• Pat Moran
• Keith Hennessy's Turbulence. Would you believe this show was polarizing?

The tenth anniversary edition of the Time-Based Art festival wrapped up on Sunday. We've got final thoughts over on our TBA blog, including how new artistic director Angela Mattox's internationally focused programming fared, and why it's time to move on from Washington High.

This year, TBA closed out its ten-day run with a show by Laurie Anderson, a returning TBA artist who's just about as big as it gets in the contemporary art scene. I'm not sure why PICA decided to close the fest with their big event, rather than opening with it as they've done in years past—it may have just been a logistical decision—but I liked it. A fancy event at the Schnitz that might make a snoozy opener instead offers a gentle comedown from the fest.

Anderson performed Dirtday!, a mild-mannered rumination on natural selection, tent cities, death, sleep, and her piano-playing dog.

Dirtday is predominantly a storytelling show—music provides punctuation and atmosphere, but is rarely the focus. On a bare stage dotted with candles, Anderson's voice settled into a dangerously soothing rhythm, occasionally distorted by a voice modifier or broken up with a riff on the electric violin. Each story was more or less a few jokes wrapped around an aphorism ("if we didn't have regrets, we wouldn't have all that much music"), plus the aforementioned YouTubes of her dead dog, which were beautifully out of context on that stage and very endearing at the same time. A fire alarm went off onstage at one point, and Anderson's handling of that distracting was as gracious as could be. She was gracious in general, in fact, peppering the show with plenty of humor, but I nonetheless I struggled to connect the pieces of Dirtday. She opened with a reference to the name of the show, in suggesting that we rename earth "dirt," because it's "funkier, like we are," but all I can think to say about the rest of the subject matter covered is that it is all relevant to being a human. The evening's undeniable highlight was when she returned to stage for an encore to play an electric violin solo, a beautifully precarious number in which every tremor of her bow transmitted both fragility and control. I wish Dirtday! had offered a few more of those moments.

• PICA

There are two performances left of Gob Squad's Kitchen (You've Never Had it So Good). Go see it.

Hilarious, technically ambitious, surprising, thoughtful—this show is wonderful. To explain it is to make it sound a lot more pretentious than it actually is, but: It's a contemporary reenactment of a handful of Andy Warhol's movies, filmed live by ridiculously gifted improvisers, with the most seamless integration of audience participation I've ever seen. (I was assured by a performer after the show that they seek out participants who seem open to being onstage—my strategy of staring intently at my hands whenever I hear the words "we need an audience member!" will work fine if you're allergic to the spotlight.)

The actors talk a lot about how their characters would be feeling and acting in 1965, when Warhol's Kitchen was filmed. In one of my favorite moments, a performer named Sharon (a pixie-haired Edie Sedgwick stand-in) is talking about feminism and oppression when another actor begins showering her with corn flakes. In any other contemporary art piece, this would be some sort of symbol, left to audience interpretation—in this show, Sharon said, "What are you doing that for?" It was a small moment, but it made me laugh, and it sums up the directness and humor that made the show work so well.

Gob Squad's Kitchen is a reminder that complexity and accessibility are not mutually exclusive. It's about nostalgia and influence and optimism and change; it's unabashedly entertaining. I might write a more in-depth review of this piece on Saturday, after it's ended, but at this point I don't want to spoil the experience for people who haven't seen it yet—it's an incredible pleasure to watch it unfold. Definitely a top-ever TBA show for me, up there with Elevator Repair Service's Gatz and Rude Mech's The Method Gun.

There are showings tonight and tomorrow at 8:30 pm at PSU's Lincoln Hall. Tickets are $30; buy 'em here.

• Pat Moran
• Last night's Parenthetical Girls show at the Works.

Well, you missed last night's wonderful The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, a "live documentary" that saw filmmaker Sam Green narrating an introduction to Bucky's life and work, with a soundtrack provided by Yo La Tengo. (You shouldn't have missed it. We told you. You never listen.)

