War
Toys
an installation by Larnie Fox
May 6-May 24
Opening Reception: Friday, May 9, 5-9 PM
Gallery hours: Wednesdays-Saturdays, 1-6pm
 
An installation of new kinetic sculpture by San Francisco
artist Larnie Fox exploring his lifelong fascination with
images of the machinery of war. War Toys reflects
the artist’s boyhood interest in things that fly, shoot,
burn, explode or make noise, channeled now through his art
away from war and toward a poetic reverie about science, space
exploration and robotics. War Toys also evokes a
common sense of ambiguity felt by those who are simultaneously
horrified by war and at the same time amazed by the technology
we have amassed to perpetrate mass destruction.
www.infoflow.com/larnie
In the Foyer Gallery:
Charles
Gatewood
Forbidden Photographs
May 6-May 24
Opening Reception: Friday, May 9, 5-9 PM
An exhibition of black and white and color photographs by
acclaimed San Francisco artist Charles Gatewood, who has documented
America's alternative culture for the past forty years. This
exhibition is in conjunction with the opening of Forbidden
Photographs, a feature film by Bill Macdonald about Gatewood's
life and work, which opens at the Roxie Theatre the same evening
and runs through May 15th.
Charles Gatewood will be present at the opening reception
to sign copies of his many books, including his latest, MESSY
GIRLS, just published by Goliath Books.
Leslie
Scalapino and Enough
Reading and Publication Party
Wednesday, May 21, 8 PM
$5-10 sliding scale admission
May 21st will be a dual evening. Leslie Scalapino will read
from her new book from Wesleyan University Press, which is
her autobiography with a poem, Zither & Autobiography.
This will be followed by readings, with San Francisco contributors,
from O Books’ Enough, edited by Rick London and Leslie
Scalapino. Enough is an anthology of poetry and writings
against war that includes fifty-eight poets whose contributions
are interactive with the current time. In Enough,
U.S., British, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Israeli poets speak
back and forth to each other through the medium of their art.
Scot
Jenerik and Larnie Fox
TARGODIE
sound performance
Friday, May 23, 8pm
$5-10 sliding scale admission
TARGODIE is an experimental sound project begun in 1995 by
San Francisco sound artist Scot Jenerik and sculptor Larnie
Fox. Their soundscapes range from atmospheric bliss to penetrating
noise. Jenerik brings forceful percussion, invented instruments
and technical expertise to the mix, while Fox provides melodic
elements and sculptural sound sources. To date TARGODIE has
one release on Mobilization Recordings, Against the Sky.
Dicewalk
participatory event with Larnie Fox
Saturday, May 24, 1pm
Free
Join Larnie Fox at The LAB on the closing day of his exhibition
for a special chance event. Fox will lead participants on
a dicewalk, a way of moving through an urban or town environment
in a random manner. The randomness allows for movement through
areas that one would ordinarily not venture into, often facilitating
surprising discoveries. For more information visit
www.infoflow.com/larnie/dicewalk
Mary
Armentrout
THE NEW WORLD
Fridays & Saturdays, June 6, 7, 13, 14
9pm, doors open at 8:30pm
$5-10 sliding scale admission
THE NEW WORLD is Mary Armentrout's newest multi-disciplinary
dance theater piece. In a dream collage installation that
collides dance, theater, video projections and an ambient
sound score, six performers deconstruct everyday activities
in ways that probe the usefulness of history, the limits of
politics, the fluidity of gender roles, and the difficulty
of love.
Known for her genre-bending, gender role-breaking dance theater
works, Armentrout presents the fruits of her recent forays
into the collective unconscious, the battle of the sexes,
and the troubled American political psyche of the moment.
Known for her experiments on the edge of hybrid dance-theater
fusion, Armentrout is a choreographer whose work lives at
the intersection of dance, theater, and object art. Special
guest artists Merlin Coleman and Maxine Moerman contribute
genre-mixing work of their own. For more information visit:
www.merlinman.com
Down
River & Hazy Lopers
CD Release Party and Solstice Eve Concert
Friday, June 20 9pm, doors open at 8:30pm
$3-10 sliding scale admission
Celebrate the night before the longest day with music by
Down River and Hazy Loper. Brand new CDs by both bands from
San Francisco's Out of Round Records on sale for $12.
