Kim Gordon’s Amant Concert Turned Into a Different Kind of Noise Story
A semi-secret performance in East Williamsburg was supposed to close out “Folded Group,” the group exhibition curated by Kim Gordon and Bill Nace. Instead, it became a small study in improvisation, illness, and the porous border between art-world polish and underground sound.
Gordon arrived at Amant last week for the concert, then left before her set because she was sick. Nace, her Body/Head collaborator, stayed on and played with Aaron Dilloway of Wolf Eyes, after Dilloway stepped in at the last minute. Their set moved through 8-track loops, amplified objects, a compact microphone held in the mouth, and, by the end, Nace’s Fender Jazzmaster played upside down and vertical.
The room around them was as telling as the music. MV Carbon opened the evening with flickering visuals, while diners at Zoli, Amant’s seafood restaurant, heard the feed from the performance. Lonti Ebers, the Amant trustee who hosted the event, presided over a crowd that mixed pierced Gen Z attendees in Napalm Death T-shirts with noise regulars in hoodies and hiking shoes.
The column used the night to sketch noise music for an art-world audience without flattening it into a novelty. Nace described the form as something broader than the usual stereotype of volume and abrasion, pointing to homemade devices, children’s toys wired to amplifiers, and a range that can feel comic or menacing depending on the room. Joe Bucciero, an art historian, and other voices in the piece helped frame the scene as one that resists easy explanation, even as it thrives on insider knowledge.
The article also connected the Amant event to Gordon’s broader presence in New York. Her exhibition “Count Your Chickens” remains on view at Amant through August 16. Elsewhere in the city, MoMA’s Party in the Garden offered a different kind of cultural crossover, with Rebecca Black DJing and Pace Gallery CEO Marc Glimcher attending with his child, Lilleth.
Taken together, the two events suggest how closely contemporary art now brushes against music, nightlife, and social theater. In Gordon’s orbit, the distinctions are less fixed than they first appear — and that may be the point.