But there's still one weekend left of the Time-Based Art festival, and plenty to see.

Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton's intriguing tour of written and spoken language, The Quiet Volume, set in the library, runs through Sunday and is absolutely worth experience. Reservations are required. It's $10. You can afford it. Don't be a baby.

Andrew Dickson's Life Coach, in which a real-person "patient" receives a life-coaching session from Dickson in front of a live audience, has four more shows on Saturday and Sunday. As unassuming as this show is (it's in a tiny conference room in the basement of the Mark Spencer Hotel; there's really nothing high-concept about it), it's probably the most memorable thing I've seen so far. It's free. You can afford it. Don't be a baby.

Keith Hennessy's Turbulence runs for two more nights. Audience opinion has been divided on this one, including among our writers: Plenty of people have found the show's immersive freakiness thought-provoking and playful; some haven't.

There are also a handful of shows opening this weekend, including the anticipated Gob Squad's Kitchen (You Never Had it So Good), a mishmash of live theater and film riffing on Andy Warhol's films. Details!

For more, browse our TBA events here.

Over on the TBA blog, Jenna Lechner reviews Keith Hennessy's Turbulence, which bills itself as "a dance about the economy." This show's been divisive—the Portland Monthly loved it, as did a few of my friends, where Jenna and I both found it more aggravating than inspired. You should read Jenna's review, because it is well-written and I think it precisely articulates the problems with the show ("At a certain point, art stops being “difficult” and starts being an abusive and self-indulgent waste of an audience’s time"). Here are some quotes that pretty much some up her night:

“This is some hippie shit up in here.” — Noah Dunham. (The show hasn’t started.)
“Want a donut?” — Dude hanging from the railing. (The show has started?)
“Who wants a donut?” — Donut dude, now in the audience, handing out donuts.
“Aimless.” — Guy in the audience.
“Well, if the party is in option…I’m gonna take that option. And get out of here.” — Woman behind me.
“DICK. I wanna. See. More. Dick." — My friend, now desperate, and hoping they open the floor to audience suggestions.
“I am so over contemporary art. I am so sick of how self-indulgent this field is.” — My friend, the art professor.
“I just want to see something pretty :( ” — Me, five days into TBA.

Music fans should take note of tonight's TBA programming: First off, two showings of the Sam Green-directed documentary The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, which draws from Fuller's own papers and is accompanied by a live score from Yo La Tengo. Here's some footage, just waiting to be soundtracked:

There are only two showings of this one, tonight at 6:30 and 8:30 pm at Washington High, $25, more info here

Apparently last night's late-night show at the Works was pretty rocky (did you read Noah's writeup? "a two hour Google+ chat amongst five seemingly intoxicated friends made increasingly tedious with obscure inside jokes and failed audience participation"? Ouch). Tonight, though, things get back on track with a show from Portland's Parenthetical Girls, which promises to augment the band's already-theatrical stage show with plenty of guests and a dance piece. That's at Washington High, 10:30 pm, $7

It's press day at Mercury HQ, so I don't have much time to write about Perforations, but in a nutshell: I didn't like it.

The program of Balkan performance art was intermittently boring, irritating, and boring again. I left before the fourth and final piece in the show, after sitting through three segments of the type of performance art that are exactly why so many of my friends refuse to go to TBA, even if I wave free passes in their faces.

Segment 1: The crowd is waiting in the the hallway when a volunteer tells us that if we're claustrophobic and/or incapable of standing for a while, we should skip the first segment of the program. We don't skip it, and so we're ushered backstage, where for the next 20 minutes we stand uncomfortably in the dark, crowded room, listening to spooky music and wishing we could see what was happening. Since what was happening was that a performer was creating an intricate yarn-web over the doorway, we weren't wishing that hard—we were trapped! In art! Art that felt a lot like a Nine Inch Nails fan's basement! So that was boring and uncomfortable.

