Steina and Woody Vasulka

[4] The couple met in the early 1960s and moved to New York City in 1965, where they began showing video art at the Whitney Museum and founded The Kitchen in 1971.

[7] For the first few years following their relocation to in New York, the Vasulkas were not involved with the local art scene; Steina continued to practice as a violinist and Woody began making independent documentaries and edited industrial films at Harvey Lloyd Productions.

[11][12] In 1967, at the request of architects Woods and Ramirez, Woody collaborated on developing films designed for a multi-screen environment to be shown in the American Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal.

[13] On December 31, 1969 and January 1, 1970 Woody Valsulka video recorded Jimi Hendrix performing with Band of Gypsys at the Fillmore East in NYC.

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 was valuable space for a number of music, performance, and media artists in New York who at the time did not feel welcome in commercial galleries or the mainstream art-world.

[15][16] The Vasulkas' programming for The Kitchen provided the space to a number video artists who would become prominent, including Joan Jonas, Nancy Holt, Vito Acconci, Mary Lucier, Dara Birnbaum, Bill Viola, and Gary Hill.

Woody's practice became more focused on digital image manipulation and the employment of tools like the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer (Bill Etra, a co-creator of this device, showed frequently at The Kitchen during the Vasulkas' tenure).