Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

In conjunction with the exhibition The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg, YBCA presents A Mad Tea Party: Five Videos by Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, a selection of important works where complex and twisted narratives are performed by molding clay figures in constructed environments. Spanning the past eight years of the artists’ career, these animations depict their characteristically dark tales that plumb the depths of human psychology to dramatic effect, and include human and animal characters that are thrown together into strange and mythological scenarios laden with sexuality and violence.

Nayland Blake was one of the pioneers of performance art in the Bay Area in the 1980s. His work often explored aspects of the queer urban lifestyle. Though now based in New York, his most recent work is a return to his earlier processes from that period, where materials and spontaneity generate sculptural works that are informal, precarious, nonsensical, and odd or uncanny. For his upcoming solo exhibition at YBCA, Blake will create spontaneous sculptures using his life as the catalyst. Also included in the exhibition are a DJ booth stocked with Blake’s collection of over three thousand LPs, which visitors will be invited to spin; and the recreation of a mural by Chuck Arnett (1962), which decorated the wall of the Tool Box, a leather bar in what is now San Francisco’s SoMa district.

Chamber Music Day | Live + Free is a unique, day-long showcase of performances designed to spotlight the breadth and variety of professional chamber music in the Bay Area. Produced by the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, Chamber Music Day, now in its fifth season, unites the community of ensembles, presenters, and arts organizations to feature thirty of the San Francisco Bay Area's finest baroque, classical, contemporary, cutting-edge improvisation, and jazz ensembles, in 30-minute performances created to delight new listeners and seasoned concert-goers of all ages and backgrounds.