'A Listening Space' from Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation

For one year, Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation will present A Listening Space, an immersive experiment that marries the Chicago-based artist’s love of music and cuisine with the concept of hospitality as a practice rather than a commercial tool. Free to the public, the meditative space—housed in the former Currency Exchange Café—presents more than 8,000 12-inch vinyl records from the Dinh Nguyen Collection. Gates invites visitors to gather, listen in, and enjoy a cup of tea.

It all began with the music. “My favorite hunt is the hunt for a great listening space, a bar, a great sound system,” Gates tells Surface. He credits his extensive time in Japan as an inspiration, as well as “recognizing that the key for the Japanese listening space is in some way connected to Black G.I.s that brought great music with them from the states. There is this inseparable bond between the music and the history of Black presence in Japan.”

“We have music collections and I am always looking for innovative ways to share those collections with the public,” he continues, referencing his Frankie Knuckles, Jesse Owens, Marva Jolly, and Dr. Wax collections. “The collections are too good and too important to have in a living room. Part of what’s made Rebuild such a joy as a platform is that it’s a way of getting things from my personal use to a creation of culture for a public that I deeply believe in. It’s about sharing the things that you have.”

When Gates became the owner of the Dinh Nguyen Collection, he promised the French Vietnamese DJ’s widow, Danielle, and daughter, Millie, that he would steward the collection into the public sector. He didn’t know how, or what form it would take. “It was really important to me to have, as quickly as I could, a moment where this amazing collection could be shared to honor the commitment I made to the family,” he says.

Nguyen focused on music of the Caribbean, particularly from the islands of Réunion and Mauritius, as he collected for more than 20 years. “He spent a lot of time in those places, but I also got the sense that he was just an avid, obsessive phonophile,” Gates says. “The collection is all over the place. Once you get past the 45s, which are really the Caribbean heart, then you get to classical music, music that I’ve been calling world ethnographic music, jazz, British R&B, ska, reggae. It goes on and on.”

For Gates, it was crucial that the experience within A Listening Space presented no burden on the public to purchase anything. “It’s uncoupled from commerce,” he says. “It feels like a sacred space for music and community. Capitalism, its efficiency is figuring out what people like, then feeding them that thing, and then charging them for it. It has been nice to bring the collection and hospitality and service to something that feels human again.”

To transform the venue, which—as its name implies—used to be currency exchange, Gates made a few minor interventions. “We took what used to be a liquor bar and barista service station and turned that into our album repository,” he says. “Then we created a wall divider that separates the back portion of the building from the front, so that if we have a DJ also serving tea—which we warmly call a TeaJ—that person would have a very simple box to manage.

“The space feels like an homage to craft and handmaking,” he continues. “We use my wares to serve tea. The shelving system and the album repository, that was made by one of my guys, who took a lot of pride in the creation of the system.” Together, Rebuild sought to make a comfortable space that wasn’t about turnover. It was about encouraging people to stay. As Gates adds, there’s nothing pretentious about the space. “It’s just the type of creative space that you don’t see very much of in the South Side of Chicago. People should come in and try it,” he says.

Gates invited Kyoto-based, Michelin-recognized chef Tatsuya Ueda, a friend, to visit Chicago. As they ruminated on potential collaborations, the idea for “12 Dinners” at Currency Exchange arose. For the exploratory culinary series, the chef collaborated with Rebuild Foundation’s executive chef, Ellison Park. Initially, it wasn’t going to be open to the public. “The more we thought about it, my team and I, we realized maybe this could be a great opportunity for people to better understand the kinds of experimentation that we want to be engaged in within culture in Chicago, as a way of celebrating and amplifying the connections we have internationally.” In four hours, all of the seats sold out.

“The modern art movement and contemporary art will make you think that all that exists is this isolated object on a wall or a sculpture in a park,” Gates says. “I don’t think art ends there. I think especially today it has to be something that meets you where you are, gets you excited, tells you a story, and aligns your political interests. It is both a thing that should be about what one experiences in the soul, and something that is a commentary on the truth of this moment.”

When the Rebuild Foundation started 15 years ago, the core of the nonprofit was about the restoration of buildings. “I feel like in some ways we’ve done that and now we are ready to get to the work of being culture instead of building spaces for the future of culture,” Gates says. “When we started Rebuild, there were very few South Side cultural gems, places where people could go to experience joy on the street. We found ourselves all going to other parts of the city, or leaving the city, to celebrate things that we were into. Now the landscape is very different.”

“On the food side, you’ve got Virtue, you’ve got Peach’s, you’ve got Bronzeville Winery,” he says, “and on the arts side you’ve got Blanc Gallery and South Side Community Art Center. You can go on and on. Rebuild is part of a constellation of great spaces.” For the next 15 years, Gates sees a shift from being a cultural service provider to being able to enrich the artistic possibilities in other artists so that they too can be great cultural providers. “We want to ensure there is a next generation of great artists,” he adds.

He believes that “the practice that I wanted to have has undergone a tremendous amount of transformation. For many years, artmaking was about looking at the environment, taking those things in, and figuring out what my output could be. I feel like I’m moving into a phase where I am looking at the outside and thinking about the output—and I am thinking about how to have a better interior.”

“You will see that Rebuild will become a place that’s much more contemplative,” he concludes, nodding to A Listening Space. “It’s really about honoring the quiet places within an artist and within a community. While we will still have Frankie Knuckles turnups from time to time, we will have moments where yoga and meditation become central to the work, and ensuring that people have access to craft excellence. We want to care for the interiors of other artists. I am really excited for that.”