In Cradled Current, Warp Duo develops feedback as a shared instrumental language. Qiujiang Levi Lu and Scott Congyu Li perform on new systems that have emerged through their five-year collaboration, bringing their individual practices into closer contact.

Li uses a transducer-based system that feeds the amplified signal of their violin back through the body of the instrument. Bowing, plucking, muting, and physical contact with the violin alter the resulting sound, moving between resonant drones, unstable noise, and conventional string articulation. Lu performs with an intraoral speaker and feedback trombone routed through a joystick-controlled processing system. The processed signal returns through the speaker in Lu’s mouth, creating a recursive circuit between the body and electronic processing.

Warp Duo’s Cradled Current, created for Lampo, brings the two systems into a single environment—electrical and volatile, but also, as the title suggests, something held and carried between the two performers. The largely improvised work extends material from the duo’s earlier 沿光苍穹 / The Ever-Reaching, Luminescent Horizon.

Warp Duo is the queer Chinese American duo of Qiujiang Levi Lu and Scott Congyu Li. Using violin, trombone, voice, guitar, and live electronics, they combine free improvisation, electronic processing, and songs influenced by Chinese folk lullabies. Their work explores love, grief, fragility, intimacy, and human connection.

Scott Congyu Li (b. 1998, Princeton, N.J.) is a New York-based violinist, composer, producer, improviser, filmmaker, and electroacoustic sound artist. Their work combines string playing with modular synthesis, live processing, fixed media, film, photography, dance, and poetry.

Li has collaborated with musicians, filmmakers, visual artists, poets, and dancers, with projects ranging from pop production to experimental noise music. Their work has been presented by New World Symphony’s BLUE Project series, Miami; the University of Michigan Department of Dance, Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Pathos Trio. Performances include Park Avenue Armory, The Jazz Gallery, and Dripping, New York; Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, Tenn.; New World Center, Miami Beach, Fla.; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Rhizome DC, Washington, D.C.; A L’ARME! Festival, Berlin; and Cologne Jazzweek, Cologne, Germany, among others. Li is a recording engineer at the Juilliard School.

Qiujiang Levi Lu (b. 1999, Beijing) is an experimental musician, composer, creative technologist, and educator. They work across live performance, electroacoustic instrument design, installation, composition, film scoring, and multimedia collaboration. Lu builds electroacoustic instruments including intraoral microphone-speaker feedback systems, amplified laptop interfaces, and motion-sensing electronics. Their work brings Chinese musical lineages into conversation with noise, embodied technology, queerness, spirituality, and transformation.

Performances include La MaMa and MATA Festival, New York; Send + Receive, Winnipeg; High Zero Festival, Baltimore; IRCAM Forum, Paris; Threading Festival, Taipei; and Temple Dongjingyuan, Beijing, among others. Lu has been an artist-in-residence at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn; Harvestworks and The New School, New York; Wave Farm, Acra, N.Y.; and Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm. They have received commissions from TAK Ensemble, Popebama, and Luke Helker, and support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants program, Ernst & Young Emergent Futures Fellowship, and NEW INC.

Lu is a lecturer in music at the University of Pennsylvania and Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University.

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.

Accessibility: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

Note: Registration for Lampo programs is required, but does not guarantee entry. Capacity for this performance is limited. Doors open 30 minutes prior to the performance and seats are available on a first-come, first-serve basis for those registered in advance. Reservations expire 5 minutes before the performance start time, at which point seating will be released to the waitlist. Due to the popularity of the Lampo programs, performances quickly reach capacity. No late seating will be permitted.

Photo: RoBotEaters

PAST EVENTS

The Graham Foundation and the Chicago Architecture Biennial mark the release of SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, published in conjunction with the sixth Chicago Architecture Biennial, 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. Edited by Rodriguez, Santiago Bogani, Igo Kommers Wender, and Isabella Moretti, it is an editorial experiment on dispersion, embracing multiplicity as a method and conversation as a form. Featuring contributions from biennial participants and invited contributors, it acts as a curatorial capsule that extends SHIFT into print, opening new spaces for conversation, collective speculation, and architectural imagination.

Join Florencia Rodriguez and Igo Kommers Wender in conversation with biennial participants Kelly Bair (BairBalliet), Alexander Eisenschmidt, Clare Lyster (CLUAA), and Antonio Torres (The Bittertang Farm), followed by a reception. Copies of SHIFT, co-published by the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Park Books, will be available in the Graham Foundation bookshop.

Kelly Bair, co-founder of BairBalliet, leads a Chicago and Los Angeles practice whose speculative and built work spans architecture, exhibitions, and design research.

Alexander Eisenschmidt directs Studio Offshore, an architecture and urban design practice, and leads The Housing Futures Initiative, with work spanning design, writing, and international exhibitions.

