evidenceofbricks.tumblr.com

Well, through our office conversations and the wisdom of the internet, we quickly discovered that bricks have far more than two sides. The tumblr, which originated as an exploration of a symbolic object, became a repository of all of the very literal instances of bricks in our culture, from revolution to fashion to pop culture to music to philosophy. And as the Festival draws nearer, we keep coming across more bricks in the news, in history, in the current London protests, in art, and in the peripheries. And with all of these bricks around us, our culture is built up and dismantled every day.

With general pass sales starting today, we thought it was high time we showed you the expanded TBA program. Read on to see what we’ve added, and remember to visit www.picaresourceroom.org for photos, videos and links on all of our Festival artists and projects.

Shantala Shivalingappa, Namasya. Photo: Nicolas Boudier.

ON STAGE

Shantala Shivalingappa, Namsya [FRANCE/INDIA, DANCE]
Born in India, but educated in Paris, dancer and choreographer Shantala Shivalingappa successfully combines East and West in her movement. Namasya is a program of four solo dances, including collaborations with renowned choreographers Pina Bausch and Ushio Amagatsu; as well as a piece by Savitry Nair and one by Shivalingappa herself.

Sarah Dougher, Fin de Siècle [PORTLAND, MUSIC/POETRY]
A staging of three experimental poem-plays by Leslie Scalapino, using video projections, voice and a five part instrumental ensemble. Spanning the distance between the art song and the pop song, Dougher’s score transliterates Scalapino’s challenging language and conceptual framework through a melodic and complexly textured score, foregrounding the poet’s fundamental humanism.

James Benning, Ruhr. Film still courtesy of the artist.

ON SCREEN

James Benning, Ruhr [LOS ANGELES, FILM]
One of the most fascinating figures in American independent cinema, Benning makes his eagerly awaited entrance into HD with the absolutely stunning film on Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley. A series of masterfully-composed, long-take shots brings the audience to an understanding of the cinematic sublime.

Disorientalism, Two by Two. Photo: Monica Ruzansky.

ON SIGHT

Occupation/Preoccupation, [PORTLAND]
The United States has over 700 military bases on foreign soil in sovereign countries where we have no declaration of war. This project unites musicians, researchers and music-lovers to gather covers by American musicians of songs that originate from each of these places, in a symbolic re-occupation.

Blue Sky Presents Laura Poitras: It’s All A Blur [NEW YORK]
Drawing upon images and sounds recorded in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 , O’Say Can You See evokes the experience of disorientation and loss that continues to haunt the nation. Footage from ground zero is combined with looped and sampled audio from the Yankees’ come-from-behind victory at Game 4 of the 2008 World Series.

PNCA Presents Disorientalism: Ready Mix [ARIZONA/NEW YORK]
The duo’s preoccupation with junk culture translates into junk food, as Ready Mix stirs up the story of Aunt Jemima’s century-long makeover from “slave mammy” to “modern working mother.”

PNCA Presents It’s All A Blur [CALIFORNIA]
It’s All A Blur focuses on three West Coast masters—Guillermo Gómez Peña, Dale Hoyt and Tony Labat—who have pioneered an intellectual, multifaceted approach to identity and art as means for social justice in the post- Bush era.

Michael Reinsch, Gallery Walk. Photo: Nathanael Thayer Moss.

OUTSIDE

Tim DuRoche & Ed Purver, The Hidden Life of Bridges [PORTLAND/NEW YORK]
The artists turn the Hawthorne Bridge into a radio and the Morrison Bridge into a cinema during this large-scale video projection and sound composition

David Eckard, ©ardiff [PORTLAND]
Channeling snake-oil hucksters and midway barkers, Eckard will take to his public stage to ruminate on hoaxes and fabrications.

Tesar Freeman, Gadsden [PITTSBURGH]
A modern day re-enactment of the American rattlesnake icon will fly from the flagpole of Washington High School, interrogating the power of symbols, and the ways in which they are re/mis-appropriated.

Michel Groisman [BRAZIL]
Through a series of simple games and exercises, Groisman will lead audiences in participatory performances that examine the connections between us. He will also present his work, Transference, a contortionist performance in which he lights and snuffs out a series of candles attached to his body.

Michael Reinsch, Gallery Walk [PORTLAND]
Donning a gallery costume, Reinsch will walk the streets of Portland accompanied by a Gallery Attendant and spouting of spoken word poetry constructed from the manifestos and artist statements that galleries produce.

