Alert: Short bragging-in-the-name-of-encouragement to follow. Ahem. I went to the 52nd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in, well, Venice, this past summer. It was my second time there, and it was awesome. There was a weird futuristic house for Illy Coffee that turned from a shipping container into a fully furnished, Dwell-type living space with white plastic furniture, and there was a long room full of hanging neon sculpture and piles of rugs that was mysteriously the only room where photos were off limits, and then a room with huge glossy pictures of dead birds, and also a room with a cow sculpture in a shack that represented something about Islam and America...and so on. And so on. And so on.
The Biennale fills several blocks worth of gallery space with art from every nation, and I can't remember much of it. But one piece that I can remember is the tiny portraits of American soldiers killed in Iraq, stacked floor to ceiling in one of the big exhibition halls. It stopped everyone in their tracks, American or otherwise. It was the work of Emily Prince, and she's here for PMMNLS tonight. Each portrait is drawn from a photo of the soldier, and the work was laid out geographically in the shape of the USA. Prince interviewed the family of some of the soldiers and wrote quotes from the interviews on the cards. According to PICA's info she has drawn more than 4,000 portraits, and it is, alas, a work in progress. You should go see this lecture.
Info:
* 5th Avenue Cinema
* 510 SW Hall St
* Portland OR , Map
* Free Admission
* Mon . Feb 11 . 7:30-8:30 pm (at the corner of SW 5th & Hall on the PSU Campus)
PICA info on the artist:
http://pica.org/programs/detail.aspx?eventid=312
--Carissa Wodehouse
Freelance writer, PICA enthusiast, member.
Kate Pocrass is an unusual artist. While most artists are striving to create unique objects or spaces, Kate’s objects are usually “naturally” occurring, and her gallery is your head.
Her work is best described by herself via her “Mundane Journeys” hotline (415.364.1465), where since 2001, she has been providing weekly “excursions to promote easily overlooked details.” This week, for example, the listener is invited to check out some interesting plants in a planter. Other journeys have included oddly shaped trees, instructions to chat with specific employees at shops, unique color combinations on buildings, and signs placed just so as to provide accidental double entendres.
Mundane Journeys has grown from the weekly hotline into two Mundane Journeys books, and chartered tour busses, complete with food, music, videos, and printed guides.
Kate has, of course done other work as well, but all of it focused around Mundane Journey’s emphasis on the importance of a meaningful day to day existence.
Check out more here
-by Abe Ingle
Alaska’s characters have issues. They lash out against themselves and each other in chaotic attempts to communicate. An ignored lover lifts her skirt for attention, a man screws anything that moves in a desperate hope of connection, another substitutes sex for love, and another struggles with himself to be closer to who he really is. These struggles are all nonverbal, and are played out masterfully against Ulises Conti’s excellent live score on a bleak, sterile stage. All of this succeeds terrifically, even against the telenovela plot, for when, after we have been watching these failures to communicate, and are offered a chance to do so ourselves, we fail just as tragically.
by Abe Ingle
Attention Google Calendar Users...
.... and lecture series appreciaters, alike:
Here is a link to a public Google Calendar with all the PSU Lecture Series info for each artist on each corresponding night. If you are like me, and already are utilizing this nice bit of technology (Google Calendar) then this should be good information for you.
PSU Lecture Series Calendar
Last night I attended the lecture by Corin Hewitt, who is in town until October 20th. Corin did a power point slide show of his work and artistic thought process. My favorite part was an extensive piece about Willard Scott (the weatherman) which involved dirt from underneath the house he was raised in, full sculpture 20% larger than scale and multiple specific location changes for the piece.
His current piece, Toad in A Hole, is up at Small A Projects, located at 1430 SE Third Avenue from noon to 6pm. I highly recommend checking it out.
posted by noelle
While entering the theater, my boyfriend cut a few people off trying to get a front row seat. He totally left me high and dry, grabbed his seat, and then asked people to move to accommodate me. I ended up sitting between boyfriend innocently flirting with a woman (probably trying to avoid my cutting looks) on the left and the man that boyfriend knocked over on my right. Yippee. I felt completely ostracized and uncomfortable. But hey, wouldn’t you know it, this was just the emotional place I needed to be to really connect to the opening of Kassys performance of Kommer. Thanks boyfriend.
