The lineup for PICA’s 2008 Time-Based Art Festival (TBA:08, which runs September 5-14) won’t be officially announced until tonight at Tada, but the press embargo on festival deets was lifted this morning—so let’s talk TBA!

As expected, it’s an exciting lineup, with a notable concentration of both international acts and Portland-specific projects. This speaks to one of TBA’s goals: to “highlight locals without ghettoizing them,” as TBA Performing Arts Program Director Erin Boberg Doughton put it; to profile local artists on the same platform as international ones, which often results in local artists becoming more engaged in the global scene.

In the same way that local and international artists can cross-pollinate, “the visual arts and performing arts worlds have a lot to learn from each other,” said Visual Art Program Director Kristan Kennedy; this is the third year that the festival has included a visual arts program, and the lineup includes boundary-defying work by video/sculpture artists Ryan Trecartin and Lizzy Fitch.

While Mark Russell, TBA’s artistic director, doesn’t identify any particular theme to this year’s festival (“A theme would bore me. Ask me after it’s over.”), Boberg Doughton notes that many of the performers share an interest in audience manipulation, and questioning the notion of “what entertainment means.” She also notes that, while PICA “didn’t set out to make an overtly political festival, [they] would’ve had to work hard to make it not political,” ‘cause that’s what the artists are making these days.

TBA organizers seem to have heard and taken to heart criticisms of last year’s fest. The Works (TBA’s space for late-night shows and schmoozing) will be once again created out of a found space—it was at the Wonder Ballroom last year, a largely unpopular choice that attendees complained was out-of-the-way and lacked the spontaneous feel of years past. Wherever the Works ends up, they’re aiming to have it open all day, and considering bringing back Family Suppers, a feature of past TBA festivals (though I’m guessing this one won’t be helmed by Michael Hebberoy). The popular kid-oriented tiny tba (which Chas Bowie last year memorably dubbed “MILF Central”) will also be back, along with Ten Tiny Dances and live music from Parenthetical Girls, Root Beer and French Fry, Ethan Rose, and more.

This year, organizers are aiming to make it possible to see every show; and, by limiting how long shows run, to facilitate shared experiences among audience members. Last year, scheduling was kind of a nightmare—I think it was physically impossible to see everything—and longer show runs meant that it was less likely that folks on any given night had seen many of the same shows, making it harder to drunkenly argue about their merits at the Works.

We’ll be launching another Mercury TBA blog in coming months, with full coverage of the festival as well as more info about all the participants. But dip your toes in after the jump, with a quick rundown of the full catalogue.

PROGRAM

ONSTAGE

Antony and the Johnsons with the Oregon Symphony.

The addition of the gender-bending Antony and his Johnsons to the program was breathlessly confirmed only last Thursday; the British-born, Mercury Prize-winning Antony is a good choice for full symphony treatment, though I am concerned about the potential emotional devastation-factor:

Jerome Bel: Pichet Klunchun and Myself

A staged conversation between controversial French choreographer Jérome Bel (the New York Times called him a “dance metaphysician”) and traditional Thai dancer Pichet Klunchun, in which Klunchun explains to Bel, via word and dance, the codified dance he practices; and then Bel gets a chance to explain his own “conceptual choreography” (check out clips from his 2003 The Show Must Go On here, and you’ll understand why a highly trained and traditional dancer like Klunchen might have trouble appreciating Bel’s work). I didn’t write down her exact words, but I remember Erin saying something to the effect that this performance essentially justifies the existence of contemporary art. It sounds pretty amazing.

LeeSaar The Company:Geisha

The Village Voice had this to say about the Israeli troupe’s “Geisha,” which they will be presenting at TBA:

In Geisha, [Saar] Harari and [Lee] Sher worked with ramifications of a single idea—that of the expectations and role-playing that gender induces. It begins with a stunning solo by a stunning woman... Jye-Hwei Lin, tall and lean with longish black hair, wears only a pair of jeans. Lin’s timing and dynamics are impeccable. She’s able to strike out, fists clenched, then melt. One minute she’s a martial arts princess; then the bold, thrusting move slips from her body, and she’s bending backward, her head hanging, her long-fingered hands drained of strength. Sometimes, she does convey the image of a geisha —delicate, eager to please, forming her body into a succession of curves. But you’ve barely grasped that when she modulates into something more powerful. As her pace increases and the steps flow together, she never loses the specificity of being in the moment—aware of the space around her and how she fits into it. She can do something as small as touch her fingers to her mouth, and meanings explode in your mind.

