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One of the major problems with "time-based art" is its definition, or lack thereof. Artists at PICA's annual Time-Based Art Festival gallery this year interpreted it as renegade percussion instruments and glitter explosions at Pictures of the Moon With Teeth.
What Is Time? by New York performance artist Dawn Kasper defies its simple title. Her work is scattered—cymbals, Persian rugs, loose bells, speakers, books and cassette tapes speckle the floor. A drum kit sits in the corner. Serpentine wires crisscross the ground. Mirrored walls reflect the mess from many angles.
More fleeting, Portlander Peter Simensky's Surface Contents 1 & 2 is a series of videos of glitter floating in rays of light in a deserted warehouse. Mirroring the video's glitz, gold and silver foil on the adjacent walls crinkles as people pass. The effect is schmaltzy and nostalgic, and fades just as quickly as its gold dust.
Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki's Nami is a slowly rotating platform of radios tuned to static. As you walk in circles around the lazy Susan, it throws you into an ever-changing soundscape where the radios' babbling voices ebb in and out of earshot. The effect is melodic and hypnotizing, but it doesn't take long for so much circling to turn maddening.
Straightforward in comparison, Eugene artist Tannaz Farsiâs And Others is a light-up text display forming a phrase from Bertolt Brechtâs âMack the Knifeâ: âSome are in the/dark and others/are in the light.â Despite being literally readable, Farsiâs piece isnât any more easily interpreted than its counterparts.
Closer to that old-school definition of "time-based" than any other, Jibade-Khalil Huffman's Vanishing Point/A Drive-in at the End of the World is a series of abstract projections, video compilations and audio clips interspersed through multiple rooms. The effect is a disjointed experience where peepholes between the rooms make you feel like you're seeing the show through a kaleidoscope.
At times, Pictures of the Moon With Teeth feels vague just for the sake of it, as contemporary art shows too often do. But as the title suggests, you're there to see something that defies definition.
SEE IT: Pictures of the Moon With Teeth is at 2500 Sandy, 2500 NE Sandy Blvd., 242-1419. Through Oct. 11.
WWeek 2015