Seth Kim-Cohen's work is more likely than not to skew the conventions of its presentation: to play with the norms of behavior, to dislodge the princess from her throne, the singer from his microphone. He often works with sound, sociality, narrative and situational aesthetics. Many of his projects initiate a listening about and around rock music as a cultural signifier.

His work has happened at venues such as the ICA London, the ZKM in Karlsruhe Germany, Issue Project Room, Tate Modern, Diapason Gallery, the Singapore Biennial, Grand Projects, Peer Gallery and PS 122.

Kim-Cohen writes about art, literature and music. He is the author of In The Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art, (Continuum, 2009), and One Reason To Live: Conversations About Music (Errant Bodies, 2006). His writing has also appeared in edited volumes including, Sound: Documents of Contemporary Art (Whitechapel/MIT, 2011), Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation (Continuum, 2011), The More The Merrier (Project Fulfill Art Space, 2011), Witness: Memory, Representation, and the Media in Question (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2008). He has written for magazines and journals including, Artforum, Art Review, TACET and Pop Stock.

Kim-Cohen was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and raised in Ossining, New York. He attended Emerson College, Columbia University and the London Consortium at the University of London, where he received a PhD.

From 1990 to 2002, he wrote, recorded and performed in a series of increasingly experimental rock bands, including Number One Cup and The Fire Show, with whom he released seven albums and numerous shorter recordings; played throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Europe; and recorded two Peel Sessions.

Kim-Cohen has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts; Pratt Institute and Yale University.

He was, for a short time, quadriplegic.