The only thing we know is that someone has died. We don’t know anything about him except that he had a significant other and his friends and family have all gathered to mourn. The dialogue was a saturation of what you might hear at any funeral and, for some reason, it was funny. The CD player played all the wrong songs. The guests expressed grief in varying amounts of humor, anger, busy-work, and distraction. The whole scene was entirely awkward and somehow ridiculously hilarious. Yet I kept thinking that there was nothing said or done on stage that had not been said or done in real life, just maybe toned down a little.
The show ends and the performance switches to video. In fact, the cast takes its curtain call via video screen, and the audience applauds them! In the video we see our actors retire backstage and discuss their performance and the audience. One-by-one, they all go home and we follow. Suddenly we are drawn into their worlds, their troubles, their collective sadness, only this time, no one is laughing. One woman deals with a dying mother and single parenthood; another obviously battles trouble with weight and health. While one man contemplates suicide another battles an eating disorder.
I found this performance to be extremely thought-provoking and walked away feeling overwhelmed. Kommer made me laugh and then broke my heart. Strange how we found comedy in the live performance and cried through the video. Why is an audience able to react more emotionally to film than to people on a stage in front of us? The film portion of the performance seemed more real simply because we were told that these were real people, behind the actors that had been on stage. In truth, they were still actors. The audience knows absolutely nothing about the real lives of the people who entertained us on stage. On a larger scale, I recognize that I know absolutely nothing about the real lives of people I am sharing space with. I have been completely avoiding the grumpy (totally projected, by the way) guy on my right. Maybe I should have asked him how he was doing and given him a hug.
Liz
One woman incessantly mops and the other repeatedly asks where she can get cocaine. We learn that they both have children and that neither have husbands. They conspire to figure out how to pay for their children’s schooling. We are made aware that they like to party at local hotspot 3.5 Floppies. We know these women; we’ve seen their type. We fear for them and maybe actually fear them, a little. We recognize their habits and attitudes, but never learn their names.
Though a thoughtfully crafted work with poignant, acerbic and, at times, comedic dialogue, I found it difficult to watch two women with such intensely real personalities, exist as nothing more than stereotypes. Surely life must have more meaning. The end product is more disturbing than pleasurable, yet the actresses portraying these roles were remarkable to study, each artfully breathing life into her chica. Aida Lopez and Gabriela Murray embody their roles to such an extent that we don’t even miss los chicas when they’re gone simply because we realize that there are always more chicas to replace them.
Liz
I have to be completely honest. They had me at little suits with shorts. Unfortunately that’s just what they wear just at the beginning of the performance, which is really the end. So first, the teased me, and then I had to wait. But that’s quite alright, in part.
The first half of the performance was boisterously fun. The premise is that the nefarious Board has declared that fruit is to be outlawed. Recognizing despotism and oppression, (and potential scurvy outbreaks?) one man ignites a rebellion. Sporting an apple-bedecked beret and arm band, proper regalia for any fashionable revolutionary, our hero enlists the help of a builder, a musicologist, and a philosopher (oh my!) and they begin the very important quest to bring back fruit. Now, toss in robot ghosts, a stuffed whale, ridiculously catchy songs, and an explosion of projected images and you get a whole lot of fun . . .and chaos, actually. Just when our hero and his friends are disbanded by the creepy Man with the Bullhorn and their journey falls apart, the performance, well, starts to fall apart. Right around the middle, the story got messy and much of the spring and zip that initially pulled me in disappeared. I’m afraid I lost interest up until the little suits with shorts reappeared, but that was the end. For real this time.
See ‘em if you can. They’re mostly awesome.