Guillermo
Gomez-Pena and La Pocha Nostra
IMMACULATE DECEPTIONS
Friday and Saturday, June 27 & 28
9pm, doors open at 8:30pm
$10-20 sliding scale admission
Two evenings of new performance, video and literary works
in progress by La Pocha Nostra and international guest artists,
followed by open discussion with the audience. Participating
artists include: Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Juan Ybarra (San
Francisco-Mexico City); Michelle Ceballos (Bogota-Phoenix);
Monica Lleo (Canary Islands-Buenos Aires) and a few surprise
guests.
ART
PROPAGANDA WAR
Group Exhibition
July 2-July 12
Opening Reception: Friday, July 4, 5-8 PM
Gallery hours: Wednesdays-Saturdays, 1-6 PM
In an invitational group exhibition coordinated by Michael
Rauner and Allegra Fortunati, Bay Area artists use the public
forum for creative acts of dissent. This exhibition will recognize
visual and performed public artworks about propaganda and
war by local activists and artists.
Kristin
Lemberg
WANDERLUST in FableCity
July
25 and 26, 9pm
$10-$20 sliding scale admission
www.rkcorral.com
Choreographer,
Dancer and Performance Artist Kristin Lemberg and The RK Corral
are proud to present WANDERLUST
in FableCity, an evening length solo featuring
a dynamic theatrical performance by Kristin Lemberg, directed
by Rajendra Serber, with music by Cheryl E. Leonard, costumes
by Ryan Heffington of Rock and Sissy, and video cityscapes
by Rajendra Serber and Bulk Foodveyor. Set in an industrial
metropolis amid political upheaval and economic disparity,
WANDERLUST in FableCity
is a non-linear assemblage focusing on two women: the isolated,
socially elevated Hera Anne and the antic and hyper-indecisive
Annie Herowane. The differences between these two characters
are external: their caste, their situations, and their responsibilities.
The only thing they have in common is an acute and insatiable
case of wanderlust.
more...
The
LAB Presents
The
West Coast Premiere of Carla Harryman’s
Performing Objects Stationed in the Sub World
A season opening event inaugurating
The LAB’s 20th Anniversary
Wednesday, September 10, 8 PM, Gala Preview and Anniversary
Celebration
$20 Admission
Friday/Saturday, September 12-13 & Thursdays-Saturdays,
September 18-27, 8 PM
$10-$20 Sliding Scale Admission
Written by Carla Harryman
Directed by Jim Cave & Carla Harryman
Set Design and Costumes by Amy Trachtenberg
Music by Erling Wold
Featuring Principal Actors:
Ken Berry
Annie Kunjappy
Walonda J. Lewis
Roham Shaikhani
&
The Poets Chorus:
Taylor Brady
Brent Cunningham
Patrick Durgin
M. Mara-Ann
Jocelyn Saidenberg
The LAB’s 20th Anniversary Season kicks off with the
West Coast premiere of internationally recognized poet, playwright
and prose writer Carla Harryman’s new play, Performing
Objects Stationed in the Sub World. Written by Carla Harryman,
and collaboratively developed with visual artist Amy Trachtenberg
and director Jim Cave, with music by composer Erling Wold,
Performing Objects explores social relationships and cultural
assumptions about social space, gender, ethnicity and childhood.
Drawing from Harryman’s experiences growing up in California
and her subsequent move to the Mid-West, the play combines
poetry, theatrical dialogue and agit prop to describe an inter-cultural
social conscience. Performing Objects, at times hilarious,
spectacular, psychoanalytic, anti-isolationist, astute, improper,
and benevolent, receives its first full-scale production at
The LAB. Harryman and her collaborators are artists-in-residence
at The LAB during July and August, rehearsing and building
a site-specific set.
more...
In
the Foyer Gallery:
Amy
Trachtenberg
Suspended Passage
September 10-27
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 10, 6-8 PM
Gallery hours: Fridays-Saturdays, 6-8 PM
The entry of The LAB is altered and activated as a passageway
towards the stage of the play Performing
Objects Stationed In the Sub World with sets and
costumes designed by Amy Trachtenberg.
