ARTIST KITTY CA$H LAUNCHES 1-800-GIVE THEM THEIR FLOWERS AT DENIM TEARS ON THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
Photo by Maria Prieto
The Interactive Public Hotline, Living Archive, and Participatory Installation Mark the First Activation of the Artist’s Long-Term Framework, Energy Reserve Systems (ERS)
NEW YORK, NY. July 7, 2026.
On July 3, 2026, the 250th anniversary of American independence, DJ, producer, and interdisciplinary artist Kitty Ca$h opened 1-800-Give Them Their Flowers at African Diaspora Goods by Denim Tears in SoHo. Conceived as a public hotline, textile installation, and durational listening experience, the project marks Vessel Study 001, the inaugural public activation of Kitty Ca$h’s larger artistic framework, Energy Reserve Systems (ERS).
Anchored by a toll-free hotline (1-800-207-3520), a large-scale sailcloth textile work, and The Human Mixtape, a sound piece sampling Christina Sharpe’s 2022 Venice Biennale keynote, What Could a Vessel Be?, the installation explores how memory, care, and communication travel across generations. Drawing from traditions of quilting, archiving, oral history, and collective storytelling, each element functions as a vessel for carrying living memory. Together, they form a participatory archive built through transmission, remembrance, and exchange.
For Kitty Ca$h, memory has long been a collective practice. Throughout her career as a DJ and producer, she has been interested in the exchange that occurs between artist and audience, the ways stories, emotions, and cultural knowledge move between people in real time. That inquiry expanded through Handle With Care, her 2024 installation at Hannah Traore Gallery in New York, where hundreds of visitors contributed personal postcards to a growing archive of emotional memory.
At the center of 1-800-Give Them Their Flowers is the belief that memory is a collective act. The public is not simply invited to experience the work; their stories, memories, voices, and participation become part of the artwork itself.
“ERS is an evolving artistic framework examining the systems through which Black communities store, transmit, and regenerate memory, care, and collective knowledge across generations,” says Kitty Ca$h.
Emerging from a growing concern over the fragility of collective memory and the ongoing erasure of Black histories, women’s histories, and other narratives excluded from official records, 1-800-Give Them Their Flowers invites the public to contribute to an evolving counter-archive of personal memory. Members of the public are invited to call the dedicated toll-free hotline and leave an anonymous voicemail for someone they love, miss, never got to thank, or never had the chance to fully speak to. The line offers a prompt, but not a conversation. There are no replies. Only the act of transmission.
These recordings become vessels that hold memory, grief, gratitude, longing, and care beyond the physical body. Over time, the accumulated archive will evolve into a multi-year durational artwork, informing future films, installations, sound works, publications, and archival projects within the ERS universe.
1-800-Give Them Their Flowers is on view at African Diaspora Goods by Denim Tears, 176 Spring Street, New York, NY, through August 4, 2026, where the installation shares the space with Theaster Gates’ diaspora library. The hotline, 1-800-207-3520, remains live as an ongoing living archive. More information at energyreservesystems.com.
ACTIVATION & INSTALLATION COMPONENTS
The project unfolds across a multi-sensory, site-specific takeover of African Diaspora Goods (176 Spring Street), on view through August 4 with opening programming over the July 3 and 5 holiday weekend:
- Storefront & Window Installation: The exterior windows of the space will feature a large-scale vinyl installation displaying archival imagery of Black sailors from Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line alongside the hotline The visuals reframe maritime history through the lenses of autonomy, circulation, and self-determined passage.
- Interior Textile & Sculptural Works: Inside the store, the archival imagery reappears printed on heavy sailcloth, accompanied by sculptural elements incorporating rope, thread, and tactile references to maritime movement and historic communication
- The Human Mixtape: Visitors will experience The Human Mixtape, a durational audio work sampling Christina Sharpe’s 2022 Venice Biennale keynote, What Could a Vessel Be?, woven through original sound compositions and contemporary electronic music. Rooted in the legacy of hip-hop mixtape culture, the work functions as a living transmission system of sound and memory while offering an early glimpse into the sonic language of Kitty Ca$h’s forthcoming EP and the broader ERS universe.
- Public Conversation (July 5): A public conversation between Kitty Ca$h and Honey Crawford, Memory, Archives & Transmission, at the African Diaspora Goods Library.
ON VIEW
1-800-Give Them Their Flowers is on view at African Diaspora Goods by Denim Tears, 176 Spring Street, New York, NY, July 4 through August 4, 2026. The hotline, 1-800-207-3520, is live for the full run. More information at energyreservesystems.com.
LISTING & VISITOR INFORMATION
- Project Title: 1-800-Give Them Their Flowers (Vessel Study 001 / Energy Reserve Systems)
- Dates: July 3 through August 4, 2026
- Location: African Diaspora Goods by Denim Tears, 176 Spring Street, New York, NY
- Public Hotline: 1-800-207-3520 (Active)
- Project Website: com
ABOUT KITTY CA$H
Kitty Ca$h is a DJ, producer, and interdisciplinary artist from Brooklyn whose work explores sound as a technology of memory, transmission, and collective care. Moving between electronic music, installation, research, and public participation, she treats the DJ set as both vessel and archive, a space where Black cultural memory can be received, remixed, and carried forward.
She has performed at Coachella, HARD Summer, Sole DXB, and Boiler Room, and has appeared alongside artists including Kaytranada, Channel Tres, and Benji B. She has DJ’d for Solange, Rihanna, Jhené Aiko, and Syd, presented performances at the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1, and partnered with brands including Dior, Chanel, Audemars Piguet, and Jordan.
In 2024, Kitty Ca$h released Handle With Care, an EP featuring Thundercat, Rico Nasty, Kilo Kish, and George Riley. She later expanded the project into her first solo installation, Handle With Care, at Hannah Traore Gallery, transforming the gallery into a participatory mailroom where visitors contributed handwritten postcards to a growing collective archive. The exhibition also introduced What The Shadow Knows, an ambient reimagining of the record featuring Sheila Maurice-Gray, Elizabeth Steiner, and Sid Sriram.
Her current body of work operates under ERS (Energy Reserve Systems), an evolving artistic framework examining how Black communities store, transmit, and regenerate memory, care, and collective knowledge across generations. Spanning music, installation, moving image, publishing, and public art, ERS asks how stories, care, and cultural knowledge survive and circulate beyond official archives. Through it all, Kitty Ca$h continues to return to the mixtape as both method and metaphor, a living archive built through transmission.
ABOUT ENERGY RESERVE SYSTEMS (ERS)
Energy Reserve Systems (ERS) is an evolving artistic framework examining how Black communities store, transmit, and regenerate memory, care, and collective knowledge across generations. Working across installation, sound, film, archives, publication, and public participation, ERS functions as a living, breathing system rather than a static archive, exploring how memory is carried and transformed when formal institutions fail. The work progresses through a series of Vessel Studies spanning music, installation, public art, sound, and publishing. More at energyreservesystems.com.
ABOUT AFRICAN DIASPORA GOODS BY DENIM TEARS
Denim Tears is a New York-based label founded in 2019 by designer Tremaine Emory. Each collection is built around a story drawn from the history of the African diaspora; its debut released on the 400th anniversary of the 1619 arrival of enslaved Africans in America, tracing the legacy of cotton and slavery through clothing. The brand’s cotton wreath motif has become its signature, described by Emory as a talisman for America. African Diaspora Goods is the Denim Tears retail space at 176 Spring Street in SoHo.