In The Lab, a performer going at a wall with a pick-axe during a concert might seem symbolic. After all, the Mission gallery and performance space has always supported artists who break down conventions in music and visual arts. But the demolition last September by Mission District sound artist Victoria Shen (aka Evicshen) was more than a provocation. She was lending a hand to a remodel — an ongoing expansion that figures to transform the The Lab, an essential arts space, on the cusp of its fifth decade.
As Mission Local reported last year, The Lab secured a new 12-year lease at its location in the Redstone Building, expanding into currently unused space. (The venue declined to rent that space when it relocated from its original location, at Bush and Divisadero, back in 1995.) When the wall Shen assaulted finally comes down, The Lab will encompass the entirety of the building’s main auditorium, says Andrew Smith, who succeeded Dena Beard as The Lab’s executive director last year.
“We’re turning that back room, which was used as storage in recent years, into exhibition space, while inviting artists to play with that wall at the back in preparation for a major floor-plan remodel,” adds Smith. In doing so, they’ll restore the original footprint of the historic building, which was San Francisco’s Labor Temple, and dates to 1914.
Further work on the wall will figure into The Lab’s 40th birthday celebration Saturday, Dec. 7, a party featuring food by veteran chef Leif Hedendal, an open bar, and a set by composer, vocalist and electronics artist Pamela Z. It’s something of a farewell performance before she heads off to Germany for much of 2025, as the recipient of a prestigious Berlin Prize Fellowship.
Z plans to present a set of her solo works for voice and electronics. “I want to do something that plays with the site itself, and the wall that’s currently being demolished,” says Z, adding that she’ll including pieces that span the duration of her relationship with The Lab.
Z has been associated with the space since the late 1980s, when she presented her first full evening performance there. As she’s honed her lapidary practice — sculpting sound in real time by looping her voice and triggering samples via an evolving array of bespoke gear — Z has returned to the The Lab again and again.
For several years, she presented an avant revue “where I’d fill the evening with work by people from all different disciplines, segueing one to another,” says Z, who’s also served on The Lab’s board. There was her one-act opera, “Wonder Cabinet,” a collaboration with cellist Matthew Brubeck inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles “where we transformed the theater with scrims,” she recalls.
But some of her most significant work at The Lab was far less publicized. For about a decade, starting in the early ‘90s, a series of grants from the California Arts Council funded a Lab residency for Z. When the venue moved to the Redstone Building, the program became a vital part of the Mission’s creative ecosystem.
At first her sound and performance workshops were designed for at-risk youth, “and then low-income women, and then low-income residents of the Mission,” Z says. “A lot of interesting artists took those workshops. Choreographers left feeling they could make sound scores for their own performances, and they’d build these new works.”
With about 10 people in each eight-week course, Z introduced Mission denizens to the ins and outs of sound production. Together, they worked in The Lab’s studio, set up by sound artist Ed Osborn, “a little room in the back with a computer station with Pro Tools and a midi keyboard,” she said.
“I’d have the group meet once a week in the gallery, and each session I’d cover one thing: found text, timbre, Foley, and also talking about performance itself as an art form. Every week I’d give an assignment to create something, and the second half of the session they’d all present what they’d done.”
More than a classroom, The Lab has also served as an incubator and host for events like the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. Z was involved in creating that showcase, and in recent years it’s taken place at The Lab.
“Especially in the last few years, we’ve been having other organizations come in and use the space,” Smith says. “That tends to fly under the radar. The American Indian Cultural District is in the space five or six times a year. We just did a big fashion show production with a trans Latina group.”
In many ways, The Lab is a survivor from the city’s freewheeling past, when artists could afford rent with a part-time job and numerous storefront spaces provided environments in which creative endeavors could take shape. With the space’s future assured through at least 2036, Smith sees The Lab as vital foothold for experimental artists in the neighborhood.
“A huge part of my decision to expand The Lab is to really lock down the space for public use,” he says. “It has been a really important resource for other Mission residents.”
’40 Years of the Lab (with Pamela Z)’ takes place at 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at The Lab, 2948 16th St. Tickets ($17 and up) and more info here.