Igo Kommers Wender, an architect, editor, and cultural producer based in Chicago, is associate curator of the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Clare Lyster, founder of CLUAA, leads a research practice exploring how logistical and metabolic systems shape architecture, landscape, and infrastructure.

Florencia Rodriguez, founding principal of -NESS, leads an international cultural platform for architecture and served as Artistic Director of the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Antonio Torres, co-founder of The Bittertang Farm, leads a playful, inventive design practice based in Chicago and Bainbridge Island whose work explores speculative forms and living materials.

ABOUT THE PUBLICATION

Essays, manifestos, and conversations feature: Kelly Bair; Arno Brandlhuber; Alejandra Celedón; Kate Yeh Chiu; Juan Du; Janet Echelman; Alexander Eisenschmidt; Valeria Esteves; Alison Fisher; Fredi Fischli; Giulia Foscari, UNA/UNLESS; Ignacio G. Galán; Amber Ginsburg; David Gissen; Architensions (Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro); Jia Yi Gu; Akilah Halley; Chana Haouzi; Christopher Hawthorne; Rossana Hu; Daniel Ibáñez; Sam Jacob; Sharon Johnston; Wilfried Kuehn; Mark Lee; Clare Lyster, CLUAA; Simona Malvezzi; Florencia Medina; Caitlin Mueller; Cristiane Muniz; Janell Nelson; Niels Olsen; Tosin Oshinowo; Cristóbal Palma; David Peyceré; Hilary Sample; Gloria Sutton; Martien de Vletter.

The publication includes a five-hour conversation marathon on topics such as new realism, the magic in the ordinary, pleasures in the urban, and the need to critically shift architecture's language with Biennial participants Sebastián Adamo, Lilla Árkovics, Juan Manuel Balsa, Roberto Behar, Erin Besler, Caio Calafate, Sol Camacho, Abigail Chang, Lap Chi Kwong, Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, Attila Csóka, James Dallman, Iman Salam Fayyad, Nathalie Frankowski, Cruz Garcia, Adriana Giorgis, Alison von Glinow, Alejandro Haiek Coll, Grace La, Sean Lally, Frederico Leite, Lara Lesmes, Iván L. Munuera, Mireia Luzzárraga, Masa Mahlek, Maria Vittória Martins, Rosario Marquardt, Szabolcs Molnár, Noelia Monteiro, Daniel Moreno Flores, Frida Mouchlian, Leandro Piazzi, Lolo Rebecca Rudolph, Alejandro Saldarriaga, David Smiló, Alfredo Thiermann, Leonidas Trampoukis, Pedro Varella, Aura Venckunaite, Alex Yueyan Li, Ema Yuizarix, and Oscar Zamora.

Co-published by Chicago Architecture Biennial and Park Books

The Chicago Architecture Biennial convenes the world to explore innovative ideas and collectively imagine the future of design. The Biennial’s large-scale exhibitions, talks, performances, films, and other events, create opportunities to engage timely global issues through the lens of architecture and design, emphasizing creativity and community participation. Free and open to the public, the Chicago Architecture Biennial stands as North America’s largest international survey of contemporary architecture and design.

Image: Estudio Planta, Latin America Informal City 2025. Courtesy Estudio Planta

Patricio del Real presents his book, Constructing Latin America. Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art (Yale University Press, 2022)—a nuanced look at how, through architecture exhibitions, this New York institution became a key agent in cultural politics in the United States and in the consolidation of “Latin American architecture” as a modernist category. Del Real demonstrates how The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s curatorial activities generated and naturalized “Latin America” not only as a stylistic and cultural variant of international modernism but also as a racializing concept at a critical global conjuncture. The idea of “Latin American architecture” was seminal for the interpretation of modern architecture in the twentieth century and, moreover, for MoMA’s international projection as cultural arbiter in the Cold War period. It remains an active category that underpins studies on architectural modernism as a global phenomenon. Constructing Latin America was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation in 2021. This talk is presented in conjunction with Latinitudes: A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture by Leonardo Finotti, on view at the Graham Foundation through July 18, 2026.

Patricio del Real is known for his expertise in the field of architecture and architecture history, with a focus in the Americas. His work examines the intersections of buildings, politics and cultural identity. As an architectural historian, he contributes to a deeper understanding of the global dimensions of modernism, shedding light on its unique transformations and adaptations. One of his notable contributions is his focus on institutions and the transnational flows of ideas and practices and how these migrations have impacted both the development of architectural forms and the practices of architects in the second postwar period. Del Real is associate professor in the department of the history of art and architecture at Harvard University. Before his appointment at Harvard, he worked at The Museum of Modern Art’s architecture and design department on several temporary and collection exhibitions, and cocurated Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980.

Image: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Fashion shoot in front of the Ministério da Educação e Saúde (MES), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as published in, “Urban Cotton: For Being at Ease,” Harper’s Bazaar, May 1946

For more information on the exhibition, Latinitudes
A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture, click here.

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