Liz
Twenty-five years from now your smart-ass kid and some of his friends think it would be, like, so fun to stage a production in the garage. Maybe it’s your birthday, so it’s sweet, really. They raid your closet and pull out the stuff you don’t remember that you had. They piece together a summer of your life based on re-re-reuns of MTV Spring Break. They decorate with leftover 4th of July decorations and back it all with the mix tapes you just couldn’t bare to throw out. For some inexplicable reason, they take a particular shine to the country mix that was given to you by that one guy. You only listened to it once, you swear. They sneak a couple beers, belt ‘em back, and belt ‘em out.
You watch the show. Hell, you’ve had a few yourself. You can’t say that you approve of the dry-humping but it’s the 32’s and you’re a modern mom. Nostalgia hits you like a brick in the face. You selectively forget that you never actually went anywhere good on spring break. You sincerely hope that your kid and his smart-ass friends recognize that Jackson 5 was WAY before your time. You remember camping, pie, and the 4th of July. You suddenly think that patriotism is kind of a cheap shot and maybe Freedom is about bragging rights. You wonder if you’d enjoy the show more if you knew all the words. You wonder what that country-mix-tape-making guy would think of the performance. Would he pledge allegiance and sing along? Would he recognize the irony of a bunch of smart-ass kids temporarily angry about never which song to sing next. Ain’t that America?
It all seems like a big disaster and for some reason that makes it better. For you anyway, and not cause it’s your kid up there doing something for you. You think that someone else with a different set of memories and ideas would just see the disaster. Or just like the music. Something starts to make some sort of sense. It ends and you clap. You were not expecting to find anything buried in a pile of your old clothes and stack of tapes, but there it was. So big that you are going to have to think about it more. Later. Your kid leaves the mess for you to clean up. Happy birthday to you. Ain’t it funny how the night moves?
Shit, now you are going to have that song in your head for days.
Liz
I have always loved the deep resonant sound a cello or two. Or twelve? Or fourteen? Sure, why not? The more the better, right? I really just want to know why there are so many cellists in Portland. Regardless, Portland Cello Project’s recent performance at the Wonder Ballroom had that oh, so Portland. Cello upon cello backed some our favorite local talent. The likes of John Weinland, Bright Red Paper, and Laura Gibson all took their turns and it sound soothingly good. Apart from one rotten apple, called Adagio for Strings (did we really need a 9-11 memorial song?), the show was a soothing success. In fact, I hope to get the recording for bedtime.
One might assume from the rather (un)clever title of Taylor Mac’s show that The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac would cover a full spectrum of work. Not so. Really, what the show presents is a beginner’s introduction to drag. I guess that was OK, because before sitting through this show I really didn’t know performance art could be such a drag. I am not going to blame Mac entirely. Maybe it was the exertion of my long, rushed bike ride just to get to the show or the uncomfortable heat inside the venue or the uncomfortably cramped wooden pew. Probably it was because the show ran unexpectedly long, thus conflicting with other shows in the TBA line-up. All of this was then agitated by what I found to be a lackluster performance from a superficially lustrous performer. Again, maybe not entirely Mac’s fault, 6:30 was, admittedly, a little early for sparkle and flare.
Aside from the outlandish make-up, there just wasn’t anything about the show that was innovative or provocative. While I appreciated the nature in which the show progressed: Mac threw clothes from previous performances all over the floor and changed outfits while changing scenes, there just wasn’t anything for me in the show itself. I found the dialogue too rehearsed to be confrontational. Even the presumably off the cuff stuff just didn’t feel like it was in the moment. Probably the most aggravating aspect of the show was that as a member of the audience I wasn’t even responsible for reacting to Mac. He unabashedly reacted to his own material and, frankly, I just didn’t have the energy to react to his reaction. That’s not the audience member I want to be. Not that I could have responded with much fervor anyway. Moments that should have been “oh, no you didn’t just say that” were more “what did you just say?” I didn’t feel that the show was smart or sharp and possessed only the requisite amount of sass. Alas, I have run into very few people who felt the way I did about the “play”, so please, don’t take my word for it.
Liz