The eighteen storey building over the Cross Bronx, the block party on the plaza, then the rec room downstairs: two turntables and a mixer, the speakers, the break, the works on the cinderblock.
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc played a back to school party for his sister Cindy Campbell in the rec room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. He isolated and repeated the breaks in records so dancers could keep going, a technique that became the foundation of hip hop. The building beside the Cross Bronx Expressway is widely recognized as the birthplace of the culture.
Source · Britannica, hip-hop ↗
The brown brick eighteen storey building at the top of the hill, the highway trench below, the lobby and the community room with its drop ceiling and cinderblock, two turntables on a folding table, a wall of speakers, a crowd in a circle around the floor. Mood: august 1973. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.