In 1971, the Vasulkas founded The Kitchen, a multi-use media theater located in the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Centre in Greenwich Village, in the interest of cultivating new-media art in an inclusive, comprehensive, and un-administrative context. Under the direction of Dimitri Devyatkin, and with help from Andy Mannik, Sia and Michael Tschudin, Rhys Chatham, and Shridhar Bapat, the space received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and expanded its programming, which was foregrounded by video and electronic media performance and would come to include new music programming under the direction of Rhys Chatham. The Kitchen would relocate following the collapse of the Mercer Arts Centre, but maintain its mission.