A youthful crowd packed the theater and sipped beers as they watched the
night's eclectic "Tingly Test Tube" program. After a set of playful folk
music by Down River, performance artist Marc Boswell threatened to blow
up the audience. He wrapped a kamikaze bandana around his forehead and
shouted tirades against yuppies. Then he lit a bomb. A few people in the
audience lit cigarettes - and lived through the hoax to smoke another.

By the end of the evening, most of the seats were empty. But the show
wasn't over. The audience had been lured on-stage to take part in an
elaborate spectacle engineered by Bob Linder, a young artist. He began
by asking someone in the front row to "Come up and give me a hand with
something." A half hour later, people were sawing boxes in half,
building a tent, typing letters, banging pots, lighting incense, wearing
sheets–conjuring memories of a suburban camping trip, or perhaps a
cartoon vision of North Africa.

A friend, who's a painter and had never been there before, whispered
ecstatically during a pause in the action, "I need to come here every
day!"

This year New Langton Arts turns 25 years old, but this non-profit San
Francisco artist's space seems as youthful as ever. "Our priority is to
find work without audiences yet," says executive director Susan Miller.
While Linder's spectacle took this saying to a new extreme, they have
always pushed the boundaries.

Langton, as it's affectionately called, isn't a museum, gallery, or
commercial theater. It's a non-profit organization, run by a board of
artists and curators, which exhibits and commissions contemporary art,
performance, and new media.

Over the last 25 years Langton has incubated some of the region's most
daring contemporary artists, such as Karen Finley, the sexually
transgressive performance artist "banned" by the NEA, and Nancy Rubins,
an installation artist whose proposed public sculpture is currently
under fire in San Diego. In the 1990's, Langton became one of the first
local spaces to exhibit new media, with shows by robot artist Chico
MacMurtrie and Net artist Ken Goldberg.

"We can be flexible and malleable," says Miller, "responding to new
needs and art forms in a modest way." Modest, since their budget is less
than half a million dollars a year–but they have other advantages.

Renny Pritikin, the visual arts curator at the Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts, was formerly the director of Langton. He praises them for
"having an ear very close to the ground," able to operate on short
notice and take chances. He says his museum takes two to three years to
plan a show, whereas Langton curators can launch a show in only six
months–allowing them to stay at the cutting edge.

The current exhibition, "Closed Circuit," explores the intersection of
video art and new media. A highlight is Anthony Discenza, an Oakland art
student selected for the Whitney Biennial, who transforms hours of
channel-surfing into slick, hyper-kinetic mosaics. Another standout is
"Text Rain" by Cammille Utterback, an Interval Research Fellow. A
projection of letters trickles down a white screen, except this screen
is unusual because the user can interact with it: catching or lifting
the falling letters with her body–all in magical real time.

This fall Langton took a bold step in embracing new media. It launched
"NetWork," a series devoted to supporting and exhibiting Net art - one
of the first efforts of its kind in California. After two years of
planning, the series opened in August with "Chess.Net" by Serbia's
APSOLUTNO and "1:1" by the San Jose collective C5.

Langton's effort is unusual because it exhibits Net art in a gallery
setting, reaching viewers who might not visit on-line exhibitions, such
as Steve Dietz's "Art Entertainment Network" (where "1:1" is currently
on view). Miller says she also wants to get the artists in "face to face
contact." So she's launched a lecture series, "Really Wired," which will
feature Rhizome Editor Alex Galloway on March 14.

Lisa Jevbratt, who helmed C5's "1:1" project, supports the NetWork
effort. But she says, "It may be more work than [Langton] thought,"
since the gallery audience might be too new to the medium. Her project
maps every IP address on the Internet and displays the information
through clever interfaces. But, she says with a laugh, "People thought I
was selling computers, or that Netscape was my project."

Perhaps this type of confusion is exactly what makes Langton so cutting-
edge–a place where curators dare to challenge audiences. Jevbratt
hopes Langton will help the public catch-up to Net art. The gallery
could become a unique laboratory to test audience interaction with new
media projects–something nearly impossible to gauge on-line. It could
also become a premier venue for exhibiting Net-based projects which
engage physical spaces, such as the "telerobotics" of Ken Goldberg.

While Langton continues to evolve and take risks, its future is
regrettably uncertain. The National Endowment for the Arts cut off key
funding in 1995, after a decade of supporting Langton's artist grant
program. Now the rising rents of San Francisco threaten to push the
organization out of its home. When the lease expires in March 2001,
Miller says the rent could triple.

The Andy Warhol Foundation has come to the rescue. They have just
pledged $100,000 over the next three years, in what Miller calls "the
largest single grant we've ever received." The money, part of a new $3
Million program to bolster small and-mid sized arts organizations, will
help Langton plan for the future. The money can't go to pay salaries of
rent. Instead the grant will help the board sure up their finances,
build an endowment, and draft plans for a possible move.

There's talk of Langton joining forces with other small arts
organizations, such as SF Camerawork and Film Arts Foundation, to share
a new building. The Warhol foundation loved this idea.

"If there's a way small to mid-sized organizations can come together and
form a partnership," says Yona Backer, a program officer at the Warhol
Foundation, "it would be an interesting national model."

Miller is optimistic that, over the next 25 years, Langton will continue
to play a key role in San Francisco's cultural landscape. "We can help
artists more than artists or small non-profits can," she says, "and help
audiences understand the art of our time."