As a painter crossing over to the stage, Trachtenberg’s
set and costume elements for the theater develop without regard
to expected categories. They are conceived as a morphological
response to the text, rehearsal process and geometry of the
architecture.
Trachtenberg’s paintings were recently shown at The Luggage
Store Gallery. Permanent public art projects are installed at
Pixar and Children’s Hospital Oakland. She has designed
the visual elements for over twenty new opera, dance and theater
performances.
Barrett
Watten
The Constructivist Moment
Reading, Discussion, Publication Event
Saturday, September 20, 4 PM
$5-$8 sliding scale admission
Language poet and critic Barrett Watten left San Francisco
for Detroit in 1994. A violent but generative shift in literary
perspective resulted, which led in turn to a remarkable collection
of essays, The
Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics,
recently published by Wesleyan University Press. Watten returns
to The LAB, where the first of the essays in the book was
unveiled, to discuss the manifold themes of his work, beginning
with his account of the crucial shift from an aesthetic of
the "material text," one of the distinguishing features
of language-centered writing, to what he sees as the larger
horizon of a "cultural poetics."
The
Constructivist Moment comprises a series of highly
original approaches to reading artistic form within cultural
context by interrogating the principles of its formal construction.
Topics range from 1920s Soviet constructivism to 1960s conceptual
art in New York, the formation of the Language School in the
1970s, and the surfacing of Detroit techno in the 1990s. Watten
argues that the avant-garde, in its foregrounding of “negativity,”
proposes a "horizon of possibility, an imagination of
participation, a totalizing vision" for society that
can yield new models for action.
Barrett Watten is Associate Professor of English at Wayne
State University in Detroit, Michigan and the author of Total
Syntax (1985), essays on avant-garde poetics.
He was the editor of This (1971-82) and co-editor of Poetics
Journal (1982-98). Recent collections of his literary
work include Frame
(1971-1990) (1997), Bad
History (1998), and, forthcoming, Progress/Under
Erasure.
 R&D
20 Years/20 Artists
October 10 - November 8, 2003
Reception: Friday, October 10, 6-9 PM
Gallery
hours: Wednesdays-Saturdays, 1-6 PM
|
Leaning
Toward the Front
Panel Discussion
Thursday, October 23, 8 PM
$5-$7 Sliding Scale
A panel discussion about the significant
role of non-profit arts organizations supporting the development
of new and experimental work by emerging and mid-career artists.
Why do we need non-profits and what do they do? What do alternative
arts organizations add to the mix of local and international
art culture? These and other questions will be addressed by
artists, curators, and critics Jaime Cortez, Lauren Davies,
Anthony Discenza, Claire Light, Jack Hanley, Renny Pritikin,
and Lise Swenson. The panel will be moderated by art writer
and curator Allegra Fortunati.
Post-Postcard
7
Thursday-Saturday
November 20-23
Just In Time for Holiday Shopping!
A Sale Featuring Small-format Multiples
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 20
6-9 PM
Gallery hours continue Friday-Sunday, November 21-23 1-6 PM
Free Admission
The LAB takes up the mantle from Four
Walls and Southern Exposure by hosting Post-Postcard
7, an annual extravaganza of small-format
works priced at $50 or less. A portion of the sales will benefit
The LAB. Artists interested in participating may email postcardshow@thelab.org
or check out the postcard
form for entry information.
Re/Search
at The LAB: The PRANKS! FESTIVAL
Two
Nights of Celebration and Angst to Benefit
RE/Search Publications and The LAB
Musical
Meyhem:
A Night of Industrial Music
Featuring the reunited band FACTRIX
Friday, December 5
8:30-11 PM
$7-$15 Sliding Scale
RE/Search presents a night of industrial
music featuring pioneers FACTRIX in a rare public reunion
concert with very special guests Monique Marquisa De Magdalena,
Sixxteens, and others TBA. San Francisco's RE/Search Publications
played a major role in the dissemination of “Industrial”
music before the genre was known, and FACTRIX was featured
in RE/Search #1. New York art critic Carlo McCormick praised
FACTRIX as “one of the great bands of their era, prescient
and influential...” and the Village Voice wrote, “Peerless.”
