The San Francisco Art Institute is excited to present From the Tower: Transmission is a series of video screenings curated by SFAI's MFA Director, alumni, and dedicated faculty member Tony Labat to explore the institution's history of experimental art making with a specific look into SFAI alumni whose practices developed under the ethos of the New Genres Department with a combined presentation of historical content drawn from the archives and contemporary work. Audiences will be invited to park outside of the historic 800 Chestnut Street Campus, watch from the windows of neighboring buildings, take socially distanced seats throughout the streets of North Beach, or virtually experience the live streamed projections of video, performance and experimental time based works projected on all four sides of the school's landmark tower.
Screenings will start on Friday September 4th and air every Friday evening until October 23, 2020 with each screening starting at 9pm PST.
SFAI will release a mobile friendly map that will provide locations for optimal viewing of the work as well as links to audio tracks for each viewer to tune into the sound based elements through their individual phones. The screenings will also be live streamed on SFAI's website at
https://www.sfai.edu for viewers to tune in all over the world.
Since the early 1970s, the New Genres Department at SFAI has been a pioneer in teaching and creating a breeding ground of performance, moving image, and installation, and the intersection of the three mediums. As one of the first graduates of the Performance Video program (now New Genres), curator and artist Tony Labat, has been an integral part of the development of New Genres since its inception. He continues to explore cross-disciplinary art production through teaching, curating, and his own practice. With ironic wit and incisive social critique, Tony Labat's provocative, nonlinear narrative collages confront cultural identity, loss and displacement. Adopting an irreverent, often subversive stance, Labat represents the experience of difference and marginalization from the mediated position of the "outsider," and deconstructs the codes by which the mass media reinforces cultural mythologies. In his idiosyncratic pastiches of performance, appropriated imagery and unexpected visual metaphors, Labat uses disguise, theatricality, storytelling and role-playing as narrative devices.
This program is a part of a year-long series of events marking SFAI's 150th anniversary that will include programs and exhibitions presented in partnership with leading artists and arts organizations around the world.