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☆
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7
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San Francisco Cinematheque
Founded by filmmaker Bruce Baillie in 1961, San Francisco Cinematheque is the Bay Area’s premier venue for avant-garde/experimental , underground and personally expressive film , v…
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Founded by filmmaker Bruce Baillie in 1961, San Francisco Cinematheque is the Bay Area’s premier venue for avant-garde/experimental , underground and personally expressive film , video and performance work . In its dedication to exhibiting works of aesthetically radical cinema from all historical eras and geo-political locales, Cinematheque cultivates the international field of artist-made cinema, inspiring aesthetic dialog, and critical discourse and encouraging appreciation across the broader cultural landscape. Inaugurated in 2010, CROSSROADS is San Francisco Cinematheque’s annual film festival, dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary avant-garde film, video and performance work. CROSSROADS is curated annually by Cinematheque’s Artistic Director Steve Polta.
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Fri, Sep 4 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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film
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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Agentworld x Superdark Factory
Marek Poliks is a theoretical researcher in deep learning and AI. He is Head of AI at LaunchDarkly . Marek's work is primarily concerned with the autonomy and self-organizing cha…
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Marek Poliks is a theoretical researcher in deep learning and AI. He is Head of AI at LaunchDarkly . Marek's work is primarily concerned with the autonomy and self-organizing character of technical infrastructure. He frequently collaborates with Roberto Alonso Trillo (HKBU). Marek and Roberto won Google's 2024 Art and Machine Intelligence Award for their work in AI interface design. Marek's research lab Disintegrator (which he leads with Roberto) studies aspects of agency and technology. The lab's eponymous podcast has been named "the most sophisticated conversations about AI going" ( Novara Media ). Disintegrator's first book, Exocapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits , has been described as "unbelievably inspiring" (Hito Steyerl, Die Welt ) and "era-defining; the Das Kapital of the 21st Century" ( New Models ).
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Fri, Sep 11 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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workshop
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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In-Person Intensive Course
A long time touring musician with the band Caribou , Ryan also produces futuristic techno music under the moniker Taraval , makes modular ambient music in the live electronic duo B…
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A long time touring musician with the band Caribou , Ryan also produces futuristic techno music under the moniker Taraval , makes modular ambient music in the live electronic duo Bathing , and has a long running collaboration with Jeremy Greenspan of the Junior Boys, both producing experimental electronic music and running the label Geej. He produced a collaborative performance of a 1973 graphics score by avant-garde composer Frank McCarty called Tactus Tempus, a controlled improvisational process for 9 audio visual performers live at Gray Area. He is an expert level user of Ableton and Max For Live, VCV Rack (virtual modular synthesis environment), numerous hardware instruments and an accomplished guitar player.
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Tue, Sep 15 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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workshop
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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Magik*Magik Orchestra PresentsCOCOON
Enjoy the concert from very comfortable, high off the ground, queen air mattress outfitted with a luxurious mattress topper, high quality linens, pillows, and bedding. Perfect for …
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Enjoy the concert from very comfortable, high off the ground, queen air mattress outfitted with a luxurious mattress topper, high quality linens, pillows, and bedding. Perfect for two people. $2500 per bed. Includes: -Queen bed with complete bedding -Welcome tea or hot chocolate -Signed concert poster by all orchestra members and conductor -Midnight snacks -Morning coffee, tea, fruit, and pastry -8½ hours of live orchestra music 🎶 As a VIP patron, your ticket helps subsidize our event, making COCOON accessible to more attendees. $2000 of your $2500 ticket is tax deductible. Thank you for supporting experimental arts and music in San Francisco!
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Sat, Sep 26 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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live_music
classical
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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In-Person Intensive Course
Sieanele Ponce (she/her), also known as ecdysis.exp, is a Filipina installation artist and experience designer based in the Bay Area. She builds immersive, multisensory environment…
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Sieanele Ponce (she/her), also known as ecdysis.exp, is a Filipina installation artist and experience designer based in the Bay Area. She builds immersive, multisensory environments using projection, light, textiles, and sensor-responsive elements — site-specific installations that explore transformation, perception, and collective ritual. Her work draws on her background in psychological and brain sciences, treating environments as active participants in how people feel, connect, and make meaning. She has created installations and experiences for Gray Area, Parameter Festival, and Bituin Studio, and her work was featured in Gray Area's Local Memory Showcase (2026) and Earthseed Remnants at ARTogether (2026). Working primarily with MadMapper, she is especially interested in making projection mapping accessible as a tool for atmosphere, storytelling, and presence. She holds a B.S. in Psychological & Brain Sciences from UC Santa Barbara.
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Wed, Sep 30 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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workshop
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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Algorithmic Art Assembly presents:
Joshua Kit Clayton, better know by his stage name Kit Clayton , is a San Francisco-based electronic and digital musician and computer programmer. In addition to his musical work, J…
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Joshua Kit Clayton, better know by his stage name Kit Clayton , is a San Francisco-based electronic and digital musician and computer programmer. In addition to his musical work, Joshua is a programmer for Cycling '74 , where he is responsible for further development of the Max/MSP MIDI/audio programming environment. He is a significant contributor to Jitter as well, a multi-dimensional data set processing and visualizing architecture with applications in audio, video, and 3d graphics, which is part of the multimedia package Max . Clayton uses Max, MSP, and Jitter extensively in his own abstract musical compositions, which have been described as including aspects of ambient computer music and glitch. Clayton continues to compose, perform and further develop Max, MSP, and Jitter.