A legend in Europe and Japan for the past 23 years, tonight
FACTRIX promises an all-out sensory sturm-und-drang, drenched
in melancholy and epiphany. Most of their recordings are out
of print, but a small quantity of their gorgeous new, highly-limited
2-CD release box on the German STORM label, “ARTIFACT,”
will be available for autographing by the band. Lovers of
Goth and Industrial music will not be disappointed; anyone
dressed in all-black will receive a special discount and a
door prize!
The
Pranksters Ball
Saturday, December 6
6-10 PM
$5-$20 Sliding Scale
A Celebration, Reunion, Christmas Gift
Faire and Reception for the 10 local Bay Area artists who
appeared in RE/Search's highly influential book, PRANKS!
Participating artists include: Mark Pauline/SURVIVAL RESEARCH
LABORATORIES (SRL), Monte Cazazza, Bruce Conner, Paul Mavrides,
Mark McCloud, Mal Sharpe, Fluxus Anti-Artist Robert Delford
Brown, John Trubee, tattoo guru Don Ed Hardy and a rumored
appearance by Jello Biafra. These and other RE/Search luminaries
will be present to autograph copies of PRANKS! and
offer their rare CDs, art, posters, videos, etc. The RE/Search
backlist will be available for sale as well. A 48-hour exhibition
will feature large blow-ups by Survival Research Laboratories
and other art works by participants. Contemporary Billboard
Liberation Front pranksters are rumored to be in attendance
as well. The event will begin with a Pranks! panel discussion,
and an ouija board summoning the Ghosts of Pranksters Past,
conducted by the mysterious Madame Clairvoyant. Everyone who
has ever appeared in a RE/Search book is also invited to attend,
so with all these people in one room...?! Admission includes
a $5 discount coupon good toward the purchase of a PRANKS!
book.
Colonized
Pleasure:
a Seratonin-based Response to the Commodity-Parasite and the
Evolution of Consumer Society
Sunday, December 7
8 PM
Free Admission
New Video Art
by Sarah Lockhart
Colonized
Pleasure is a two-channel projected video
work that makes the bold assertion that our consumerist desires
are the result of an infection by a powerful parasite that
lives, feeds, and grows on consumerist behavior. In fact,
this parasite alters our brain chemistry so that Ikea furniture,
a Prada handbag or an ice cold Pepsi, for example, will cause
our brains to release the pleasure-chemical, seratonin, that
nourishes the parasite. The parasite does not kill its consumer
host, it merely makes it want to go shopping.
Lockhart’s media works are primarily video essays that
foray into mundane aspects of cultural anthropology. Imagery
appropriated from television commercials, Hollywood cinema,
and advertisements in other media illustrate the piece's pseudo-authoritative
narrative, borrowing language and structure from scientific
presentations to trace the evolution and life cycle of the
commodity-parasite. The deadpan seriousness with which this
ostensibly crackpot theory is espoused abstracts its highly
material subject for better analysis. Sarah Lockhart’s
“Colonized Pleasure”
is the culminating project for her M.A. in Broadcasting and
Electronic Communication Arts (BECA) at SFSU.
Bread
> Circus II:
Multimedia Art Exhibition
December 10-13
Opening Reception: Wednesday, December 10
6-9 PM
Free Admission
Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday
1-6 PM
“Long since, because we can
sell our votes to no one, We have thrown off our cares; those
who once bestowed Rule, the fasces, legions, everything, now
refrain, and hunger for only two things: bread and circuses”
– Juvenal, Satire X c. 85 C.E.
Bread > Circus
II features work
in diverse media by 14 San Francisco Art Institute students
led by art critic and teacher Mark Von Proyen. Taking Juvenal's
assessment of the Roman mob to heart, the artists included
in Bread > Circus II
ironically reflect on the role of spectacle in contemporary
visual culture. The featured artists are: Zach Amendolia,
Shane Berkowitz, Suzie Buchholz, Caleb Gentry, Naoko Goto,
Josh Hartsough, Eui-Hyang Lee, Margaret McGuire, Erman Mercan,
Mabel Negrete, Eric Taylor, Brian Traylor, Robert Vergara
and Matt Woods.
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The
Clarinet Monster Series
