Arab.AMP x The Lab: DISCOSTAN ft. Checkpoint303 + DJ ariB

Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$17 adv / $20 door / free or discounted for members
Request your member DICE Code or become a member

Decolonizing the dancefloor since 2011, DISCOSTAN returns to San Francisco for a special evening featuring Checkpoint 303, led by Tunisian producer SC Mocha. Joined by DJ ariB, and together with Arab.AMP, we present adiasporic discotheque which imagines past, present and future soundscapes. In step with community, this night’s DJs and sound artists raise awareness and inspire action on behalf of our liberation struggle and revolution.

Discostan is a diasporic discotheque which imagines past, present and future soundscapes from Beirut to Bangkok via Bombay. Over the last six years, this space has grown to be an interactive forum and space of convergence for QTPOC of the SWANA region. From presenting a vast archive of golden-age music to the most forward-thinking musical producers from our regions, performative collaborations with avante-garde artists outside of the white cube, to events raising awareness and galvanizing action for political engagement, Discostan is an ever-evolving space of possibility, imagination and liberation for immigrants and diaspora of South and West Asia and North Africa living in Los Angeles. Reconfiguring the nightclub and the dance floor as devotional spaces and radical sites of rewriting our histories and destinies, we explore narrative threads including migration, celebration, conflict, nostalgia, homeland, and borders, often within realms of Islamic influence, through lenses of traditional forms, experimental renderings, and kaleidoscopic reinventions of pop culture. Listen on NTS.

Checkpoint 303 is an avant-garde activist sound art project that creates experimental electronic music raising awareness about the struggle for liberation, justice and self-determination, and against settler-colonialism, occupation and apartheid. Using archives and field recordings predominantly from Palestine and various countries throughout the Arab world, Checkpoint 303 constructs soundscapes that weave cinematic audio with experimental sound processing, breakbeats and glitch. Checkpoint 303 is led by Tunisian producer SC Mocha and has numerous collaborations with Palestinian artists including Rim Banna, Jawaher Shofani, Ministry of Dubkey, Walaa Sbait and more. Checkpoint 303 has performed shows in Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Europe, Australia, USA, Canada, Japan, Chile, etc. Checkpoint 303 was also invited by the British trip-hop band Massive Attack as supporting act for several shows in the UK and France.

DJ ariB is a queer Iranian-American DJ, dancer, and musician whose eclectic sound blends high BPM club beats with influences from Dabke and Bandari, drawing on their Southern Iranian roots. Their performances across the Bay Area showcase genres like techno, footwork, and hip hop, and they also host The Art of Sound on Lower Grand Radio, celebrating electronic musicians from Iran and the SWANA region.

Directed by Leyya Mona Tawil, Arab.AMP is a platform for experimental live art, music and ideas by artists of the SWANA diaspora, the region, and our allied communities. The Arab.AMP 2025 season highlights practices of listening and action; through sound, performance and conversation. Arab.AMP receives lead support from the Hewlett Foundation and the California Arts Council.
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Mimesis Magazine Issue #2: Let’s Spoil!

Doors 6:30pm / Event 7pm
$12 / free or discounted for members
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Mimesis Magazine — Film as Performance celebrates it's second issue centered around the concept of"spoiling," featuring contributions by Asher Hartman, Nina Sarnelle, Ryat Yezbick, Mohamed Abdelkarim, Tatum Howey, and Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja. The launch event will bring together some of the contributors for an evening of short film screenings, readings, performances and concurrent live spoilage. The magazine is edited by Neha Choksi, Elbe Trakal, and Lior Shamriz.

Mimesis is a platform for social and cultural analysis at the intersection of contemporary film practices as acts of performance and the performance of our everyday as fundamentally shaped by the cinematic and the moving image. We see film’s trans-temporal communication capacity as an opportunity to help decipher power structures within our sensorial worlds. Writing on film performance practices guides our learning process and the possibilities for resistance and subversion of those modes of power. We embrace the compulsion for the mimetic as a chance for mutation and failure.
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Carla Harryman / Jon Raskin: Scales for the Living Under Duress

Night 1 (May 9) | Night 2 (May 10)
Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$17 adv / $20 door / free or discounted for members

Scales for the Living under Duress: 2020-2025 arranges selections from Carla Harryman’s poem-dialogue trilogy written in “pandemic time” for voices and improvised music under the direction of Harryman and composer Jon Raskin. The multi-instrumental performance with speaking and singing voices features Ben Davis (cello and voice), Carla Harryman (speaking voice), Darren Johnston (trumpet, vocals), Jon Raskin (alto saxophone, concertina, electronics, and vocals), and Roham Sheikhani (movement and vocals).
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Carla Harryman / Jon Raskin: Scales for the Living Under Duress

Night 1 (May 9) | Night 2 (May 10)
Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$17 adv / $20 door / free or discounted for members

Scales for the Living under Duress: 2020-2025 arranges selections from Carla Harryman’s poem-dialogue trilogy written in “pandemic time” for voices and improvised music under the direction of Harryman and composer Jon Raskin. The multi-instrumental performance with speaking and singing voices features Ben Davis (cello and voice), Carla Harryman (speaking voice), Darren Johnston (trumpet, vocals), Jon Raskin (alto saxophone, concertina, electronics, and vocals), and Roham Sheikhani (movement and vocals).
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TJ Borden / Mari Kawamura: Morton Feldman's "Patterns in a Chromatic Field"

Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm

American composer and John Cage associate Morton Feldman composed a number of large-scale, lengthy works toward the end of his life. Patterns in a Chromatic Field, his 1981 duo for cello and piano, is a relatively concise 80 minutes, but encapsulates the quietly intense minimalism of this late period. T.J. Borden and Mari Kawamura perform this work alongside earlier pieces Durations 2, Film Music for JP, and Intersection 3.
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