Please note: this event includes strobe lights / special lighting effects, which may affect individuals with light sensitivities.

Roc Jiménez de Cisneros’ MAKINA TRAX unfolds as a free deformation of the mákina sound—a subgenre of Spanish techno with a fast, hard-edged style that emerged in Spain in the early 1990s, becoming a soundtrack for youth in Valencia, Barcelona, and beyond, particularly within working-class communities.. MAKINA TRAX bends, stretches, and fractures its fevered pulse into unstable rhythms, caught between propulsion and collapse. Although wildly popular, mákina was long dismissed by critics as low-quality, functional music—a paradox of mass success and cultural stigma. With MAKINA TRAX, Jiménez de Cisneros asks what happens when a form already treated as marginal is pushed further toward the edges.

Roc Jiménez de Cisneros (b.1975, Barcelona) is part of the computer music group EVOL together with Scottish artist Stephen Sharp. Their work considers processes of deformation applied to post-acid house culture. Their recordings have been published by record labels such as Diagonal, Editions Mego, Presto!?, iDEAL, Hypermedium and others. Much of his work interprets music in morphological terms: mutated forms, spatial relationships, and elasticity, both metaphorical and literal. Since 2013, he has pushed this spatial-material approach to music in different ways, originally drawing connections between holes and music, then extending that to folds and folding, to produce a series of pieces, talks, light installations, and publications that propose a reevaluation of musical phenomena as volumetric and topological structures. MAKINA TRAX is Jiménez de Cisneros’s fourth project with Lampo. In November 2019, he premiered Six Hexaflexagons for Chicago, an audiovisual piece and homage to early Chicago house music. In February 2016 he presented EVOL’s Opus17aSlimeVariation#8—a reinterpretation of Hanne Darboven’s Opus 17a. He first appeared in the Lampo series in October 2011.

Artist Talk:

Lampo Annex, Monadnock Building, 53 W Jackson Blvd. #1656. Thursday, October 9, 6 p.m. 
Register to attend

Roc Jiménez de Cisneros discusses Untitled Drum Permutations, his project built on a simple but overwhelming premise: playing every possible ordering of eleven drum machine sounds—over 39 million unique permutations. Using the iconic Roland TR-909, it becomes a systematic yet strangely meditative exploration of limits, repetition, pattern deformation, and attention. What begins as a mechanical process soon raises deeper questions about how we listen, how memory functions in music, and how sheer quantity can shift our perception of time. He situates the work within larger cultural patterns, positioning it alongside economics, horror, and magic.

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.

PAST EVENTS

In Materia Resonante, Concepción Huerta treats sound as a borderland. Her work is informed by Gloria Anzaldúa’s writings on liminal space and Daphne Oram’s early electronic experiments. In performance, Huerta uses recordings made with synthesizers and oscillators, layered onto magnetic tape, and sets them in tension with live electronics. Lighting extends the sound, creating a synesthetic experience. Materia Resonante moves through shifting states: drones, pulsing rhythms, tonal fragments, and silence emerge and recede, each with its own weight.  The new composition suggests that these threshold conditions, where one form gives way to another, reveal sound’s capacity to function as both a technical process and living matter.

Concepción Huerta is a composer and multidisciplinary artist who divides her time between Mexico City and Berlin. Using processed tapes, together with synthesizers, she creates dense, atmospheric works. Her practice reflects on the space between silence and noise, the physical and psychological effects of sound, and its power to shape perception and place. She is a member of the experimental ensemble Amor Muere with Gibrana Cervantes, Camille Mandoki, and Mabe Fratti, and has collaborated with artists including Daniela Huerta, Hara Alonso, Aimeé Theriot, Fernando Vigueras, Rodrigo Ambriz, Martin Escalante, CNDSD, Tommi Keränen, and Leslie Garcia. Her projects include Travelers, Grietas (with Lucia Hinojosa and Vania Fortuna); and The Sacredness of All Dimensions of Life, a project of speculative narratives (with Anahy Cabrera/ZETA). Recordings include Cueva de Cristales (Vorágine, 2018); Personal Territories (Static Discos, 2019); Lost Time (Filiae, 2020); Estática (SA Recordings/Spitfire Audio, 2021); Desciende (TVL REC/Aurora Central, 2022); Harmonies from Betelgeuse (Umor Rex, 2022); A Time to Love, A Time to Die (Scrawl, 2023); The Earth Has Memory (Elevator Bath, 2024); and El Sol de los Muertos (Umor Rex, 2025).

Moderated by Isabella Moretti and Santiago Bogani with participants Pedro Varella (gru.a), Wonne Ickx (PRODUCTORA), Rocío Crosetto Brizzio (BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI), Sol Camacho (RADDAR), Magdalena Tagliabue, Oscar Zamora, and Alejandra Celedón.

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month—and marking the first Latin American Artistic Director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial—this panel gathers leading voices from across the region to reflect on the architectural ideas and cultural forces shaping practice today. Moderated by Isabella Moretti and Santiago Bogani, the conversation highlights a generation of architects who are redefining the field through experimentation, cultural continuity, and social engagement.

