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Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts’ Time-Based Art Festival grew into more than a local tradition in its 20-plus-year run. It’s an institution for the city’s visual and performance art community. Those who are immersed in the art scene are aware of the special significance this performance-packed 10-day event holds with its influx of global and local talent. This year’s lineup is especially West Coast forward, coinciding with PICA’s 30th anniversary.
In that sense, looking back makes as much sense as looking forward. While previewing this year’s lineup, PICA artistic directors Erin Boberg Doughton and Kristen Kennedy mentioned during a TBA preview event on Thursday, Aug. 21, that audiences can also expect more performances starting earlier thanks to patron feedback, so don’t be surprised if you see more families and children than usual this year.
Angelo Scott opens TBA on Sept. 4 with Omni Rail, a performance incorporating directional acoustics—sound that reverberates in an intentional flow. The architecture of Pacific Northwest College of Art’s historic 511 Building will influence one composition as notes bounce within and out of rooms, stairwells, balconies and the building’s atrium, blurring the lines of an instrument’s capabilities alongside choreography written in collaboration with Muffie Delgado Connelly.
Tahni Holt and Emma Lutz-Higgins will premiere Horizon, an exploratory dance focusing on themes of “kinship and sentiment” Sept. 5–7 at PICA. Composer Luke Wyland and artist Jess Perlitz will also collaborate on this performance, exploring the relationships among movement, nature, sculpture and sound.
Jasmine Orpilla and Asher Hartman, co-presented by Los Angeles’ Performance Art Museum, will share Blessed with Switch, a lightless sound performance that will also be dark and daunting in concept. Orpilla’s 25-minute performance will examine and distort language and the feminine in this disorienting, poetic and corporeal showcase intersecting installation, performance and theater Sept. 5.
In The Untitled Native Project, live at PICA on Sept. 7, David Harrelson and Anthony Hudson will speak with Amber Kay Ball, Trevino Brings Plenty, Leland Butler, Olivia Camfield, Woodrow Hunt, LaRonn Katchia, Steph Littlebird and Kanani Miyamoto. The two-part conversation—livestreamed for anyone who can’t make it—will cover a history of Portland and Oregon, then a discussion with Native Pacific Northwest artists connecting to it.
On Sept. 6, Vancouver, B.C., dancer and artist Justine Chambers, who is known for her site-specific, socially embedded choreography, will present a discussion of her choreography project The Brutal Joy that focuses on Black dandyism.
L.A. musician San Cha returns to TBA showcasing a brand-new Spanish operatic performance, Inebria me, presented with English subtitles at the Winningstad Theatre on Sept. 5 and 6. Think telenovela-style dramatics and heightened theatrics intertwining cumbia and mariachi with drag, club culture, punk, electro and classical influences. The boldly original composition and visuals will undergo a “queer reframing of heteronormative and cisgender archetypes.” It will be a bold night celebrating grandeur, so dress appropriately.
Seattle artistic performance duo Drama Tops, composed of Elby Brosch and Shane Donohue, will present DADS with Portland’s Performance Works Northwest for a three-night run at the PICA Annex on Sept. 5–7. As the title suggests, this dance performance will consider Brosch’s and Donohue’s relationships with their fathers, incorporating velcroelcro and inflatables while intermingling comedy with tender, dynamic modern dance.
Dao Strom and collaborators will perform Tender Revolutions/Yellow Songs, a combination of music, writing and visuals illuminating the confines of identity and diaspora of Asian women in the West. Strom has been performing and creating “diaspora songs” for almost 30 years, digging into folk stories, memory and the collective consciousness of community and ancestry. There will be two activating performances on Sept. 12 and 13 alongside the multisensory display of text, audio and imagery, while the installation will be on view in the PICA Annex through Oct. 4.
With tbd: to be diasporic un determined, keyon gaskin and collaborators will share a dance performance at PICA on Sept. 11 and 13 that focuses on “darkening” and its implications related to “people who are traditionally understood as dark.” Erika M. Anderson and Tabitha Nikolai duet together in Memory as a Rock Out of Reach, a visual and musical collage that mines the subconscious, overlapping erotic themes between inspired feminine imagery, distorting first-person shooter video games and mixing with synth guitar and spoken word to share a soundscape on Sept. 12
Apotropaic by Freddie Robins will open at Reed College’s Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery on Sept. 13 and run through Dec. 18. Tapestries, assemblages and sculptures using a combination of found and created materials will exhibit Robins’ humorous, political and unapologetically feminist textile work. Art and craft will be prominently displayed through Robins’ knitting practice along with her collection of items from her past, like vintage toys and dolls, and once-discarded elements of old projects.
The Dirty Thirty closing party sends off TBA with a proper farewell. Get ready to get down and belt out tunes at late-night karaoke Sept. 13 at PICA, then come in the next morning for the final event, Good Dang Weekend 2, a bingo and dance party benefiting The Elbow Room, a Portland nonprofit facilitating art-making for people with disabilities (not to be confused with the Vancouver, Wash., bar The Elbow Room).
SEE IT: Time-Based Art Festival at Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, 15 NE Hancock St., and other locations, 503-242-1419, pica.org/tba. Various times Sept. 4–14. Event prices vary; full festival passes $250–$500.
