The LAB ^[1], located at 16th and Capp in the Mission (that’s one block east of the BART station), is one of the more interesting art spaces in town. For almost twenty-five years it has been a showcase for interdisciplinary, experimental work (i.e., work that involves several media). The show on the walls right now, running through next Saturday, is called Subversive Complicity ^[2].

In case you actually follow that link, let me do a rough translation of all that art-speak into English:

The artists involved have created performance pieces (”interventions”) in which they assume various social roles out on the street, and basically behave in unexpected ways for those roles. The aim is to upset preconceptions about these social roles and the way they normally function, and by doing so, get some of these passers-by to think about the social roles they play. And maybe this will even rouse a couple people to constructive action. The exhibit itself documents these interventions. [Note: I haven't seen the exhibit.]

But wait — wasn’t this post about a poetry reading?

That’s right. Tomorrow night from 7-9, The LAB ^[1] is to host the first of four evenings in the 2008 Bay Area Poetry Marathon ^[3]. (The other nights, all Saturdays, are June 28, July 19, and August 30.) Admission is on a sliding scale from $3 to $15. Will you know who the poets are? Not necessarily, but I can assure you that won’t matter at all. Check out Suzanne Kleid’s ^[4] verdict on last year’s event:

Going to a poetry reading, especially one of poets one hasn’t heard of, can be nerve-wracking: is it going to be embarrassingly confessional, or boring, or bad? I’m not normally a poetry person myself. I’m sure there were dozens of allusions and techniques totally lost on me. But there were also sublime moments, along with some interesting and funny ones, and not a dud in the bunch. [The curators of the show have] clearly put a lot of thought into who they’ve chosen to read, and if watching skilled people do interesting things with language sounds like your idea of a good Saturday night, I recommend coming to cheer on the Poetry Marathon as it rounds into the final stretch. They even serve beer.

Her blow-by-blow review can be read here at KQED ^[5].

[Much thanks to Kemble Scott ^[6] for mentioning this event in his great newsletter ^[7], so I could report it here.]