Stage and Studio on 09/04/12

SNS features the 10th year for the Time-Based Art Festival at PICA (The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art). TBA, a convergence of contemporary performance, visual and media art brings diverse talent from around the world for ten days in Portland. Dmae Roberts talks with Artistic Director Angela Mattox and installation sound artist Claudia Meza. Plus a clip from musical genius Laurie Anderson! 

Claudia Meza created an interactive sound installation at the White Box at the University of Oregon in Portland. Visitors can start and stop audiotapes on a series of hanging cassette players, looping and layering the myriad soundscapes.

Meza also created Listening To Space: Sonic City PDX. An audio tour running SEPT 6–16, Meza worked with 30 local musicians, composers, and sound artists. With QR codes and online maps, audiences are directed to sites and sounds, culminating in a live, outdoor concert.

Legendary musician and artist Laurie Anderson performs Dirtday!, the third and final of her groundbreaking solo story works on Sept. 16. With wit and candor, Anderson engages with politics of the Occupy movement, theories of evolution, families, history, and animals in a collection of songs and stories.

TBA returning artists include Faustin Linyekula, Gob Squad, and Miguel Gutierrez,as well as the first local interractive projects by Big Art Group, chelftisch, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, and Nora Chipaumire.

The Festival features U.S. artist and international artists from  Mexico, Japan, Croatia and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany and Zimbabwe.

For more info and a calendar of events and performances, visit the TBA website. Or call 503.242.1419. Check out summary of artists below...

Here are some highlights from TBA:12:

BIG ART GROUP, THE PEOPLE—PORTLAND THEATER/VIDEO, US (SEPT 6­–8)

With their unmistakable brand of transgressive internet-age aesthetics, Big Art Group broaches themes of democracy, justice, and community in an outdoor spectacle of theater and large-scale video projection with a cross-section of Portlanders.

ANT HAMPTON & TIM ETCHELLS, THE QUIET VOLUME. THEATER, UK [US PREMIER] (SEPT 6­–16)

A self-generated 'automatic' performance for two audience members/participants taking cues from headphones. They follow an unlikely path through a pile of books, as outlined by “autoteatro” pioneer Ant Hampton, and artist/writer Tim Etchells.

LAGARTIJAS TIRADAS AL SOL, EL RUMOR DEL INCENDIO (SEPT 7-9). ASALTO AL AGUA TRANSPARENTE (SEPT 10–12)

The young Mexican theater collective presents El Rumor del Incendio, exploring the history of their radical revolutionary forebears in 60s Mexico. Asalto al Agua Transparente explores the stark water issues of Lake Texcoco from the Aztec founding of Tenochitlan.

MIGUEL GUTIERREZ, HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE. DANCE, US (SEPT 7–9)

Gutierrez weaves a rambling and comic monologue that unspools into a bold and ferocious dance.

NORA CHIPAUMIRE, MIRIAM. DANCE, ZIMBABWE/US [WORLD PREMIER] (SEPT 7–8)

In MIRIAM, Zimbabwe-born, New York-based choreographer Nora Chipaumire creates a deeply personal dance featuring herself and dancer Okwui Okpokwasili. MIRIAM explores the tensions that women face between public expectations and private desires and the perfection and sacrifice of the feminine ideal.

ANDREW DICKSON, LIFE COACH. PERFORMANCE, US (SEPT 8–9, 15­–16)

Andrew Dickson offers hour-long life coaching sessions to select festival-goers. In a break from traditional coaching, an audience will be invited to observe, offer support, and reflect on their own journey while the one-on-one dialogue happens on stage.

KOTA YAMAZAKI/FLUID HUG-HUG, (GLOWING). DANCE, JAPAN (SEPT 9)

Famed butoh choreographer Kota Yamazaki has collaborated with six dancers from Japan, Senegal, Ethiopia, and the US on a new performance that blends traditional and avant-garde forms.

PERFORATIONS: NEW PERFORMANCE FROM THE BALKANS. PERFORMANCE, CROATIA/SERBIA (SEPT 10–11)

Writer and multimedia artist Biljana Kosmogina, performer Petra, and experimental music duo East Rodeo explore the contemporary issues of Balkan life and reveal the latest generation of artists from the region.

KEITH HENNESSY, TURBULENCE (A DANCE ABOUT THE ECONOMY). DANCE, US [WORLD PREMIER] (SEPT 12–15)

Bay Area choreographer Keith Hennessy gathers an international ensemble cast to respond to the global economic crisis at the level of the dancing body, offering new movements, images, and strategies that explore failure as practice, crisis as movement, and queer as tactic.

SAM GREEN & YO LA TENGO, THE LOVE SONG OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER. FILM/MUSIC, US (SEPT 12)

A “live documentary” from filmmaker Sam Green exploring futurist, architect, engineer/inventor Buckminster Fuller’s utopian vision of radical social change through design. With a live score from experimental indie band Yo La Tengo, the film draws inspiration from old travelogues, the Benshi tradition, and internet TEDtalks.

GOB SQUAD, GOB’S SQUAD’S KITCHEN — YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD. THEATER/FILM, GERMANY/UK (SEPT 13­–15)

Gob Squad takes a trip back to the underground cinemas of New York to re-create Andy Warhol’s Kitchen. Live actors cross in and out of the films and audience.

