone —  Skatespace: Underexplored Terrain
Sameep Padora — Looking for Context
Ma Yansong & Sandra Jackson Dumont — In Conversation moderated by Asima Jansveld

SESSION THREE: A PLANETARY LANDSCAPE
4 PM CT 
Béatrice Grenier
Yu Kongjian — Turenscape
Joe Christa Giraso — MASS Design Group
Lisa Switkin — Field Operations
Beatrice Galilee — Close

PARTICIPANTS

Germane Barnes, Studio B-arn-S – An architecture practice disrupting the status quo, committed to hands-on, research-driven design in service of social transformation in the USA

Niklas Bildstein Zaar, Sub – A Berlin-based studio with a synthetic approach to design that encompasses emerging technologies, semantic analysis, and behavioral research alongside traditional architectural techniques

Joe Christa Giraso, MASS Design Group – A design group on a mission to promote social and environmental justice, advocating a deeper approach to “sustainability” rooted in place, community, and care on ongoing projects in Rwanda

Emanuele Coccia – A philosopher revealing the dependencies between all life on earth to write an aesthetics for the Anthropocene Era in his new book, The Philosophy of Home

Nguyễn Hà, ARB Vietnam – A landscape architecture studio reading the natural poetry in an orchard site to preserve a space of spirituality at the Dao Mau Museum and Temple on the outskirts of Hanoi, Vietnam

Mae-ling Lokko – An architectural scientist, designer, and educator from Ghana and the Philippines working with agro-waste and renewable bio-based materials

Jing Liu & Florian Idenburg, SO–IL – An architecture practice envisioning new urban housing models in Brooklyn, New York through homes that allow the outdoors to enter into nurture connection

Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – A curator, author, educator, and public advocate bringing her vision to redefine the role of art museums today to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles

Sameep Padora, Sameep Padora & Associates – A landscape architecture firm based in Mumbai, attending to the landscape’s material histories to shape an architecture at one with its context in South India

Ernesto Picco – An investigative journalist documenting the destructive race to power the green transition in South America’s Lithium Triangle

Alexis Sablone – An Olympic athlete making “skateable” public art across Europe and the USA to invite urban communities to play in their cities

Lisa Switkin, Field Operations – A landscape architect behind some of New York City’s most revered public parks, including the High Line, Domino Park, and Gansevoort Peninsula

Rossana Hu & Lyndon Neri, Neri & Hu – A Shanghai-based architecture studio bringing their characteristic tactile minimalism and attention to massing to the extension of Xi’an’s Qujiang Museum of Fine Arts

Ma Yansong, MAD Architects – An award-winning Chinese practice drawing on nature to design a landmark arts institution, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, into the cultural fabric of Los Angeles

Kongjian Yu, Turenscape – A China-based landscape architecture and urbanism practice, building on tradition to reconnect communities to the earth and steward the environment for future generations

Founded in 2020, The World Around (TWA) is a global nonprofit platform headquartered in New York, with a simple but ambitious mission: to rethink architecture. Taking the most critical issue of our time—the climate crisis—as the lens to view all of their activities, TWA connects with global institutions to craft unique public conversations that look beyond buildings to investigate the often-invisible forces that shape our homes, cities, landscapes, and lives. The World Around Summit 2024 is co-presented with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

To learn more about the 2024 Summit and browse past presentations, click here.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Graham Foundation, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

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