[Unexplained interlude lasting approximately 40 minutes.]

Segment 2: Back in the main auditorium. A woman moved squares around over a light board (projected on a screen above) while pretty music played, then she rolled around on it for a while. I found this part sort of relaxing, but I also sort of wanted to leave.

Segment 3: A woman in a white dress gave a "political speech" inspired by Pussy Riot, while a slide show of stock vagina photos played in the background. This segment had some potential, except it lasted for 600 years, long enough for the vagina slide show to cycle through four times. I wrote down a lot of quotes from this, mostly alliterative pussy sloganeering, but I'm not going to transcribe any of it because it's frankly not that interesting. Basically it was yelling about how we need a vagina-based political party, and then it was some spoken word poetry that involved reciting the names of past presidents while porn sounds played.

At this point PICA volunteers tried to usher us upstairs, for the evening's fourth and presumably final segment (it was 10:15; the show started at 8:30), but we ran free into the night.

There's one more showing of Perforations tonight, if you really want to challenge yourself. Or you could just watch this clip 120 times.

Better bets tonight: Everyone seems to love Lagartijas al Sol's second show, and I'm excited to see what choreographer Keith Hennessy comes up with.

One annoyance of TBA this year has been that cute little old-timey announcement board in the hallway where the night's show schedule is posted. At least three times now, I've shown up for a show that's listed in the program and online as starting at 10:30 pm, only to find that damn board telling me it won't be starting til 11 pm. A half an hour's not a huge deal, but it's indicative of a larger problem: there's a LOT of hurry-up-and-wait at Washington High. Last night's Perforations was scheduled to start at 8:30 pm, and it did, but the 20-minute segment from 8:30-8:50 pm was followed by a solid 40 minute of waiting around for the next part of the show to start. Not to mention the general pain in the ass of waiting in line outside of Washington High, only to get in and wait in another line inside of Washington High.

Per official channels, "Things get backed up around using Washington High as a venue for 8:30 mainstage shows (particularly last night and tonight). Set changeovers can delay performers, so 11 is generally a safer bet. But doors always open by 10."

With the disclaimer that I tried the "11 is a safer bet" approach two nights ago, and missed part of Miniature Dramas. SIGH.

/whining

(More complaning—plus review of two great shows running this week—at the Mercury's TBA blog!)

We wrote about Ten Tiny Dances yesterday; over on the TBA blog, we've got some photos to go with the words.

• Pat Moran
• Yep, this is a dude dressed as Spider-Man dumping water on his head, what the fuck did you think happened at TBA?

More right over here.

While the rest of you were all distracted with banal little events like MFNW and the (apparently awesome) Rose City Comic Con, your high-minded Mercury arts team has been steadfastly plugging away on our coverage of TBA, the city's annual showcase of world-class performance art.

Here's what we've got:

Amateur Life Coach Andrew Dickson spent a fascinating, Radiolab-worthy hour talking to an elderly gentleman who wanted to bring his dead friend's math breakthrough to a wider audience. Erik Henriksen wrote all about it.

Our writer was challenged by Nora Chipaumire's Miriam, a dance referencing gender, displacement, and African identity, and her thoughtful review grapples with why she found it difficult.

I loved Miguel Gutierrez's Heavens What Have I Done—it made the performance-about-a-performance concept feel fresh and thoughtful, with the help of intimate on-stage seating strategically deployed Marie Antoinette wig. (I'm surprised that I haven't yet heard from anyone who hated the show—certain audience members were palpably bored/irritated the night I saw it.)

Our writer struggled with Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol's wordy, Spanish-language El Rumor del Incendio—he echoes what I heard from a number of people over the weekend, which is that the show is appealing and the performers engaging, but the history-heavy script was difficult to take in via supertitle.