FAUSTIN LINYEKULA, LE CARGO. DANCE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO [US PREMIER] (SEPT 13–15)

Legacy, forgetting, and memory form a confluence of forces in the work of choreographer Faustin Linyekula, whose performances are indelibly etched by the experiences of his home in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

CHELFITSCH, HOT PEPPER, AIR CONDITIONER, AND THE FAREWELL SPEECH
THEATER, JAPAN (SEPT 14–15)

Three vignettes track the absurd and mundane stories of a group of office employees in this stylized performance. The company references the social and cultural characteristics of today's Japan, not least of Tokyo.

VOICES AND ECHOES FROM JAPAN. MUSIC, JAPAN (SEPT 16)

Acclaimed artist and musician Aki Onda has organized a rare concert from some of the pioneering forces of Japan’s avant-garde sound and music scene. Sound artist Akio Suzuki, experimental poet Gôzô Yoshimasu, and improvisatory guitarist/turntablist Otomo Yoshihide present a range of performances.

VISUAL ART AT THE TBA FESTIVAL: End Things

Visual Art Curator Kristan Kennedy gathered together a group of international artists for a series of projects and residencies that reflect on “things”—why we make them, why we keep them, and their place in our lives.

ALEX CECCHETTI, SUMMER IS NOT THE PRIZE OF WINTER, ITALY. 

Working across performance, literature, painting, video, sculpture, and choreography, Cecchetti constructs narratives through chance and accident and pre-considered rules and guides. In this “performance relay,” the artist delivers a poetic discourse through words, objects, and drawings.

ISABELLE CORNARO, FRANCE

Isabelle Cornaro carries her content between mediums, representing the same ideas through different forms. For this site-specific installation, Cornaro will create a series of painted murals based on her film-work.

MO RITTER, US

Ritter boldly resists the anti-object impulse of our digital age, instead making sculptural objects that highlight the tensions between stillness/animation. Pulling clay directly from the earth from sites around Oregon.

ERIKA VOGT, US

Casting objects from both found industrial molds and forms of her own making, Vogt will construct an interactive installation of sculptures suspended and manipulated by ceiling-mounted pulleys.

VAN BRUMMELEN & DE HAAN, MONUMENT TO ANOTHER MAN’S FATHERLAND,NETHERLANDS. CO-PRESENTED WITH CINEMA PROJECT

Dutch duo Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan pursue the complex work of artistic restoration and repatriation in Monument to Another Man's Fatherland (I), a 35mm black and white film that slowly tracks the length of the Turkish Pergamon frieze in Berlin.

VENUS X. MUSIC, US (SEPT 6)

The force behind New York City’s epic GHE20G0TH1K parties, DJ Venus X will mash-up a global mix of chopped and screwed pop songs, club mixes, political newscasts, and big dance beats.

CHRISTEENE. MUSIC, US (SEPT 7)

Created by performance artist Paul Soileau, CHRISTEENE is a shameless and sexually infused sewer of live rap and RnB, who challenges the American obsession with charm and grace.

TEN TINY DANCES. DANCE, INTERNATIONAL (SEPT 8)

The audience favorite returns with a lineup of 10 performers. Confined to a 4x4 foot stage, the dancers and artists of Ten Tiny Dances devise new material within tight constraints. Featuring Miguel Gutierrez, Okwui Okpokwasili, Keith Hennessy, Carlos Gonzalez, Taka Yamamoto, Linda K Johnson, Renee Sills, and Nicole Olson.

LAURA HEIT AND DAVID COMMANDER. TOY THEATER, US  (SEPT 9)

Two clever puppeteers play out small-scale dramas live and projected on-screen. Laura Heit performs matchbox micro-plays with hand-cranked action and pop-up engineering. David Commander presents In Flight, a satiric performance questioning airplanes and news media.

BRAINSTORM/SAHEL SOUNDS. MUSIC, INTERNATIONAL (SEPT 10)

Art-pop group BRAINSTORM and music label Sahel Sounds have curated a multimedia night of musical performances, Skype video concerts from western Africa, YouTube remixes, and live cellphone feeds. Featuring performances by local musicians Jason Urick, and Iftin Band.

HOLLYWOOD THEATRE PRESENTS: FUTURE CINEMA (SEPT 11)

Hollywood Theatre brings Terrifying Women (“The Vagina Monologues on nitrous oxide”) by artists including Alicia McDaid, Kathleen Keogh, Tanya Smith, Diana Joy; Director Weston Currie premieres a new film with a live score by Liz Harris (Grouper); and Wolf Choir leads a raucous round of B Movie Bingo with Gary Busey’s BULLETPROOF.

PARENTHETICAL GIRLS, ET AL.. MUSIC/DANCE, US (SEPT 12)

Parenthetical Girls presents an evening of performances by  musical guests Golden Retriever, Classical Revolution PDX performing compositions by Jherek Bischof and a solo dance by choreographer Allie Hankins.

ALEXIS BLAIR PENNEY. MUSIC, US (SEPT 13)

New York-based singer, performer, DJ/personality Alexis Blair Penney travels an emotional journey in song, from childhood to first love to romantic dissolution to ecstatic hope and empowerment.

THU TRAN, THE YES AND NO OF BLACK LIGHT FOOD. PERFORMANCE/FOOD, US (SEPT 14)

Host/creator of  TV show FOOD PARTY, Thu Tran presents her own take on the classic cooking show. For nearly two months, Tran recorded the effects of black light on almost everything she ate.

FADE TO MIND. MUSIC, US (SEPT 15)

A record label and a movement, a series of club nights and cooperative projects in music, visual art, video, and apparel, Fade to Mind is an LA-based DJ collective changing the global bass music scene. DJ/Producers Kingdom, Total Freedom, and Massacooramaan throws a closing night TBA party.