The tower 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 tower 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.