Through the lens of their current projects and concepts, participants will open a collective dialogue about contemporary architecture in Latin America: its diverse contexts, shared urgencies, and imaginative approaches. Together, they will consider how architectural practice in the Global South is producing powerful ideas for the present and bold visions for the future.

SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change is the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and marks the celebration of its tenth anniversary.

Led by Artistic Director Florencia Rodriguez, SHIFT signals the opportunity and need to change direction—an invitation to think with others and to set new grounds for the interpretation and design of our built environments. This edition explores how architecture engages with the profound cultural, social, and environmental transformations shaping our world today and explores the possibility of envisioning alternate paths forward. Featuring over 100 projects by architects, artists, and designers from 30 countries, SHIFT convenes voices from around the world, in a citywide constellation of exhibitions and public programs. Together, they address urgent questions shaping the spaces we inhabit, such as housing, ecology, and material innovation, to demonstrate architecture’s role in shaping our collective future.

The Graham Foundation is an official site for SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change.

Please note: The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please call ahead to make arrangements. The second-floor galleries and the third-floor ballroom, where events are held, are only accessible by stairs. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

For more information on the exhibition, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change , click here.

Moderated by Florencia Rodriguez, Igo Wender Kommers, and Chana Haouzi with participants Iman Fayyad, R&R, Alexander Eisenschmidt, Space Popular, Abigail Chang, Adamo-Faiden, Erin Besler, The Bittertang Farm, Kwong Von Glinow, Michael Meredith, Christopher Hawthorne, and Tiffany Jow.

As part of SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change—the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial—this panel brings together Biennial participants and critics for a fast-paced, collective exploration of how architecture can respond to a world in flux. Moderated by Artistic Director Florencia Rodriguez with co-curators Igo Kommers  Wender and Chana Haouzi, the program features architects from across the Biennial’s thematic capsules—Inhabit, Outhabit; Ecologies; The Ordinary-EXTRA; and Melting Solids.

In a dynamic format, each participant will respond to the central question of SHIFT—how does your work address change? Their provocations will spark a larger conversation on housing, ecologies, and the beauty of the everyday, offering insight into how architects are rethinking fundamentals and experimenting with new possibilities for practice. The session closes with reflections from architectural critics, underscoring the vital role of criticism in shaping public discourse and reaffirming architecture’s capacity to imagine better futures.

SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change is the sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and marks the celebration of its tenth anniversary.

Led by Artistic Director Florencia Rodriguez, SHIFT signals the opportunity and need to change direction—an invitation to think with others and to set new grounds for the interpretation and design of our built environments. This edition explores how architecture engages with the profound cultural, social, and environmental transformations shaping our world today and explores the possibility of envisioning alternate paths forward. Featuring over 100 projects by architects, artists, and designers from 30 countries, SHIFT convenes voices from around the world, in a citywide constellation of exhibitions and public programs. Together, they address urgent questions shaping the spaces we inhabit, such as housing, ecology, and material innovation, to demonstrate architecture’s role in shaping our collective future.

Please note: The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please call ahead to make arrangements. The second-floor galleries and the third-floor ballroom, where events are held, are only accessible by stairs. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

For more information on the exhibition, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change , click here.

Ikue Mori presents new electronic music inspired by Lafcadio Hearn’s writings on Japanese folktales—particularly the ghost-story genre known as kaidan. In this solo performance, she reimagines supernatural narratives collected by Hearn a century ago in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, creating an evocative work of melody, texture, and taiko drumming patterns.

Ikue Mori (b.1953, Tokyo) started her career in 1977 as Ikue Ile, transplanted from Japan to Manhattan’s East Village, where she played drums in the No Wave band DNA with guitarist Arto Lindsay. An autodidact, she took to percussion immediately, developing a distinctive personal style that helped set the band apart.

Mori soon went on to become a key member of the downtown New York improvised music scene, using drum machines and samplers. She began an ongoing collaboration with saxophonist John Zorn and has appeared on many of his recordings, including early classics such as Locus Solus and Godard/Spillane.

Bridging the worlds of improvised music, experimental music, and rock, Mori has developed a singular approach to freely improvised laptop music, working with musicians across the improvising spectrum, including harpist Zeena Parkins in the duo Phantom Orchard and with Zorn and singer Mike Patton as Hemophiliac, and performing and recording with pianist Craig Taborn, saxophonist Ken Vandermark, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, trumpeters Dave Douglas and Butch Morris, and guitarists Fred Frith and Thurston Moore. She often records on Tzadik and has designed the covers for many of the label’s albums.

Commissioners of her work include the Tate Modern, the Montalvo Arts Center, SWR German radio program, Relâche, the Mary Flagler Charitable Trust, and the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates. Mori was a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and has received numerous other honors, including the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2006), a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2000), and a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction (1999). In 2005 she participated in the Ucross Foundation Residency Program. She has led workshops and lectures at Dartmouth College, Mills College, New England Conservatory, Stanford University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Gothenburg.

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.

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