Ten Tiny Dances is an audience favorite because it's like a Whitman's sampler of TBA—5-10 minutes from a variety of festival artists, performing their work on a tiny stage, and if you hate any one performance, no big deal, it'll be over soon. This year saw a Spider-man, a baby goat, and Keith Hennessy saying "fuck it" and packing the stage with bodies.

• Pat Moran
• Keith Hennessy sets a new record for most bodies on a Tiny Dances stage.

I'd never heard of self-described "drag terrorist" Christeene before TBA this year, and I wasn't sure what to make of the videos I'd seen online, but last night's performance was oddly uplifting. "Oddly" because, well, the show did in fact feature lead singer Christeene (the nom de drag of performer Paul Soileu) licking what I think was pudding out of another man's butt; "uplifting" because underneath the incredibly graphic stage show and lyrics were genuinely catchy pop songs. Plus, backup dancers in gimp masks performing upbeat, goofily choreographed dance numbers... I don't know, it was just sort of delightful in a way that absolutely belied how on-the-surface offensive a lot of the material was. Plus, the crowd—lots and lots of youngish gay dudes, clearly already fans—was super into it. It was fun!

Tonight at The Works: The wildly popular and only intermittently offensive Ten Tiny Dances. (It's worth noting that this year, the beer garden and food offerings at Washington High are free and open to the drinking-age public. If you're in the neighborhood, drop by for a $4 Session, eat some food, and check out the scene.)

Meanwhile, the reviews are stacking up over at our TBA blog—if you've seen any shows so far, head over and tell us what you think.

"African Mayonnaise":

It's art, dudes.

Washington High School, 13th & Stark. 10:30 pm, $7

Tonight and tomorrow are also your last chances to see The People—Portland, a large-scale spectacle based on the Oresteia, snippets of which last night prompted me to loudly make the intellectually dubious argument that "updating" classic theater is a bullshit waste of time. (That is what happens when you give gin to a theater critic.) Our reviewer actually saw the whole show, and he didn't love it either.

• Pat Moran
• TBA's fancy new sign!

Opening night of TBA is less about art and more about taking in the scene, so to that end: Fancy new signs! Delicious snacks! Pretty art school students! Cranky homeless people! Click over to the TBA blog to read all about it.

ALSO! Last night, Matt Stangel posted an in-depth and very candid interview with TBA's visual art coordinator Kristen Kennedy, about how her curatorial approach has changed to better suit a festival where it's easy for visual art to get lost in the hustle and bustle. It's worth a read.

• PICA

I saw my first show of TBA yesterday: A strange, intimate little piece called The Quiet Volume, which is set in the Central Library and designed for two people at a time. You grab an iPod, sit down next to a stranger, and are guided by narration and text on a tour through the stack of books in front of you.

It was really good! And it made me feel like I was going crazy. I've got a full review over on our TBA blog.

The 10th annual Time-Based Art festival kicks off tonight with a performance of Big Art Group's The People—Portland (a mashup of live theater, video, and footage from interviews with Portlanders, loosely based on the Oresteia)—followed by a free dance party at Washington High, and the opening of TBA's visual art exhibits.

I have it on good authority that—for real this time—this is the last year TBA will be based at the school. It's absolutely worth checking out while you still can—the old high school makes a great performance hub, and it's fun exploring classrooms and hallways full of visual and video art.

Tonight's dance party is FREE! and starts at 10:30 pm at Washington High (SE 13th & Stark); it's helmed by NYC DJ Venus X. "Not since DJ Spooky... has a D.J. been appreciated in so many cultural contexts," writes the New York Times of the scene-hopping DJ, who's as likely to perform in an abandoned warehouse as at the Museum of Modern Art. Kinda boring video:

Also at Washington High: Cocktails, a beer garden, and food—tonight provided by Boke Bowl.

We'll have more detail on TBA:12 at our TBA blog, and you can follow MercArts on twitter for updates.

This is your FINAL REMINDER: Over at that oasis of good taste and erudition also known as the Mercury's TBA blog, we're giving away a full immersion pass to this year's Time-Based Art festival. The contest closes at 3 pm today—all you have to do to win is write something funny about my cat! Easy peasy.

