Artists Archive
Bri Pruett is a stand-up comic and improviser from Portland, Oregon. Willamette Week named her one of the Funniest 5 Comedians in Portland. She’s appeared at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, the All Jane No Dick comedy festival, the Seattle International Comedy Competition, San Francisco Sketch Fest, and Bumbershoot. She makes regular appearances at Helium Comedy Club, Curious Comedy Theater, and other Portland showcases.
Learn moreBritt Hatzius works in film, video, sound, and performance, exploring ideas around language, interpretation, and the potential for discrepancies, ruptures, and (mis/)communication. Her work has been shown internationally at galleries, institutions, and performance and media arts festivals. Recent collaborations include the cinematic installation Micro Events (2012) with Tom Kok, the interactive performance This Is Not My Voice Speaking (2013) with Ant Hampton, and a sitespecific installation As Never Before, As Never Again (2014) with Ant Hampton.
Learn moreBrock Monroe is an artist and designer, with a focus on the connection between live cinema and music. As one of the lead artists in the Joshua Light Show, Brock has collaborated with founder Joshua White on performances at Tanglewood, Mutek Mexico, Transmediale/CTM Festival (Berlin), Przemiany Festival (Warsaw), Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, New World Symphony for Performa/Art Basel Miami Beach, and the opening of Southampton's Parrish Museum, among others, with musicians ranging from Manuel Göttsching, MGMT, and Silver Apples, to The Boston Pops, Lou Reed, Terry Riley, and Oneohtrix Point Never. His collaboration with Seth Kirby, creating light art to accompany William Basinski's Vivian & Ondine has been presented at ISSUE Project Room and The Kitchen as part of Carnegie Hall's American Mavericks festival. In 2009, he collaborated with Nick Hallett on Voice + Light Systems, a four-part performance series at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Monroe and Hallett have also presented their A/V lecture opera, "Xenia," at LMAK Projects and for Art On Air/Calder Foundation, on the occasion of the 2011 Armory Show. At Mighty Robot, an underground music venue which existed in Williamsburg during the early 2000s, helping to launch the careers of bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, and Oneida, Brock served as a member of its A/V Squad, creating projections for literally hundreds of independent rock bands.
Learn moreCondon’s work is notable for its influence on the repurposing of existing computer and live games to create sculpture, performance, and software installations. Examples include Youth of the Apocalypse, a series of self-playing game modifications based on Late Medieval Northern European religious paintings, and the recent Twentyfivefold Manifestation, a ritualistic performative event with 80 players from the live action role-playing subculture held at the Sonsbeek 2008 International Public Sculpture Exhibition.
Condon was born in Mexico and received his MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2002. He attended residencies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2004 and Skowhegan 2001. Past exhibitions include 2004 Whitney Biennial, Pace Wildenstein Gallery and New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Santa Monica Museum of Art and Machine Project in California; the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh; Kunst-werke in Berlin; and the Stedelijk Museum Post CS in the Netherlands.
Learn moreDr. Brook Colley (Wasco, Warm Springs, Eastern Cherokee; Enrolled: Eastern Band of Cherokee) is an associate professor and chair of the Native American Studies program at Southern Oregon University. Colley’s research is focused on federal Indian law and policy, Oregon Tribes, intertribal relations and conflict, and community health and healing. Her book Power in the Telling: Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, and Intertribal Relations in the Casino Era was published in 2019 by the University of Washington Press and it was a finalist for the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction. In 2014, she received her PhD in Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis, and is currently working on an intertribal Indigenous-led collaboration to enhance first food access and first food production in Southern Oregon. She lives in Jackson County with her daughter and two pups named Honey and Leonard Cohen.
Learn moreBruce Conkle is an American installation artist based in Portland, Oregon. He is noted for his ecological and dystopian fantasy themes. His work is in the collection of the Portland Art Museum and has shown at Nylistasafnio The Living Art Museum in Iceland and A Gentil Carioca in Brazil.
Learn moreIn Portland's hallowed history of rock, Bugskull is a shadowy influence. Born in 1991 as the bedroom four-track project of Sean Byrne, by the mid-90s the band had evolved into a three-piece rock ensemble—Byrne on guitar and vocals, Brendan Bell on bass, and James Yu on drums—weaving a spacy spell for the lucky attendees of their live shows, and releasing a handful of utterly unique albums incorporating elements of electronic music, raga, and alternately plaintive and poppy vocal work. Called Portland's "sleeping giants" by Snipehunt magazine, the band reforms for an evening of soulful inner space travel. Be there when the giants awaken.
