Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, El Rumor del Incendio. Photo: Anne Vijverman.

It’s natural that in any given cultural moment (local or global), certain ideas will percolate. You know how at certain moments it seems like Hollywood releases three asteroid blockbusters in a matter of weeks? Call it zeitgeist, call it coincidence, but we’ll come out and call it significant. This year, we were struck by the number of artists who are working at the borders of art and activism, exploring big political shifts in societies around the world. In 2011, the first inklings of these political leanings were already present in artistic practice, not least in our visual art program, entitled Evidence of Bricks. Following a year that spanned from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, it’s small wonder that so many artists are now unveiling projects that reflect revolution and protest and uprising and political renewal.

Perhaps central among these projects at TBA:12 will be a world-premiere dance piece by Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero Performance. Developed in-residence this spring at PICA , Turbulence (a dance about the economy) attempts to make sense of the global economic collapse through improvisation and deliberate failure. The performance references images as disparate (but eerily related) as circus performance and Abu Ghraib, while exploring the many ways that our language and ideas about economies are literally “embodied.” Through a June symposium hosted around their residency, the company explored the problematics of queer identity and performance, of alternative economies, and whether art can truly be political. Their questions and investigations will continue at the September TBA premiere.

Big Art Group also asked a lot of questions during their pre-TBA residency, some quite literally. Their time in Portland centered on a week of community interviews by Portland residents of their friends and neighbors. The questions they posed covered everything from census-style information to deep and challenging issues at the heart of democratic society. Can you wage a war on behalf of democracy? Is terrorism ever justified? What makes a community? Together, these videos form the digital “Greek chorus” of The People—Portland, a multi-city serial project that loosely examines the tragic Oresteia, often cited as a founding text of civic society. Big Art’s performance will span a monumental video projection on the facade of Washington High School and engage with some of the core values underlying our political system.

Seminal artist, musician, and storyteller Laurie Anderson has developed a new piece entitled Dirtday! to cap off her story cycle trilogy. Over a varied career spanning countless subjects and themes, Anderson has consistently tapped into the present and the echoes of our recent past. From the legacy of 9/11 to the impact of last year’s Occupy movement, Anderson is an astute chronicler of the American political consciousness.

Moving beyond American soils and concerns, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol is a young Mexican company investigating the political heritage of their country and the society their generation has inherited. In two bold “documentary” plays at TBA, Lagartijas will expose two overlooked aspects of Mexico City’s history—the armed revolutionaries of the 60s (El Rumor del Incendio) and the destruction of its natural aquifers and water sources (Asalto al Agua Transparente). Through a mix of archival text and footage, video, and original theater,  the company will set out to, “document the truth within the fiction, not to interpret it.” A worthy goal for any politically-minded artist, to be sure.

This year, we’re looking at film as a tool, as a medium that moves beyond the movie screen to play a central role in contemporary performance and visual practice. The filmmakers we’ve selected for TBA don’t work with celluloid and digital files in the typical way, instead looking outside of the film world for collaborators and new ideas. Meanwhile, a whole host of our performing companies incorporate innovative, real-time video and other filmic devices. So, for audiences in love with the moving picture, let’s just say we’ve got you covered.

One of our biggest opening weekend (and opening night!) projects comes from New York’s Big Art Group, pioneers of what they’ve labeled “real-time film.” In The People–Portland, the company brings together footage recorded of Portland locals during their Spring residency with live video and performance, all projected in real time on the exterior of Washington High School. It’s a bold project exploring our ideas of democracy and community, with a unique, internet-age approach to digital media.

Gob Squad (an early PICA alum) take a similarly inventive approach to film, devising complex live-streamed performances that create pure theater magic, dazzling the audiences with the charm and wit beneath their technology. In Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had it So Good), the company veils their live action behind a wall of screens, projecting their re-enactments of Warhol’s iconic 60s films in black-and-white. We won’t spoil the show, but suffice it to say, the company doesn’t completely hide behind the screens for long. The effect is wonderful.

In a very different exploration of historical documents, the Dutch artist duo Van Brummelen & De Haan re-create a controversial monument through 16mm film. Denied access to film the Pergamon frieze in Berlin (which had been “expropriated” from Turkey in the 1880s), the artists re-constructed the sculpture through hundreds of text-book photos. It’s film and photography as renegade archaeology.   In a time when film technologies are so rapidly changing, it is perhaps fitting that so many of the film-based projects take an interest in the past. Bay Area filmmaker Sam Green has looked back in time to one of the most future-minded figures ever: the visionary architect, inventor, and thinker R. Buckminster Fuller. Along with indie icons Yo La Tengo, Green will stage The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, a “live documentary” with a band-driven soundtrack and in-person narration about Fuller’s relentless pursuit of a better tomorrow.

While these projects all concern ideas and visions and projections on a grand scale, many of our TBA film events are rather more intimate. On THE WORKS stage, two innovative animator/puppeteers bring their charming, miniature performances to life through video projection. David Commander will perform In Flight, his biting analysis of contemporary media saturation and apathy, while Laura Heit will create diminutive worlds atop matchbox stages. Also lined up for THE WORKS, is a night of FUTURE CINEMA, curated by our friends at The Hollywood Theatre. With live performances by a group of “Terrifying Women,” some B-Movie Bingo of cult film clichés, and a new collaboration between Liz Harris (Grouper) and director Weston Currie, the night will be a far cry from the usual movie theater fare.

And in the visual program, Isabelle Cornaro approaches film as one of the many multi-valent tools of her practice. Much of Cornaro’s output exists in a sort of feedback loop of similar items and subjects reflected and re-reflected through different mediums. She sculpts architectural spaces, builds installations based on landscape paintings, and films her airbrushed paintings, only to then re-paint select frames of the resulting films. The ethereal results speak lovingly to process and medium, rather than overt subject matter; they are films and paintings about film and painting. So skip the multiplex and experience a new take on film in an age when our lives often seem to exist on screen.