The inaugural CounterPulse Festival is a five-day celebration of mind-bending performance. Join us.
This year CounterPulse asks audiences to join in the experiment of festival, both human-scale and mind bending. Expect the perceptions and conceptions of yourself and those around you to flex as a full program of performance, conversation, and radical celebration unfold over five days.
FULL PROGRAM SCHEDULE
WEDNESDAY MARCH 14
6PM-8PM
Join CounterPulse for Jon Levy-Warren‘s Artist Reception.
Where: CounterPulse
Free RSVP>>
SHOW AT 8PM-9:30PM
OX commemorates the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot with a queer drag spectacle in Daughters of a Riot.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Tickets>>
RECEPTION FROM 9PM-10PM
Opening reception with SFMOMA’s Open Space
Where: CounterPulse Lobby
Free.
LAB FROM 9PM-10PM
During the opening reception, Kinetech Arts hosts an open lab with installations, improvisations and experiments exploring the future of A.I. and us in Super Lab.
Where: CounterPulse Project Space
Free RSVP>>
THURSDAY MARCH 15
SHOW AT 6PM-7PM, DOORS AT 5:15PM
Combining pompous burlesque acts with intimate confessions, Valérie Reding‘s wild child blurs the line between natural and artificial, authenticity and masquerade, reality and fantasy.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Tickets >>
SHOW AT 7PM-8:30PM
this is an artwork
this is for you
you are a community
you are my material
this is a prison
leave when you want
Where: The Lab
Tickets >>
SHOW AT 8:30PM-10PM
OX commemorates the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots with a queer drag spectacle in Daughters of a Riot.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Tickets>>
FRIDAY MARCH 16
SHOW AT 7:00PM-8:00PM, DOORS AT 6:15PM
Arletta Anderson & Adam Smith collaborate with Eric Garcia and Melissa Lewis to deconstruct the ongoing concert between permanence and impermanence in Good Strong Hands.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Tickets>>
SHOW AT 8:00PM-9:30PM
this is an artwork
this is for you
you are a community
you are my material
this is a prison
leave when you want
Where: The Lab
Tickets >>
SHOW AT 9PM-10PM, DOORS AT 8:15PM
Combining pompous burlesque acts with intimate confessions, Valérie Reding‘s wild child blurs the line between natural and artificial, authenticity and masquerade, reality and fantasy.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Tickets >>
EVENT AT 10PM-4AM
neon-tinted retro futures this month at Creature XIV: Future/Present.
we’re talking Tron and virtual reality. landscapes where pixels fracture and piece themselves back together in new queer forms. remember when we thought the future was gonna be cool? dig into the past to create new visions of tomorrow.
Where: The Stud
More info>>
SATURDAY MARCH 17
SHOW AT 2PM-3:30PM, DOORS AT 1:15PM
After walking alongside the 303 mile disputed border between The Republic and The North of Ireland, Mica Sigourney and Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin, enter the theatre for their queer mythological epic, aon mhac tíre, nó roinnt mic tíre.
Where: CounterPulse Project Space
Tickets>>
SHOW AT 4PM-5PM
Upstanding Others bring together a cohort of Bay Area, red/swing state, and Russian artists in a cultural exchange lab to explore how interdisciplinary arts can be a model for cultural pluralism.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Free RSVP>>
EVENT AT 5PM-7PM
Epilogue for Our Future Ends is dance party and performance with new and restaged selections from Clement Hil Goldberg‘s Our Future Ends (a multidisciplinary satire about near extinct lemurs and long lost Lemuria).
Where: The Stud
Free RSVP>>
SHOW AT 8PM-9:30PM, DOORS AT 7:15PM
After walking alongside the 303 mile disputed border between The Republic and The North of Ireland, Mica Sigourney and Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin, enter the theatre for their queer mythological epic, aon mhac tíre, nó roinnt mic tíre.
Where: CounterPulse Project Space
Tickets>>
EVENT AT 11:59PM-6AM
SURFACE TENSION presents an all-night dance party featuring its four resident DJs (Nihar Bhatt, Justin Anastasi, DJ CZ, and Jason Polastri), selecting left-of-center electronic music well into the wee hours of the morning.
Where: CounterPulse
Tickets>>
SUNDAY MARCH 18
SHOW AT 2PM-3PM, DOORS AT 1:15PM
Arletta Anderson & Adam Smith collaborate with Eric Garcia and Melissa Lewis to deconstruct the ongoing concert between permanence and impermanence in Good Strong Hands.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Tickets>>
SHOW AT 5PM-6:30, DOORS AT 4:15PM
We Inherit, We Transform, We Heal is a multidimensional performance oriented show that aims to explore how communities of color have healed generational traumas.
Where: CounterPulse Main Stage
Tickets>>
SHOW AT 7PM-8:30, DOORS AT 6:15PM
After walking alongside the 303 mile disputed border between The Republic and The North of Ireland, Mica Sigourney and Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin, enter the theatre for their queer mythological epic, aon mhac tíre, nó roinnt mic tíre.
Where: CounterPulse Project Space
Tickets>>
Visit our friends at PianoFight, Waystone, or Farmer Brown for CounterPulse Festival ticket holder specials all Festival long!
Upstanding Others
Upstanding Others
Upstanding Others
Upstanding Others
Upstanding Others
Upstanding Others
keyon gaskin: this is an artwork...
keyon gaskin: this is an artwork...
keyon gaskin: this is an artwork...
keyon gaskin: this is an artwork...
keyon gaskin: this is an artwork...
keyon gaskin: this is an artwork...
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
Epilogue for Our Future Ends by Clement Hil Goldberg at The STUD: Brontez Purnell, Heather María Ács, Siobhan Aluvalot, John Foster Cartwright, Costume Design by Margaret Bolton Grace, Lighting Design by Jerry Lee. Presented by Some Serious Business
See more images>>
The CounterPulse Festival is produced in partnership with SFMOMA’s Open Space and The Lab and funded in part by Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Phyllis C Wattis Foundation, the GPS/Global Practice Sharing, Culture Ireland, Oeuvre Nationale de Secours Grande-Duchesse Charlotte (LU), Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art (CH), Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung (CH), Fonds Respect (CH), City of Zurich (CH), Consulate General of Luxembourg in San Francisco (SF), Swissnex (SF), prohelvetia (CH), and CounterPulse members.