After landing its first album-length cassette Subversives in the Midst (Shrimper, 1992), Bugskull produced a slew of self-released cassettes and then a 10-inch self-titled EP (Quixotic, 1993). The band continued to redefine lo-fi experimentalism with Phantasies and Senseitions (Road Cone, 1994), Crock: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Pop Secret, 1995), and Snakland (Scratch, 1995). Byrne continued producing work after the band's dissolution in 1996, including Distracted Snowflake Volume One (Pop Secret, 1997), Distracted Snowflake Volume Two (Scratch, 1997), and Bugskull vs. The Big White Cloud (Scratch, 2002). Communication (Digitalis Recordings) will be released Fall 2009.
Learn moreburke jam is an artist, composer, curator and educator. His recent work in performance, installation and recorded media explores sound as intervention–questioning and subverting perceptual coherence and relationships with physical place. His research engages the intersection of field recording, composition, acoustic ecology and the Anthropocene. Following the completion of his MFA in 2013 at the University of Montana, Jam received a Fulbright Grant to Iceland researching environmental sound and methods of listening. Jam performs and exhibits internationally, and works as the Director of Digital Facilities and Instructor of Music and Art in the College of the Arts at Portland State University.
Learn moreCandace Kita is an enthusiastic arts and cultural worker committed to connecting people of color with creative opportunities. Born in Chicago to Japanese American and Swedish American parents, she has been an artist and arts enthusiast for as long as she can remember. Her multifaceted artistic practice has spanned illustration, sculpture, graphic design, typography, book arts, writing, and performance.
Weaving her creative background with her experiences in social justice organizing and nonprofit administration, Candace currently manages cultural work and strategy at the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO). Previously, she co-founded grassroots collective Arts Workers for Equity, worked in development, marketing, and programs for the Portland Art Museum and Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre, and served as Visual Art Curator for Asian American art and community space Tuesday Night Project. She has participated in multiple initiatives to empower arts professionals of color including the Western States Arts Federation’s Emerging Leaders of Color Fellowship and the Getty Multicultural Internship Program. Candace received her BA in Studio Art from Scripps College and was recently featured as one of Scripps College Magazine’s “30 Alumnæ Under 30.”
In her spare time, Candace co-manages a blog called Asians Doing Everything and reads voraciously. She is a lover of words, cities, and onigiri.
Learn moreCannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico-based, multi-disciplinary artist. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. Using social collaboration, and in response to timely and site-specific issues, Luger produces multi-pronged projects that take many forms. Through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, and cut-paper, Luger interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about twenty-first century Indigeneity. This work provokes diverse publics to engage with Indigenous peoples and values apart from the lens of colonial social structuring, and oftentimes presents a call to action to protect land from capitalist exploits.
cannupahanska.com
@cannupahanska
Learn moreCarlos Motta | Photo by Cory Rice
Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge dominant and normative discourses through visibility and self-representation. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.
Motta's work was the subject of the survey exhibitions Carlos Motta: Formas de libertad at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM), Colombia (2017) that traveled to Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2018); and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015). His solo exhibitions at international museums include, The Crossing (2017), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Histories for the Future (2016), Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; Réquiem (2016), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano the Buenos Aires (MALBA) (2016); Patriots, Citizens, Lovers (2015), PinchukArtCentre, Kiev; Gender Talents (2013), Tate Modern, London; La forma de la libertad (2013), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico; We Who Feel Differently (2012), New Museum, New York; Brief History (2009), MoMA/PS1, New York; and The Good Life (2008), Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia; among others.
In 2020, Motta will participate in the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and the Yerevan Biennial, and he will have solo exhibitions at Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery—University of California Santa Cruz, and at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA).
Carlos Motta’s first 20-year career monograph, Carlos Motta: History’s Back Rooms was published by SKIRA in June 2020. He won the Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise (2017); the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008).
Motta received grants from Art Matters (2008), NYSCA (2010), Creative Capital, and the Kindle Project (2012).He was appointed tenure-track Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt Institute’s Fine Arts Department in 2019.
Learn moreCatherine Ming T'ien Duffly is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department at Reed College where she teaches courses on race and identity in American theatre, performance studies, and community-based performance, in addition to courses in acting and directing. Kate’s written work has appeared Theatre Journal and Theatre Annual. She is currently researching the use of food in socially engaged performance practices.
Learn moreC Davida Ingram is an award-winning artist who is passionate about beauty and social justice. Her primary subjects are race, gender, and social relationships. Ingram’s impulse is to imagine tactics to get free—not further prescribing Otherness. With this in mind, she uses unorthodox mediums—Craigslist ads, hypnosis, drones, cell phone videos among other things to reshape what is possible in her own identification with being a black queer woman. Her art has been shown at the Frye Art Museum, Northwest African American Museum, Evergreen College, Bridge Productions, Intiman Theater, Town Hall and more. Her writings have been included in Monday, Arcade, Ms blog, James Franco Review and The Stranger. Ingram received the 2014 Stranger Genius Award in Visual Arts. She is a 2016 Neddy art award finalist. She is a former 2016 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist fellow and was recently voted both one of the “20 most talented and most influential people in Seattle” by Seattle Magazine. She is recent Jacob Lawrence fellow at the University of Washington and the winner of the Museum of Northwest Luminary Award in Innovative media.