Miwa Matreyek, Myth & Infrastructure. Photo: Scott Groller.

THE WORKS

Vockah Redu [NEW ORLEANS, BOUNCE MUSIC]
Vockah Redu and the Cru animate the stage with their dynamic revival of dance, music and art from the street corner to the club. More than your typical hip-hop act, this theatrical performance sets the stage for a sweaty, hands-down, booty-up good time.

Beyondadoubt [PORTLAND, RnB, BOUNCE, SOUL, DJ]
Pulling from her Southern roots, Beyondadoubt has brought originality to nightlife for over a decade, whether in the Northwest or the deep South. DJing since ‘98, Beyondadoubt creates rhythms from her sprawling collection of vintage soul records to compliment her raw, Dirty South, New Orleans Bounce and 90’s rave sounds.

Fast Weapons presents Love is Blind, Lingerie is Braille [PORTLAND +, MUSIC, EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE]
A night of music and mayhem curated by Nathan Howdeshell and his Fast Weapons music label. Featuring Beth Ditto, performing her new solo work with Beyondadoubt, garage rock from Ghost Mom, visual and auditory bombast by Dangerous Boys Club, a one-act play by Harry K, and the release of Nudity in Groups‘ newest broadside in the high school bathrooms.

Ten Tiny Dances 25 [GLOBAL, DANCE]
Celebrate the 25th performance by Ten Tiny Dances with a lineup that draws together five “greatest hit” tiny dances, and five new works by TBA Festival artists.

Shana Moulton & Nick Hallett, Whispering Pines 10 [NEW YORK, DIGITAL OPERA]
A live-performed, computer-animated opera, featuring the hypochondriac agoraphobe Cynthia, as she navigates her daily life and her fantasy illusions.

Experimental 1/2 Hour [PORTLAND, CABLE ACCESS, EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE, VIDEO]
The biweekly genre-bending cable access program presents live performances by Flaenge God, Barbara, Princess Dies, and Lucky Dragons, along with a suite of video projects. Hosted by Beau von Hinklywinkle.

Cinema Project Presents Alex MacKenzie: the wooden lightbox [VANCOUVER, BC, FILM]
Using a handbuilt wooden projector, Alex MacKenzie attempts to re-instill some of the early magic of the moving picture in this intimately-scaled film.

Miwa Matreyek, Myth & Infrastructure [LOS ANGELES, LIVE PERFORMANCE/ANIMATION]
Digital animator Miwa Matreyek steps into her projection and navigates the projected worlds of her own creation, in the process making a live-performed film that layers body, space, and animation.

NEW MUSICS [PORTLAND/SAN FRANCISCO, EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC]
Megan Holmes and Claudia Meza present a night of new music experimentation, featuring Meza’s wordless sound and video opera, Liz Harris’ (Grouper) tape collage performance with Flash Choir, and new compositions by Tashi Wada.

Catch [NEW YORK/PORTLAND, DANCE/PERFORMANCE]
Like New York’s own take on THE WORKS, Catch is a no-holds-barred performance series curated by Jeff Larson, Andrew Dinwiddie and Caleb Hammons. This special TBA edition will present dance and performance in a club setting by Luciana Achugar and Karinne Keithly, among others.

Big Terrific [BROOKLYN, COMEDY]
Big Terrific is a weekly comedy show in Brooklyn hosted by Gabe Liedman, Jenny Slate and Max Silvestri. Show up at Big Terrific to hear personal stories from people who love to tell them, see short films by up-and-coming directors and laugh along to stand-up curated carefully by Gabe, Jenny and Max.

Dance Truck [ATLANTA, DANCE]
A dance series programmed in the backs of pick ups and the bays of panel trucks. Revelers will be treated to intermittent dance performances by local and visiting artists, empty truck beds for makeshift dance floors, and drink specials on Southern treats like mint juleps and boiled peanuts.

THERE’S NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT.
This September, PICA’s ninth-annual Time-Based Art Festival takes over Portland, Oregon, for an all-hours, city-wide happening of contemporary performance and visual art. The Festival gathers artists for morning workshops, expands the conversation with afternoon talks and salons, fills pop-up galleries with visual installations, and takes the stage until late in the night with experimental, genre-defying, live performances.

READ ON FOR THE FIRST ARTISTS OF THIS YEAR’S TBA FESTIVAL.

MORE DETAILS TO COME AT PICA.ORG.

Rude Mechs, The Method Gun, from Humana Festival of New American Plays,
2010, Actors Theatre of Louisville. Photo: Kathi Kacinski.

