Sterling Music Room

Sterling Music Room was a salon hosted by the artist Claudia Weber in her Brooklyn apartment throughout 2016. The program consisted of exhibitions, performances, readings, storytelling, video screenings, dinners, etc., based on an intentional mix of planning and chance. While the salon drew inspiration from many ideas and places, at its heart it was a response to the rising rents and current luxurification of New York City, and the impact it currently has on both, the city's cultural practitioners and landscape as well as on the domestic concept of the living room. After hosting 17 semi-public events, and many more private ones, Sterling Music Room has come to an end. This website will continue to serve as the salon’s extended notebook and digital space. Click here for past activities.

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A double-sided poster pays tribute to and reflects on many of the events that took place in the Sterling Music Room.

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After hosting a wide variety of events, including exhibitions and readings, storytelling and performances, live music and record days, social experiments and film screenings, dinners and late night drinks, the Sterling Music Room project has now come to an end. 

Participants included: Nawaaz Ahmed (writer), Bonnie Begusch (artist), Mark Boswell (filmmaker/storyteller), Zachary Fabri (artist/performer), Eliza Hornig (writer), Oliver Husain (artist/filmmaker), Monika Gray (owner of choc. a brownie company), Joyce Kim (artist), Joanna Kotze (choreographer/performer), Jason Lazarus (artist), lumberob and dan (performers), Rick Myers (artist), Jeff Sims (artist), Tyler Wayne Smith (countertenor) + Chelsea Musica (chamber ensemble), Jo-ey Tang (artist/curator), Total Effekt (designers/illustrators/artists), Vier5 (designers), and many more.

For Sterling Music Room’s program see: https://www.facebook.com/sterlingmusicroom/

Thanks to everybody who participated in this experiment. In 2017 I will begin work on Sterling Music Room’s publication.

- Claudia Weber (Artist & Host)

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Zachary Fabri performs “Container #3″ at Sterling Music Room.

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Eliza Hornig reads selections from a short story about childhood politics–about love and rivalry, manipulation and cruelty–unfolding amid a trip to the Omaha Zoo.

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Preparation for Eliza Hornig’s reading at Sterling Music Room.

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Donald Trump picks retired Neurosurgeon Ben Carson to become the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for the United States.

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Zachary Fabri is revisiting the space for his upcoming Container #3 performance at Sterling Music Room.

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GLOBAL FOREVER.

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Letter that I found in my mailbox today: A shady real estate company that wants to buy this building, trying to lure me with a cute font and drawing, and an appeal to sincerity: IAE Equities LLC. 

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Left: Shadow of a speaker Right: “Not good enough...” - Emailed text by Jason Lazarus in response to the playing of his record Untitled at Sterling Music Room in the context of Donald Trump's presidency.

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For Untitled (2013), the artist Jason Lazarus invited a student of classical piano, Anthony Zediker, to learn to play Federic Chopin’s Nocturne in F Minor, op.55, no.1, in the exhibition space of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago over the course of three months. Lazarus’s idea behind the piece was to make the personal process of learning public and visible, so that the museum audience could intimately witness the act of learning as it happened in real time.

Lazarus documented Zediker’s live performances through weekly audio recordings, and produced a set of records from the outcome. Sterling Music Room played the two LPs (180 gram clear vinyl with hand-poured opaque milk white haze) to a new audience in a different context.

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Steven Zultanski reads from Part 3 or 4 of “Unfinished Poem in Five Parts,” an excerpt from a book about various kinds of intimacy. The topics are broad and flexible: friendship, love, money, and waiting.  http://www.kenningeditions.com/shop/part-3-or-4-of-unfinished-poem-in-five-parts/

The reading took place during Total Effekts’ Sterling Safe Room event.

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Sterling Safe Room by Total Effekt.

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Daily News’ headline after Donald Trump wins the election and becomes the president-elect. 

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A real estate developer and demagogue has become the president-elect of the United States, dividing the country.