One of my favorite articles in this week's TBA guide is "Online Relationship Management," by local writer/artist Dylan Meconis. Dylan interviewed writer/artist Claire L. Evans—whom you might know from her work in YACHT—about a presentation Evans is giving at TBA. The interview discusses Evans' ideas about how online relationships are measured and understood, and it's accompanied by some of Dylan's suggestions for online relationship tools. They are delightful:

Read the whole piece here.

The 10th annual Time-Based Art festival kicks off in just a few weeks—from Sept 6-16, Portland will play host to artists from around the country and the world (this year's lineup is as far flung as Croatia, Japan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo). Our guide to TBA hits the streets on Wednesday, with artist interviews, previews, and more—in the meantime, if you have any interest in theater, dance, music, weirdo performance art, and late-night dance parties at Washington High, click on over to our TBA blog for a chance to win a full festival pass.

• Photo by Alin Dragulin, paint & fire by Steve Matthews
• Artist Steve Matthews creating the Mercury's TBA blog header.

Hello, friendly art-loving art friends! Today we launch the 2012 edition of the Mercury's trusty TBA blog, where it's all Time-Based Art, all the... well, you know. PICA's annual contemporary art festival runs from September 6-16—if you don't have a pass yet, you can snag one right over here.

Stuff to look forward to on the TBA blog over the next few weeks:

• Reviews! Of everything. Literally. We'll be weighing in on every play, art installation, dance, concert, and"happening." We'll do our best to write about these things in a thoughtful, informed, and lively manner, and you have my solemn oath as blog editor that we will never not employ mocking scare quotes when discussing any event described as a "happening."

• Interviews! Stay tuned for interviews with festival artists and curators, including a giant Q&A with visual art coordinator Kristen Kennedy on the new direction she's taking the fest's visual arts programming.

• News! Sometimes people tell us things! Sometimes there is art drama because I don't know if you have heard but artists are dramatic! Sometimes the food trucks promise tacos and there are no tacos!

• Discussion! I guarantee that I personally will use the comment-baiting phrase "what do you guys think?" at least like 15 times in my blog reviews. One of the best parts of TBA is talking about the work—with friends and in blog conversations, as well as following what critics at other outlets have to say. So that's gonna happen.

•Etc! And... you know! Whatever else!

Also! Our comprehensive print guide to TBA hits the streets on Thursday, August 30, as an insert in the regular paper, so pick up a copy wherever your Mercury is served. We'll also be using the @MercArts as both a link dump and for on-the-spot updates, so go follow along over there if you really want to stay in the loop.

AND FINALLY! We're giving away one immersion pass to TBA:12—valued at $250. Click on over to win.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, one of the organizers of Miami's contemporary art festival cites our very own TBA festival as inspiration:

Is there a performance art festival in another city that served as a model for M/P'12?
Absolutely! I lived in Portland, Or for many years. PICA (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art) throws a festival called TBA (Time-Based Art) that is having its 10th anniversary this year in September.

I had the chance to see a lot of performance art/video/installations over the history of the festival. The college I graduated from (Pacific Northwest College of Art) also has a tight relationship with PICA. Every fall during the first week back to school, it's your homework is to attend as much of the festival as you can. And I did. I also volunteered with PICA and assisted artists and performers with their pieces. That's why I know first hand the possibilities of such a cultural manifestation happening in a community.