Learn moreCeleste Camfield is a mixed Muscogee artist living on the settled land of the Nʉmʉnʉʉ Sookobitʉ (Comanche), Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache), Coahuiltecan, Tonkawa, and Jumanos peoples, currently known as Austin, TX. She works in the mediums of movement, film, and food. She grew up dancing in Texas Hill Country and studied dance at Marymount Manhattan College. Celeste has studied modern dance in Vicenza, Barcelona, Prague, and at ImPulsTanz in Vienna, and was a participant in P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels, under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. She is a member of ARCOS and has performed with the company since 2019. Celeste has also performed original works with BLiPSWiTCH and Alexa Capareda. She has been creating and performing in experimental dance films since 2019, with screenings in Austin, Camden, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, and Portland. In 2022, Celeste co-founded Preheat Fest, a film festival that celebrates the experimental on camera.
Learn moreChanticleer Trü is a musician, performance artist who currently resides in Portland, Oregon. His body of work encompasses music, theater, fringe, dance, visual installation, drag, film, cabaret, and good time instigation. When he's not turning heads the world over as front-man of "Post Phunk" dance outfit Magic Mouth, you can catch him pursuing one of his many other creative efforts. His unique brands of aesthetic storytelling, and expression have made him a mainstay on stages both large and small. His creative direction and performances are in demand across major city hotbeds of the underground and mainstream.
Learn moreAtlas has created work for film, theatre, television, and museums including the Whitney (New York) and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville (Paris). A pioneer of integrating live video with stage performance, Atlas is best known for his acclaimed collaborations with choreographers, dancers, and performers such as Leigh Bowery, Diamanda Galas, Merce Cunningham, and with Antony and the Johnsons on the audiovisual performance, Turning. Atlas is the recipient of three Bessie Awards and was recently presented with the prestigious John Cage award, by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2006).
Atlas has been active as an interdisciplinary filmmaker and video artist since the 1970s. Over the years he has made pioneering media/dance works, multi-channel video installations, feature-length documentaries, video art works for television, and live electronic performances. In November 2006, London's Tate Modern presented a retrospective of his work, titled Hail the New Puritan.
Learn moreCHARLES TONDERAI MUDEDE (Director, Screenwriter) is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, writer, and filmmaker. He collaborated with acclaimed director Robinson Devor on the films Police Beat and Zoo, both of which premiered at Sundance. Police Beat is part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection, and Zoo was presented at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. Mudede is currently the film editor for Seattle’s The Stranger.
Learn moreCharlie Salas-Humara is a painter and musician living in Portland, OR. Self-taught, he began working with acrylic, oil, charcoal, and collage as a means of expressing his love of dance and music through art. Salas-Humara has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, Russia, and China (with The Planet The and under the moniker of Panther), and has shown his visual work in Portland, OR, Springfield, OR, Los Angeles, and New York.
Learn moreCharlotte Vanden Eynde is a contemporary dancer and choreographer, based in Ghent. In 1999, she graduated at P.A.R.T.S., the renowned school for contemporary dance headed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Since, she has been creating highly personal choreographies and performances, focusing on the body with a strong sculptural and imaginative sensibility. Her early works revolved around vulnerability, intimacy and femininity. In ‘Lijfstof’ she explored the body as object/matter and in ‘MAP ME’ video images were projected on the body as on a canvas. She pursued her movement research in the solo’s ‘I’m Sorry It’s (Not) A Story’ and ‘Shapeless’, and in various site-specific performances and improvisation solos. Her last work ‘Deceptive Bodies’ displayed an iconography of the theatrical body and was also shown in exhibition spaces. She often collaborates with other choreographers, theatre makers, film makers and musicians. Additionally, she gives advice to other artists and conducts workshops based on her own artistic practice.
Learn moreChase Biado (b. 1985) is an artist based in his native Portland, Oregon. His varied output including sculpture, video, painting and writing has been exhibited at Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Ulsan; Rocksbox, Portland, OR; sophiajacob, Baltimore, MD; Appendix Project Space, Portland OR; Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR; Gaite Lyrique, Paris, FR; The Front, New Orleans, LA; among others. He received a BFA from Portland State University.
