Dream and Re-Dream: Time-Based Art Festival ‘07 Mark Russell, Artistic Director of the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art

Port­land Insti­tute for Con­tem­po­rary Art’s 2007 Time-Based Art Fes­ti­val (TBA:07) is going to be full of sur­prises. It will be an occur­rence with many events that will cer­tainly make a vis­i­tor see things in a new way. There are many themes threaded through the fes­ti­val this year, and some that will prob­a­bly sur­prise even the orga­niz­ers, once we get to see them all together.
How­ever, if there is any one theme emerg­ing at the moment it is this: the Amer­i­can voice. We are com­ing out of a time when the voices of rea­son in our coun­try were, effec­tively, silenced, but now I think we are find­ing our voice again and are express­ing our dreams for a bet­ter future. We have work to do here and it is impor­tant that we lis­ten to each other. We need to hear what our own artists are say­ing. I think we need to re-dream Amer­ica at this time—we need to find out where we left the path and how to get back on it.

To that end, TBA:07 works to deepen the dia­logue that we have begun. Rinde Eck­ert, an inter­na­tion­ally renown vocal­ist and com­poser, for instance, is prepar­ing a spe­cial com­po­si­tion to be played by a wide col­lec­tion of choirs from all over Port­land in the cen­ter of downtown’s Pio­neer Square, a kick off to the forth­com­ing sur­prises with a joy­ful noise.
One cen­tral event of TBA:07 is the West Coast pre­miere of Ele­va­tor Repair Service’s Gatz—a com­plete, word-for-word ver­sion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. ERS is one of the fore­most new the­atre com­pa­nies work­ing today. Of course, it does take some time to read/enact the whole of The Great Gatsby—about seven hours with a din­ner break, in fact—but this ver­sion of the Great Gatsby is revealed in such a rich and con­tem­po­rary man­ner that is much more pow­er­ful than any of the pre­vi­ous Hol­ly­wood or Broad­way attempts at por­tray­ing this great Amer­i­can novel. Fitzgerald’s voice, chan­neled through ERS, should remind us of who we are, the good and bad run­ning in the veins of this country—our lost Amer­i­can dream.

We are also proud to host a major dance con­cert by one of today’s most impor­tant chore­o­g­ra­phers: Donna Uchizono. She has been mak­ing work for many years now, has vis­ited PICA sev­eral times in the past and has reached a matu­rity in and a mas­tery of her craft that sets her apart as one of this generation’s most adven­tur­ous dance mak­ers. To TBA:07, she will bring a piece that she made with her com­pany as well as another piece com­mis­sioned by the Barysh­nikov Dance Foun­da­tion fea­tur­ing Mikhail Barysh­nikov as one of the com­pany performers.

One of the states­men of hip hop’s future aes­thet­ics and a spo­ken word/dance artist com­ing from San Fran­cisco, Marc Bamuthi Joseph will also per­form at TBA:07 in The Breaks, his new work-in-progress about the early days of hip hop and how it affected him.

Tay­lor Mac, a hit at last year’s late night cabaret/theatre/bar/hangout, returns to do his show, THE WORKS, again, but this time in a dif­fer­ent setting—one where you can hear and see him with­out hav­ing to stand on a chair. His love song, which tells of the for­bid­den lust between Sad­dam Hus­sein and Lynn Cheney, is a trea­sure.
Also return­ing is the Nature The­ater of Okla­homa. Their Poet­ics: A Bal­let Brut was one of TBA:06’s sur­prises, and this year they are bring­ing us some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. While last year’s per­for­mance took 63 min­utes and 48 sec­onds, this year’s per­for­mance, enti­tled No Dice, involves a rein­ven­tion of din­ner the­ater and goes for a lit­tle over four hours.  There is a break dur­ing the per­for­mance, of course, and com­ple­men­tary ham and cheese or peanut but­ter sand­wiches will be pro­vided for your theatre-going pleasure.

