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.

Toyoda introduced NAZUNA by saying (paraphrased) “you see the image on the screen, but you walk up to touch it, and it isn’t there; there is nothing there, only a moment that has already passed.” How wonderful for his already passed moments to come “to life” again in the performance of advancing picture after picture.
NAZUNA begins with images in the artist’s backyard garden. We see the greenery at its peak, threatening to overtake the hard walls that contain it. The next image is the twin towers, smoke rising from their just-hit sides. We are on the other side of the river and the distance between the viewer and the buildings gives a strange sort of perspective, one complicated by the knowing, now in 2009 eight years later, the fall-out from that day. But then we are in the garden again, and so it goes, intercutting from towers (smoke building) to garden (steady and green) to flowers piled up on the sidewalk, missing posters, notes of support, George W. Bush on the TV screen. There is the bumblebee, perched inside the flower. An intertitle: Next morning, the bumblebee was dead in the flower. The next slide is of the flower and dead bee; it looks so similar — unmoving bee on yellow flower — but now I am thinking about why this bee is dead: (a) it just happened to die, (b) it has some mystical connection to the towers falling, (c) it has a practical connection to the towers falling, maybe there are too many particulates in the air and all the bees in Brooklyn died that day.
What is nazuna? A common flowering plant (capsella bursa-pastoris), in English known as shepherd’s-purse, and an easy flower to overlook. Sitting under an 800 year-old willow tree, Toyoda recall’s Basho’s poem:
When closely inspected,
The nazuna is flowering
By the hedge.
It is this first inspection, the writing of this poem, that gives the nazuna a chance for second inspection, perhaps by the reader of the poem. It is Toyoda’s taking photographs (first inspection) and sharing them in a live presentation that gives us the time and place for our own close inspection.
This is the slow beauty of Toyoda’s work, the meditative journey you ride as an observer of the images and of your own thoughts and imposed narrative on the images. It is not a story, although there are stories deftly revealed through photos and intertitles, it is about the continuation of everything and the connections we choose to make or choose to ignore. The towers fall; the bee dies; the garden continues to grow. Toyoda photographs the head monk sitting in meditation; two weeks later he dies in a bulldozer accident during a snow storm. We see Toyoda’s parents at the table together, meal after happy meal. The food changes, the sweaters they wear change, and then Toyoda’s mother is dead and his father is sitting alone at the table: it goes on.
I was happy to watch this piece outside. Feeling the hush come over a crowd outside is something entirely different than the gallery quiet of a screening room. As the rain came and went, the sky grew ever darker and the group of silent observers journeyed from New York to Japan against the backdrop of our own city and our own imaginations.