The Lab

The Lab is a nonprofit experimental art and performance space located in the Mission District of San Francisco.

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Xuxa Santamaria "​Chancletas D’Oro​" w/ Foozool, Las Sucias, Tyler Holmes, Felidae

7:30pm doors / 8pm show
$9-18 sliding scale general admission / Free for members
Tickets at the door

Chancletas D’Oro,​ ​Xuxa Santamaria’s third release and second full-length LP, is a loose concept album focused on exploring femme and womxn narratives drawn from both history and works of fiction​. Side A employs reimagined myths, fables, and original fictional narratives to create songs that challenge or obfuscate the received ideas around feminine agency, motivations, and desire. In ​Puro Animal ​and King Marsile​, Córdova recasts fictional characters (from “Dracula” and “The Song of Roland” respectively) who originally were little more than victims or mute accomplices within their narratives as willing participants in their own corruption or liberation; ​White Pine ​uses the text of an early 20th century poem about tribal life in the Pacific Northwest, written by a white trapper, as a means to simultaneously twist and redirect the white gaze in on itself while still celebrating the knowledge of land and sea possessed by this continent’s first peoples. The Borges-inspired ​Rudos Del Mar,​ written while Córdova was traveling along the coast of Chile, details the odyssey of a group of pirates patrolling the seas beyond the edges of language, reason, and time; closing out the side, ​Color Of The Dark i​s a (comparatively) straightforward ode to lust, love, and ego disintegration between bodies of color within the darkness of a dance club.

Side B pulls from historical narratives, with subjects ranging from queer silent film star Alla Nazimova in Jardin de Alla​ to the Puerto Rican syndicalist and feminist pioneer Luisa Capetillo in ¿​Quien Lleva Los Pantalones?​ The last three tracks of the album follow the stories of collective and individual revolutionary womxn; in ​River Neva​, the International Women’s Day March in 1917 which kickstarted the Russian Revolution and the massacre on Bloody Sunday over a decade earlier drift into each other, as the lyrics imagine the march morphing into a psychedelic battleground on a frozen river covered with blood. Heaven’s Gate Path ​dramatizes the work of the womxn truck drivers of the North Vietnamese army, who risked life and limb to transport vital goods during the American War of Imperial Aggression (known in the U.S. as ‘the Vietnam War’), following them through humid jungles bombarded by artillery and fire, while ¿​Quien Lleva Los Pantalones?​ closes out the album by using the story of the Puerto Rican syndicalist movement and Luisa Capetillo to meditate on the struggle for freedom, not only from the injustices of US empire but from the confines of gender roles and tradition.

Xuxa Santamaria (Ratskin)
https://soundcloud.com/xuxasantamaria

Interdisciplinary artist Sofía Córdova and Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland are XUXA SANTAMARIA, a musical collective channeling feminist sci-fi, the Final Fantasy 7 OST, So So Def All Stars Volumes 1-3, Garbage, Kid Creole, Celia Cruz y La Sonora Matancera and The Stooges variously or all at once. In March 2015 the duo released a mixtape, Billionair Rainbow , a 6 track bilingual meditation on societal alliances and entanglements with money: desire, power, debt and revulsion. Their first album, Chucha Santamaria y Usted , was released in 2011 album to cult acclaim. In addition to these two song-based projects, they also have done a series of one off semi improvisational long-form experimental performances - most recently Song4Sanctuary at SF City Hall (commissioned by the SF Arts Commission) and WALL at the Internet Archive (as part of the Soundwave Biennial) - and score all of Cordova’s video art and installations.

Las Sucias (Ratskin)
https://sucieria.bandcamp.com/

Las Sucias is a duo formed by Danishta Rivero and Alexandra Buschman, mixing anti-patriarchal riotgrrrl lyrics, afro-caribbean rhythms, brujería noise and possessed vocals. Each performance is a ritual that combines all of the senses and elevates into a higher realm, inspiring the listener to dance, speak in tongues, laugh hysterically and get possessed by the spirits awoken.

Tyler Holmes (Ratskin)
https://tylerholmes.bandcamp.com/

Tyler Holmes is an audio, vocal and performance artist. They are currently using music in the wake of tragedy as a therapeutic device. Exploring trauma and an obsessive need for highly organized variety through new electro-acoustic arrangements and audio experiments; with songs being arranged and re-arranged with changing instrumentation and players and touching genres ranging from Doo-Wop,Freak-Folk,Country and Soul to Noise. Heavily inspired by Unplugged Grunge, Neo-Soul and 90s Femme Singer Songwriters. Presenting more intimate, vulnerable songs about anxiety, obsession, sadness, illness, self care and sex addiction while focusing on the career and life theme; Love & Violence

Foozool (Club Chai)
https://clubchai.bandcamp.com/album/disruption

Foozool (aka Lara Sarkissian) is a DJ, producer and co-founder of Club Chai in the Bay Area; a music label, radio show, event series and curatorial project. She produces forward-thinking club-focused edits, remixes and collaborations, that have been released on labels Salviatek, Nostro Hood System and more. She performed an audiovisual DJ set at MUTEK Festival San Francisco in 2018, and was resident DJ of Roskilde Festival Denmark’s Apollo stage in 2017. Foozool made her Boiler Room TV debut in July 2017, and has contributed guest mixes on Red Bull Radio, Rinse FM, NTS Radio, Hong Kong Community Radio, Radio Wave Prague, Subcity Radio Glasgow, Radio Valencia and Truants. Her work has been featured on The Fader, Fact Magazine, Mixmag, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, Telekom Electronic Beats, Spin Magazine, Thump/Vice, Tiny Mix Tapes, Billboard, The Creators Project, KQED, Milk Studios, Dummy Magazine, Reorient Magazine, East Bay Express and Truants.

Felidae
(Beast Nest + The Creatrix)
https://beastnest.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/fanciullagentile

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