Workshop Performance at 6pm
Free with RSVP

Zachary James Watkins’s Exciting Sites of Opposition III is the latest in a series of works by Watkins exploring the multiplicity of the term resonance in human relations and in acoustics, especially as it relates to histories of struggle and resilience. The initial work in this series, completed in 2015 at the invitation of Indigenous art collective Postcommodity, involved a community activation of the Black Heritage Society’s Heritage Hall in Guelph, Ontario, built by formerly enslaved Africans who escaped the United States aided by abolitionists and First Nation Tribes.

In 2024, Watkins returned to this theme while clearing out his mother’s art studio where he grew up in Lubbock, Texas, after her passing, collaborating with family members and soprano Lisa E. Harris on a collection of site-specific recordings. For his commission from The Lab and third entry into this series of works, Watkins is joined again by Lisa E. Harris and Bay Area-based bassoonist Jamael Smith. The trio will work within the newly excavated, raw space of the historic San Francisco Labor Temple, as a pre-renovation site of The Lab, with Watkins tuning his equipment to the site and exploring the location through improvisation and activation of natural resonances.