Very nice, right? PICA, which celebrates its 17th birthday in a few weeks, is gearing up for TBA:12, the first year under the stewardship of new permanent artistic director Angela Mattox. We'll be digging deeper into TBA's offerings in the coming weeks; for now, the full lineup is here.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of PICA's annual Time-Based Art festival (Sept 6-16), and the first year with new permanent artistic director Angela Mattox at the helm. I met with Mattox yesterday to discuss 2012's lineup, her approach to curating the festival, and her plans to expand PICA's year-round programming offerings; one thing that strongly emerged was a commitment to presenting artists at different points in their careers, as well as from different backgrounds. Consequently, it's a far more global lineup than we've seen in years past, with artists from the Balkans, the Congo, Japan, Mexico, and elsewhere. Maddox was also more willing than past artistic directors have been to discuss explicit themes in her programming, including resistance to oppression, the relationship between art and protest, and freedom of speech. Big names: Laurie Anderson, Miguel Gutierrez, Yo La Tengo.

Here's a charming video of one project, by Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells (of Forced Entertainment—we saw Sight Is the Sense the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First at TBA:08); it's a guided performance for two people at a time that'll take place in the Central Library:

Visual art and the late-night Works lineup have yet to be finalized; ditto venues, though my fingers are tightly crossed that the fest snags one more year at Washington High School. I'll post the full TBA:12 performance lineup after the jump, though bear in mind that it's the nature of contemporary art to sound ridiculous on paper.

Continue reading »

Mike Daisey is currently on hour 19 of his 24-hour monologue. I gave up last night at about 3 am, and couldn't settle into it again this morning when I went back, so now I'm checking out the livestream from the relative comfort of my couch. Erik is still there, though, and he's been blogging all night. It's pretty fucking great.

2:39 am—In what is either a brilliant satire of goofy performance art or just goofy performance art, Mike Daisey is now delivering a monologue/anecdote/dream sequence about that one time he turned into a female “prostitute in a brothel in Düsseldorf.” Meanwhile, two young, cute, immaculately dressed vegans fry bacon onstage on either side of him. —Erik

2:57 am—Overheard from one of the young, cute, immaculately dressed vegans: “It’s cool. I’ll shower afterwards.” —Erik

4 am—“My favorite episode of Battlestar Galactica is the clearly the best episode of Battlestar Galactica,” Daisey says, citing “33” as the best (this opinion is neither uncommon nor controversial, and is the correct opinion to have), and then going on to note that the series ended well (which is both an uncommon and controversial opinion, but also the correct one to have). Like that episode—in which the Galactica’s fleet has to jump via a faster-than-light drive every 33 minutes in order to avoid their enemies—Daisey says he’s on the clock, here, every 45 minutes, having to compile notes on every break, then come out at the top of every hour. “The whole episode’s about fatigue. It’s a beautiful episode,” he says. He is grappling, he adds, with “the very real possibility that this is not sustainable.” —Erik

12:12 pm—because we are in a decrepit old high school with really uncomfortable seats of fucking course there is a fire alarm and everybody follows daisey out to the flagpole like we are all six years old —erik

Go read the whole thing.

Tonight at TBA, a visit from Jenny Slate, Gabe Liedman, Max Silvestri, the hosts of the well-regarded Brooklyn comedy night Big Terrific—SNL short-timer Slate wrote and voiced "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On," and she stars with Liedman in the awesome web series Bestie x Bestie; they'll also be showing short films from the director of those videos, Dean Fleischer-Camp. After a not-particularly-successful comedy interlude as part of last night's programming, I'm looking forward to this—these guys are pros. That's 10:30 pm at Washington High.

Also tonight, dance performances by zoe|juniper and the Offsite Dance project, and another round of Andrew Dinwiddie's faux preacher schtick. (Has anyone else seen that? I'm curious what other people have thought.)

If you're wondering about the Offsite Dance project, which takes place at roving locations in industrial Southeast, there's a review and some video on our TBA blog. Also on the blog, we've got a review of the recent works program New Musics, which included a collaboration between Grouper and the Portland Flash Choir, plus a look at the first performance of Dean and Britta's 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests:

Hey demographic, you're about my age, right? Which means we're too young to remember Andy Warhol's experimental art scene of the 60s but old enough to have died of an overdose by now if we'd been a part of it.

Read the whole thing.