EYE's 200-Cymbal Performance Transcends at Watermill Center Summer Festival

At the Watermill Center's Summer Festival on Saturday, Japanese musician Yamantaka Eye (EYE) of the band Boredoms conducted a noise performance featuring 200 cymbal players arranged in a circle around a central stage. The event, titled "Limitless Time," celebrated founder Robert Wilson, who died last year. EYE's piece descended from Boredoms' 2007–08 performances with 77 drummers in Brooklyn Bridge Park and subsequent shows in New York and Los Angeles. The cymbalists, many from the Brooklyn underground music scene, played hi-hats and crashes guided by a lighted conical sculpture emitting blue light and deep bass sounds. EYE appeared later, swinging the cone and spinning into a shamanic flow. Other offerings included an exhibition of Wilson's objects, a collaboration between Laurie Anderson, Shane Weeks, and Shinnecock Nation members, and a reading of Maya Angelou poems by Isabelle Huppert. Notable attendees included Anna Delvey and Performa founder Roselee Goldberg. Matt Stephenson of Machine Girl brought his father to play a cymbal. Artist Irina Alimanestianu found the performance too long. The festival blended noise and high society, with earplugs distributed.