Mean­while too, our inter­na­tional guests will be bring­ing some­thing to this dis­cus­sion. Kassy’s from Hol­land will arrive with their per­for­mance, Kom­mer, which means “grief” in Dutch. Kom­mer is an inves­ti­ga­tion that is out­ra­geous, humor­ous and ulti­mately poignant, but also half per­for­mance and half film. It exposes the feel­ings that our whole soci­ety has been deal­ing with for the past six years. We have also invited a two-woman play from Mex­ico enti­tled “Chi­cas of the 3.5 Flop­pies” and a per­for­mance piece from Bel­gium by Char­lotte Van­den Endye, among oth­ers.
Port­land artists will be fea­tured as well this year: Hand2Mouth The­ater, Zoe Scofield and Andrew Dick­son are all pacific north­west­ern artists whose work speaks to the national and inter­na­tional plat­form that TBA gives voice to.
Not to be for­got­ten is Mam­malian Div­ing Reflex’s Hair­cuts by Chil­dren. A whim­si­cal per­for­mance that is quite lit­er­ally chil­dren cut­ting your hair, Hair­cuts by Chil­dren invites the con­sid­er­a­tion of chil­dren as cre­ative and com­pe­tent indi­vid­u­als with whom aes­thetic choices can be trusted. It’s a leap of faith with scissors.

Our visual art cura­tor, Kris­tan Kennedy, has assem­bled the TBA:07 Visual Art Pro­gram, with projects that will be in con­ver­sa­tion with our per­for­mance offer­ings and, often, that will pleas­antly blur the lines between the two gen­res. The work addresses the audi­ence directly, and plays with the ver­nac­u­lar of per­for­mance, although most works are sta­tic or media instal­la­tions. These artists poke holes in our un-realities, play­ing with sys­tems of infor­ma­tion and modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion usu­ally employed on the stage or the big screen. They are inter­ested in where our col­lec­tive mem­ory and indi­vid­ual mem­ory col­lide; they ref­er­ence film, lit­er­a­ture, music and tele­vi­sion, and turn the gallery into a place of social engage­ment.  They are work­ing with notions of the fan­tas­tic and the impos­si­ble. They are using props, sweep­ing cin­e­matic ges­tures, act­ing, the­atrics, com­edy and drama. Works reveal the lim­i­ta­tions of their own media; they leave clues or hints that illu­sion or trick­ery is employed and, most of all, count on the audi­ence to sus­pend their judg­ment and disbelief.

PICA artists-in-residence Larry Bam­berg and Arnold Kemp will develop work specif­i­cally for TBA:07—each will record of a hal­lu­ci­na­tory vision. Sculp­tors Marko Lulic and Peter Krei­der will show their sculp­tural work, side by side. Sarah Greenberger-Rafferty will present a sim­ple instal­la­tion of a stool, a stage and a loop­ing sound­track; it will be unclear whether the per­for­mance is about to begin or if only its ghost remains. Guido Van Der Werve will present his series of num­bered films, each a sweep­ing cin­e­matic ges­ture. Sin­cerely John Head will present “Stu­dio Ses­sions” as an exer­cise in obses­sive fan­dom as they re-record their favorite album, Foghat Live.

TBA:07 is going to be about the ques­tions that we will all be ask­ing our­selves and, as we head into a marathon year of dis­cus­sion that will end up with a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, now is the time to think about what our new Amer­i­can dream is—as a super­power with dif­fer­ent respon­si­bil­i­ties, what is our iden­tity as Amer­i­cans now? As always, artists pose the dif­fi­cult ques­tions in ways we could never have imag­ined. Port­land, as a city, as a com­mu­nity and as a grand venue, embraces this free exchange of ideas so that they can flour­ish and become part of the larger civic dia­logue. I’ve always looked to artists to sur­prise me and to make me think in dif­fer­ent ways. I like to exam­ine my world anew. And, there is no bet­ter time for audi­ences to come, look and listen.