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Fri, Oct 2 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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art
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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Online Intensive Course
Nasir Anthony Montalvo (b. 1999) is an experimental memory worker. Montalvo’s work challenges the erasure of Black and queer people from our historical record through archival stud…
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Nasir Anthony Montalvo (b. 1999) is an experimental memory worker. Montalvo’s work challenges the erasure of Black and queer people from our historical record through archival study, obsolete and emergent technology, popular education, and the written word. Montalvo’s art and archival research has been exhibited locally and nationally, published in Syllabus, Sixty Inches From Center, The Advocate, and KC Studio, and collected by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Their work is referenced in curricula at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Pomona College. Montalvo is founder of {B/qKC}: a community archive of Black queer midwestern history, and has been awarded fellowships with The Opportunity Agenda, Diaspora Solidarities Lab, and Gray Area in addition to their 2024-2026 studio residency at Charlotte Street. Montalvo is queer, Afro-Boricua, and from Kissimmee, Florida. They received their BS in Business & Technology from Stevens Institute of Technology.
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Mon, Oct 5 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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livestream
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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Xiu Xiu: Eraserhead
Xiu Xiu was born on a dance floor, arriving alone at the club and going home alone from the club. That night the first Xiu Xiu song, Jennifer Lopez, was recorded. Its line, “is it …
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Xiu Xiu was born on a dance floor, arriving alone at the club and going home alone from the club. That night the first Xiu Xiu song, Jennifer Lopez, was recorded. Its line, “is it tough to watch, Friday after Friday!?,” began what Xiu Xiu was going to try to say. The songs would always be about specific events in the personal lives of the band, the people close to them, and about the social and economic politics that effect and deform subjugated life from everywhere in this wobbling, wreck of a solar system. Over the course of 15 7"s, five EPs, six collaboration albums and ten full lengths Xiu Xiu has never shied away from any topic that is honest and meaningful to them. Their songs are about gender dysphoria, suicide, loneliness, going insane, child soldiers, the tsunami in Indonesia, hideous sex, the Sanrio character Pandapple, abortion politics, incest, cats, queer life, being raped by the police and the individual responsibility of U.S. military personnel for the families they murder. Somehow within all of this, cuteness attempts to find a way to embrace death and horrible emotion. The music is drawn from British post punk and synth pop, modern Western classical, noise and experimental musics, Asian percussion musics, American folk, torch singers, house, techno and 1950s rock n roll. Starting in isolation in San Jose, California in 2002, Xiu Xiu has relentlessly toured all over the world since. San Jose is a rotten place to be, so relentless touring was a way to get AWAY! Xiu Xiu have been called “self flagellating”, “harsh”, “brutal”, “shocking” and “perverse” but also “genius”, “brilliant”, “unique”, “imaginative” and “luminous.” The band is Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart.
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Thu, Oct 8 · 8:00 PM
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Gray Area
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Mission
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live_music
experimental
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$30.49/$36.59 |
Gray Area
Stevelist
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2026-06-02 03:49 |
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☆
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7
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Unseen Visions Symposium
The Saturday symposium begins with a tribute to San Francisco radio, which played a major role in the circulation of New Age music. This session will highlight the shows Music from…
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The Saturday symposium begins with a tribute to San Francisco radio, which played a major role in the circulation of New Age music. This session will highlight the shows Music from the Hearts of Space and Will Noffke’s New Horizons . Next, Kat Epple will be in conversation, with excerpts from Photonos . After a lunch break, we reconvene with a session on Continuum , the dance and meditation school of Emilie Conrad, which fostered New Age musicians like Michael Stearns, Kevin Braheny Fortune, and Larkin . Larkin will be in conversation and will perform, with visuals by Ken Jenkins . These sessions will be led by Prof. Jacob Smith (Northwestern University), whose new book Bridge to an Unseen Shore is the first in-depth cultural history of New Age music and is based on extensive interviews with musicians and artists in the genre. The afternoon continues with Steven Halpern in conversation and a screening of Jeanette Stobie’s Lightstream . The final presentation of the day is by renowned author Erik Davis ( TechGnosis , High Weirdness ) and Megan Phipps .
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Fri, Oct 9 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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workshop
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |
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☆
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7
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Online Intensive Course
Kate Hollenbach is an artist, programmer, and educator. She is passionate about using open source tools and teaching in interdisciplinary environments where art and technology meet…
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Kate Hollenbach is an artist, programmer, and educator. She is passionate about using open source tools and teaching in interdisciplinary environments where art and technology meet. Kate is also a contributor to p5.js and serves as President of the Board of Directors for the Processing Foundation. Before joining Gray Area, she was an Assistant Professor of Emergent Digital Practices at the University of Denver. In her creative practice, Kate creates video and interactive works examining critical issues in user interface and user experience design with a focus on user habits, data collection, and surveillance. Her work is informed by years of professional experience as an interface designer and product developer. She has presented, published, and exhibited work in venues such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, SIGGRAPH, INST-INT, Piksel Festival, and Taper.
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Mon, Nov 2 · See venue
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Gray Area
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Mission
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livestream
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Gray Area
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2026-08-22 04:08 |