SFAC to Present Pamela Z at The Lab

At the end of next month, the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) will present a special performance of a work for solo voice, electronics, and projected image by composer Pamela Z. This concert will be held in conjunction with side by side/in the world, an exhibition featuring California artists reflecting on the current nature of immigration and the rise of sanctuary cities. The exhibition is currently on display in the SFAC Main Gallery, located on the first floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue; but The Lab will provide the venue for Z’s concert.

Her contribution to the exhibition is a mixed media installation entitled Suitcase. A suitcase provides the core of the installation, in which it serves as both a bag and a home for a video projection of a vulnerable and inconsolable female subject that occupies it. Suitcase is part of a larger work entitled Baggage Allowance, which has been structured around both the literal and the metaphorical denotations and connotations of the noun “baggage.”

The campus of the American Academy in Rome, where the winners of the Rome Prize stay and work (photograph by CenezoicEra, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

This past April the American Academy in Rome announced that Z was one of the winners of the 2019–20 Rome Prize. Specifically, she received the Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Prize for composition and performance work on the piece Simultaneous. The award includes a stipend, workspace, and room and board for a period of five to eleven months at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome. Z plans to leave for Rome not long after her performance at The Lab; so the event will have “last chance to see” connotations (at least in the short run)!

This performance will begin at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 29. The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street, which is a short walk to the east from the corner of Mission Street. This is particularly good for those using public transportation, since that corner provides bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel as well as a BART station. There will be no charge for admission; but, given that demand is likely to be high, registration is strongly recommended. Doors will open at 8 p.m., and it is usually the case that a long line has accumulated before then.