Tim Etchells/Forced Entertainment: Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First and Quizoola

This acclaimed six-person company from Sheffield, England sounds promising. Their Quizoola is a “durational performance”—six hours long, though the audience can come and go as they please—in which three performers have a list of 2000 questions, ranging in subject from pop trivia to personal secrets and twisted philosophical searches,” with which they interrogate one another. After Elevator Repair Service’s absolutely amazing 7-hour production of Gatz last year (essentially a staged reading of The Great Gatsby), I’m far more open to the idea of marathon performances like this one—although I do appreciate that at this show you can wander in and out if you absolutely must have a cigarette. Sight according the the TBA press release, is a monologue “which fails in the attempt to describe the world and marks a personal, deliberately imprecise and badly organized taxonomy.”

Mike Daisey: Monopoly and If You See Something, Say Something

You may remember monologuist Mike Daisey from this classic YouTube of a group of high schoolers walking out of his show en masse. Or maybe you’ve read his persuasive Stranger article about how the death of the repertory theater model has hurt American theater (if not, you should); or caught his popular show “21 Dog Years,” about working for Amazon.com, when he was in town a few years back. Daisey is currently performing “How Theater Failed America” in New York. For TBA, he’ll bring two monologues: “Monopoly,” and the new piece “If You See Something, Say Something.”

Reggie Watts

The Mercury’s love for Reggie Watts is well-documented, and he hasn’t disappointed us yet. Dude is kind of a genius. Watch this:

It’s from a posh PICA fundraiser at Aura in Decemember, and the audience was on the older side, folks who could actually afford to pay $50 a head and didn’t have to scam free tickets off PICA (thanks, PICA). Reggie told me afterward that he was terrified to look down at the audience, because he had no idea how his act would go over with an older crowd, so he played to the back wall and avoided eye contact the whole time. Watch the clip and you will understand why.

Daniel Beaty:Resurrection

Actor/singer/writer/composer Daniel Beaty, who performed the ridiculously titled solo show Emergence-See! at the IFCC in February (about which I heard very good things; here’s a clip from that show [wait out the intro]), will be performing a new work called Resurrection. Beaty’s got a 2007 Obie (for outstanding writing and performance) under his belt, if you’re impressed by those sorts of things...

Vivarium Studio

Philippe Quesne’s Vivarium Studio—a “labratory for theatrical innovation—is back after a TBA:06 run of La Demangeaison Des Ailes (“The Itching of Wings”). L’Effet de Serge is a play about a man named Serge, who lives alone and likes to gather friends over every Sunday for a two-minute performance of a “one man show,” which may or may not involve small, ineffective rockets:

Bridget Everett and Kenny Mellman Sexercise Live! A Tribute to the Potty-Mouthed Millie Jackson

Is that homepage not kind of terrifying? Kiki & Herb’s Kenny Mellman joins Bridget Everett for an “uncensored R&B revue celebrating the trash-talking diva Millie Jackson.” That is to say, this lady:

“Is anybody curious about why I haven’t said ‘fuck’ all night? We’ll make up for it now.”

Superamas: Big, 3rd Episode (happy/end)

More cerebral Frenchy action, from the French-Austrian collective Superamas. I love shows that punish you intellectually for allowing yourself to be manipulated by popular entertainment; its like doing penance for how much I like The Biggest Loser:

BIG 3rd episode has this bitter taste of failure and death. Everything looks perfect though : the show is sort of smart and funny ; the women on stage are beautiful, healthy and sexy ; the men are mean and cynical ; the dialogs perfectly fit the image of a clever provocative Superamas´ entertaining program. But by using the strategies of repetition and decontextualisation Superamas digs under the surface of its representations. And what Superamas digs out is the power of this desire for happiness and at the same time its total vanity. These strategies applied to this topic create an auto-reflexive thinking process which leads the spectator to reflect its own parcours through the piece and its own expectations of happiness… and it occurres that those expectations are predictable and predicted.