TBA ON STAGE presents performances by artists colliding the genres of dance, music, theatre, new media, and film to propel new ideas and new forms. ON STAGE is curated by TBA Festival Artistic Director Cathy Edwards, in collaboration with Erin Boberg Doughton, Performing Arts Program Director for PICA. In curating this year’s program, Edwards has said that she was interested in exploring the, “continuums of community to cult, of mentor to demagogue, and of art to propaganda.”

Kyle Abraham, The Radio Show [NEW YORK, DANCE]
Hailed as “the best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama” by Out Magazine, Abraham’s choreography investigates the effects of the abrupt discontinuation of a community radio station and the impact of Alzheimer’s on a family. Abraham’s score mixes recordings of classic soul and hip-hop with contemporary classical compositions by Ryoji Ikeda and Alva Noto.

Kyle Abraham, Live! The Realest MC (in-development) [NEW YORK, DANCE]
Abraham’s newest solo performance spins off from the duality of Pinocchio’s plight to be a “real boy,” investigating gender roles in the black community and societal perspectives of the black man through hip hop and celebrity culture.

Andrew Dinwiddie, Get Mad at Sin ! [NEW YORK, THEATRE]
A one-man performance reanimating an out-of-print vinyl record of a sermon by the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, recorded live in 1971. Dinwiddie achieves perfect audio fidelity to the original record while reincarnating Swaggart’s carpet-pacing, pulpit-pounding performance.

Mike Daisey, All the Hours in the Day [NEW YORK, THEATRE, ONE-DAY ONLY]
For three years Daisey has been working on an insane project: a live twenty–four hour monologue, on the scale of War and Peace. Dreamed of as an epic story that shatters the framework of the theater, All the Hours in the Day will weave together massive narrative threads into an electric story about our humanity in this age…if all goes well.

Taylor Mac, Comparison is Violence: The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook [NEW YORK, CABARET THEATRE]
Combining dramatic flair, searing satire, poignant honesty, and—of course—plenty of glitter, Mac arrives in a flourish of sequins with his newest show, in which he dissects the darker side of comparison while singing Tiny Tim songs and selections from David Bowie’s glam-rock classic, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust.

Offsite Dance Project [JAPAN, DANCE, NEW COMMISSION]
For this site-specific project, Offsite Dance returns to Portland and embeds three dynamic Japanese choreographers in the Central Eastside Industrial District, under bridges, off of loading docks, and in the neighborhood’s rapidly developing buildings. Featuring Yoko Higashino with Wayne Horovitz, Yukio Suzuki, and Ho Ho-Do.

Rachid Ouramdane, World Fair [FRANCE, EXPERIMENTAL DANCE]
A French choreographer of Algerian descent, Ouramdane’s latest solo asks, “What can authorities expect from a work of art? What are the marks left by political history on the body?” World Fair blends movement and video to present the body as a bank able to record, erase, or register different ingredients of modern reality and national identity.

Rude Mechs, The Method Gun [AUSTIN, TX, THEATRE]
The Method Gun explores the life and techniques of Stella Burden, the actor-training guru of the 60s and 70s, and creator of “The Approach” (often referred to as “the most dangerous acting technique in the world”). A play about the ecstasy and excesses of performing, the dangers of public intimacy, and the incompatibility of truth on stage and sanity in real life.

Dean & Britta, 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests [NEW YORK, MUSIC, FILM]
Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol shot nearly 500 Screen Tests—beautiful and revealing 16mm film portraits of hundreds of different individuals, from the famous to the anonymous. Songwriters Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, formerly of the band Luna, will perform a live score of original compositions and covers for 13 of the films.

tEEth, Home Made [PORTLAND, EXPERIMENTAL DANCE]
Home Made mounts a daring exploration of the awkwardness of human beauty and the struggles of intimate negotiation. Choreographed by Angelle Hebert and scored by Phillip Kraft, Home Made explores the fine balance between tenderness and hostility, where playfulness becomes manipulation and exploration shades into aggression.

zoe | juniper, A Crack in Everything [SEATTLE, DANCE, COMMISSION]
Through 3-D animation projections, atmospheric installations and lighting, and Scofield’s compelling choreography, the piece meditates on the moments that divide people’s lives into linear experiences of time. Scofield creates a unique and intense contemporary dance language from a range of movement styles, performed by an ensemble of top-notch dancers.