Our more intimate desires are already calculated by social statistics and marketing. Therefore individual behaviour is nothing else than a copy of a cliché.
The modern vaudeville is statistics!

Tim Crouch: England

I’m having a bit of trouble finding much info about writer/performer Tim Crouch. He has written plays and won awards; England took home 3 at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Fest. The press materials for England have this to say:

Forget thoughts of skinheads or nostalgia, ENGLAND is about an empire of a different kind – one of transmigrations and transplantations. It’s the story of one thing placed inside another: a heart inside another person’s body, a culture inside another country’s culture, theatre inside a gallery, a character inside an actor, a play inside its audience.

Performed by two guides within an exhibition, ENGLAND travels the trade routes of art and human beings. It’s about a sickness and the search for health at any cost. It’s a tour through space and across borders: from an art gallery to a jam factory, from Edinburgh to Osaka, from a hospital bed to a hotel room.
It’s a tour to the end of the world.

Dael Orlandersmith : Stoop Stories

Orlandersmith is perhaps best known for her play Yellowman—about racism between dark and light-skinned African Americans—which was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer in Drama. She’s also an actress, and she’ll be performing a new work “multi-character solo piece” called Stoop Stories.

Tiago Guedes: Diverse Materials and A Solo

Portugese choreographer Tiago Guedes “transforms everyday material, including newspaper, tape, and string into a beautiful tableau.

TBA:08 ON THE ROAD

I could not be more intrigued by TBA’s “On the Road” lineup this year: They are very Portland-based, with an emphasis on architecture, and seemingly more focused than the hodgepodge of wackiness that was last year’s roaming events.

Khris Soden: The Portland Tour of Tilberg

Portlander Kris Soden created maps of the history and landmarks of both Portland and Tilburg, Netherlands, and he superimposed the map of Portland over Tilburg, and vice versa. He’ll be giving walking tours of Portland while pointing out the sights of Tilberg; he’ll be taking Portland’s landmarks to Tilberg the following week.

Third Angle New Music Ensemble: Halprin Fountain Sequence

This project really caught my interest. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the modernist architect Lawrence Halprin designed three Portland parks: The Keller Fountain, which everyone is familiar with; and the lesser-known Pettygrove Park and Lovejoy Fountain, as part of a now-overlooked. Halprin’s designs were influenced by his wife, the choreographer Anna Halprin, and this site-specific work brings performances inspired by the couple to the parks designed by Halprin.

Sojourn Theatre: Built

Sojourn Theatre has been working with the South Waterfront as part of their artists in residence program, on a site-specific work called Built. I am quite intrigued to see where they go with this: Sojourn is a sharp ensemble, and I have no doubt that this will be a highlight.

Linda Wysong

Standing at the intersection of community, urban design, and the environment, Linda Wysong creates opportunities to “re-see” the everyday world. Her practice is not centered in object making but utilizes place, space, and experience. The work addresses the cycle of building and demolition, waste, water, communications, transportation, and land use, examining each of these systems in relationship to human history and the natural world.

TBA ON SIGHT: VISUAL ART

When it comes time to cover visual arts at TBA, I will pay someone smarter than me to do it. (Email me, ahallett@portlandmercury.com, if you think you might be that person.) Here without commentary is the 2008 TBA visual arts lineup. Do your own homework.

Ryan Trecartin, elizabethdeegallery.com

Lizzy Fitch, boboson9th.com

Jacob Hartman, website

Jeffry Mitchell, pulliuamdeffenbaugh.com

Corey Lunn, urbanhonking.com/pictureswamp

Mike Kelley, gagosian.com

Sharon Hayes, shaze.info

Justin Gorman, buildproduction.com

PAINTALLICA: A local collective that will create a site-specfic installation in a Portland storefront.

Tamy Ben-Tor, website

The Yes Men, theyesmen.org

Fritz Haeg, fritzhaeg.com