Jesse Sugarmann, Red Storm Rising. Courtesy of the artist.

TBA ON SIGHT is a collection of installations, exhibitions, projections, and gatherings by visual artists, curated and organized by Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Curator for PICA.

Evidence of Bricks: Work about the building up, but mostly tearing down, of institutions, societies, structures and ideas.

Claire Fontaine [FRANCE]
Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective, founded in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a “readymade artist” and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people’s work. Working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text, her practice can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today.

Kate Gilmore [NEW YORK]
In Kate Gilmore’s art, she devises strenuous, physical propositions without clear, purposeful outcomes. Whether kicking and climbing out of a drywall column, stacking shelves with paint-filled pots, or maintaining her balance atop a pile of marble being sledge-hammered from beneath her, Gilmore’s actions assert a dogged persistence, dark humor, and a stark sense of risk.

Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Don’t Worry We’ll Fix It [PORTLAND]
The Fix It office will both produce the publication September, a daily art historical broadside specially produced for TBA:11, and be an active space where the artists will work onsite to correct, revise and compile errata from previous editions of the paper.

Cristina Lucas, Europleasure International LTD. TOUCH AND GO [SPAIN]
Incorporating irony and humor into her work, Cristina Lucas focuses on the irrationality of human actions and ethics within contemporary aesthetics. Lucas’ video makes a sly commentary on the diaspora of Western factories to the Third World, through an encounter with one such British company, Europleasure International LTD.

Ohad Meromi, Rehearsal Sculpture, Act II: Consumption [NEW YORK]
Inspired by the pragmatic idealism of the Kibbutz and Russian avant-garde theatre, Meromi creates an architecture for action, in which visitors are invited to form their own troupe to interpret and perform scenes from his Stage Exercises for Smokers and Non-Smokers.

Patrick Rock, Oscar’s Delirium Tremens [PORTLAND]
A hot pink, elephant-shaped, forced-air-inflated, viewer-interactive jump-room of the monumental scale usually reserved for historical statues and public art. Oscar’s Delirium Tremens disrupts our balance, implicating everyone in its experiential abandon and the woozy sense that the world continues spinning out of control, even after stepping off the ride.

Halsey Rodman, Towards the Possibility of Existing in Three Places at Once [NEW YORK]
A sculptor and painter, Rodman’s installations use different forms of near-identical objects, creating a sense that despite their concrete physicality, something about them remains unresolved and unfixed. While the elements exist simultaneously in space, their differences expose the passage of time in their creation and in the audience’s regard.

Jesse Sugarmann, Lido (The Pride is Back) [SPRINGFIELD, OR]
Sugarmann’s automotive performances are elegant pile-ups. His vehicular actions engage the car accident as an inadvertent monument, a spectacle of trauma, and a point of social exchange. Positioning three Chrysler minivans atop 42 inflatable airbeds, Sugarmann creates a slow-motion wreck.

Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Rite of Spring [ROMANIA/SWITZERLAND]
Living in Bucharest, Romania, Vatamanu & Tudor examine the sea change in social and economic systems following the decline of Communism in Eastern Europe. In Rite of Spring, as children set drifts of poplar fluff aflame in the street gutters, the artists create a symbol of “Lost Boys” innocence in the face of Capitalism’s failed promise.

Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries [SOUTH KOREA]
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES was founded in Seoul by Young-hae Chang, C.E.O., and Marc Voge, C.I.O. Their quick-cut, text-based flash animations pair catchy, percussive scores with original narratives that tell sharp, captivating, and politically-charged stories of modern urban life and society on the web.

Whoop Dee Doo [KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI]
Whoop Dee Doo is a kid-friendly faux public access television show featuring performances and live audience participation. With skits, contests, musicians, and local talent, the program is inspired by television shows such as The Carol Burnett Show, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Mr. Wizard, The Gong Show, American Bandstand, Soul Train, Double Dare, and You Can’t Do that on Television.

MORE ARTISTS TO BE ANNOUNCED, INCLUDING ADDITIONAL ON STAGE PERFORMERS, THE PROJECTS OF THE OUTSIDE PUBLIC HAPPENING PROGRAM, THE WORKS LATE NIGHT STAGE, AND TBA INSTITUTE WORKSHOPS, SALONS, AND LECTURES.

MORE DETAILS TO COME AT PICA.ORG.

This exhibit is a combination of Anissa Mack’s own sculptures, and works by other artists that Mack deemed to have a similar “theme” – if one can call a mind-melting combination of space, time, memory, infinity and reality-question-mark a theme. With a bit of guidance, which I will attempt to impart here, you (the sentient you) will be forced to the edge of your intellect as you attempt to answer the glaring questions of the universe. At the same time, you may suddenly treasure your memory, fearing its loss and attempting to make a quick inventory of what you have managed to retain that binds you to this world. Dear reader, I personally prefer not to frequent the freaky territory of theoretical physics and the bizarre frailty of perceived reality. Countless visceral distractions await in illuminated carriages to cart us away from that scary place. But when a thoughtful artist/genius gets Kubrick on you and makes you get in your shaky little lunar module with its thin, awkward legs, it’s thrilling.
I had the honor and sheer pleasure of discussing Anissa Mack’s work with her in person today at The Lumber Room. She explained that she approaches her works from a personal, often home-related aspect (ironic, considering their heady effects). She will base a work on something she remembers from her own past, and will bring that memory to life again in a new object that imitates the initial one. She often works at home, and therefore in the scale of objects in the home, that surround people in typical life. Plainly obvious is her immense skill in many types of craft (trained in some and learned in many more through books). The mere execution of her work is enough to delight. As an artist does, Mack adds her own interpretation of the craft, and other formatting elements that transform the work into a communicative piece of art. Two of her four pieces in “My Heart Wants More” are great examples of this.
One piece, entitled, “Broken Star (Variaton),” is an absolutely gorgeous quilt of black fabric with yellow thread. The highly elaborate symmetrical topstitching in a radial star and wreath pattern is stunning. Now, picture this – the quilt is a large trapezoid, so the bottom edge is a regular queen size, but the top is about half that. The entire pattern is adjusted to fit this trapezoidal shape. That alone is amazing, and the optical illusion of it hanging on the wall in this shape makes it appear in 3-D perspective: long, and stretched into space through the wall, very much like the “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” beloved text crawl in Star Wars. It is just genius; please go see it.
Another sculpture, also entitled “My Heart Wants More,” is a water-laser-cut, powder-coated aluminum sculpture, somewhat like a wall hanging, in the detailed form of a clipper ship in full sail, seated on a white laundry basket. Ms. Mack indulged me in an explanation of this one, and it was a convoluted trip in time, nostalgia and cycles of memory. For one thing, the laundry basked reminds her of her mother folding laundry in the living room. Additionally, the clipper ship is based on a very strange cross-stitch piece her mother had in her bedroom, which had an accompanying “inspirational” quote that made hilariously little sense (Mack’s own inverted color version is shown here: http://www.anissamack.com/29.10). The way the ship and the basket harmonize, with light passing through the detailed cutouts of both, is a manifestation of memories of her mother and her objects. And Mack has situated the piece in front of a huge window in the Lumber Room, so when you regard it, you’re inevitably going to look out the picture window at the sky beyond, like you would if you were either watching clipper ships go by (in some imagined past), or folding laundry in your living room. The layers of meaning swirl and connect, and are at once ultra random but loaded with potent memories and feelings that both connect and blur past and present.
The other pieces Mack has included in this exhibit seamlessly augment Mack’s exploration of time, perspective and our perception of both. (These works are courtesy of the Lumber Room.) Of particular note is an unbelievable painting (from about 1965) of little numbers, once black but now in shades of grey and white, that begins with number 3583916. On an earlier canvas (around 1959), Polish painter Roman Opalka began with number 1. The project as a whole is called “1 – ∞.” Paired with the painting is a soundtrack of the artist counting out loud. Over the years, he’s also taken photos of his own face as he worked on these number paintings, so you see him age… it’s almost insane, and more than the sum of its parts. You’re also welcome to leaf through the beautiful fabric book of replicas of pieces of recently late artist Louise Bourgeois’ own wardrobe, constructed by her (in 2004) and entitled, “Ode À L’Oubli,” meaning “Ode to Forgetting.”
For many of these works, Anissa Mack suggests considering the plane of the piece vs. the implied plane of the subject, and see where the latter takes you – down the rabbit hole and into spatial oddyseys, with memories as your tether. Stop by the beautiful Lumber Room gallery to see these brilliant works!
For the TBA catalog description of this exhibit, see http://www.pica.org/tba/tba10/detail.aspx?eventid=595.
See you out there!
Reporting from Portland,
Sara Regan, TBA Press
Many thanks to Anissa Mack and Sarah Miller Meigs at The Lumber Room for generously sharing their time and tales today.