Learn morechelfitsch Theater Company was founded in 1997 by writer and director Toshiki Okada. Named after a deliberate mispronunciation of the English word “selfish,” chelfitsch Theater Company began to refine its textual aesthetic as that of colloquial language representing contemporary youth culture. With Five Days in March (awarded the Kunio Kishida Award for Best Script) the company began to juxtapose a noisy choreography derived from everyday mannerisms to the text. The works of chelfitsch have been presented at premier international theater festivals and venues throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. In 2011, Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech received the critics’ award from the Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre for the 2010-2011 season. The troupe continues to develop its distinct methodology, which revolves around the relationship between speech and body.
Selected Press
"Writing for Foreigners (Americans)," Jason Zinoman, The New York Times, May 21, 2014
"Under the Radar 2012: An interview with chelfitsch's Toshiki Okada," Jeremy M. Barker, Culturebot, December 27, 2011.
"Temp Workers Too Twitchy to Engage in Office Politics," Ben Brantley, The New York Times, January 6, 2012.
"Hot Pepper," Tom Philips, Dance Review Times, January 7, 2012.
Learn moreChisao’s grandmother, Chisao Tajima, came to Oregon as a “picture bride” in 1890. In1942 her mother, Kasae (Kay) Tamiyasu married Tadashi (Ted) Hata in the Poston concentration camp in Poston, Arizona. Arts training and artists teachers in Iowa shaped Chisao’s early life. Moving to Oregon from Iowa, her years at the University of Oregon fueled her Asian American activism, community organizing and pursuits as an artist. Chisao connected to the Portland dance community where she eventually established a school and company. A life changing study in Japan solidified her artistic vision and commitment to exploring how artful practices could address social issues and create change. In the Japanese American community her early leadership led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and inspired her personal research and artmaking. Her studies in the Portland State Dance program, abruptly ended with the decimation of the program. However, new opportunities thrust her into arts in public education where her teaching philosophy as a dance educator influenced curriculum design and integrated arts programming schoolwide and impacted hundreds of students.
Her personal work incorporate community engagement, social action and includes omitted histories on themes of identity, culture, social action and legacies. DrumSouls and We Are You were intercultural and intergenerational works visioning an inclusive America. Harmos, The Human Flag project created for Hiroshima Day performed throughout Portland and Remember Us were community based performances on a citywide scale. Gambatte-An American Legacy, The Assembly Center Project and We are Still Here incorporate Japanese American history, oral histories through the fusion of text, poetry, music, dance and visual storytelling. Additionally Ms. Hata has designed and directed numerous art driven programs like Move Backs and Move On classes.
Her training in modern dance, expressive arts, physical theater, healing through the arts, community facilitation, poetry, taiko drumming and classical Japanese dance integrate with her peace and justice work in diverse communities. Her original choreo poems and artistic collaborations root her artist voice. “There's not one group she hasn’t touched with her activism through art. Her themes are exigent for our times and urge participants to ponder their worldview and take action for change.” Chisao’s vision has consistently created innovative programs, artistic works and shaped community partnerships. Chisao is also an Artist Organizing for Change with the Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Maryland where the scope of her work develops intergenerational institutes, mentors socially engaged artists, creates cross-cultural programming rooted in the philosophies held at the Dance Exchange. This work continues to inspire her work as an Oregon Humanities Conversation Leader, community activist artist serving multiple organizations throughout the city of Portland and beyond.
Learn moreChloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree, Canadian interdisciplinary artist and sound designer. Thompson approaches sound as a mode of connection—embracing the kinesthetic agency of sound to compose abstract feats of spatialized audio recording and synthesis. Her work engages tactics of material minimalism to create site-specific installations that sculpt droning, maximalist experiences out of space and sound.
Learn moreCreated by performance artist Paul Soileau, CHRISTEENE has emerged as a pop music artist and anti-icon in its own right. CHRISTEENE is a shameless and sexually infused sewer of live rap and RnB, whose message challenges gender, capitalism, corporate mendacity, complacency, and false celebrity while shattering the American obsession with charm and grace. Providing a much-needed voice for a new society and posing a threat to those who support the current structures, CHRISTEENE is a new, dangerous, and unstable breed of entertainer and “Drag Terrorist.”
Attempts at gathering personal information on CHRISTEENE concerning age, origin, race, religion, and even gender have proven fruitless, leaving the public to rely on a highly stylized collection of music videos released through the singer’s collaborative efforts with award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer PJ Raval. Sightings of CHRISTEENE have been documented in Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, New Orleans, Toronto, Vancouver, Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin.
Selected Press
Don't call him queen: Paul Soileau talks about more-punk-than-drag persona Christeene Vale, Bree Davies, Denver Westword, July 19, 2012.
Learn moreBorn in Cannes, Christian Rizzo took his first steps as an artist in Toulouse, where he started a rock band and created a line of clothing before studying visual arts at the Villa Arson in Nice. In the ’90s, he performed with and created costumes and soundtracks for choreographers including Mathilde Monnier, Hervé Robbe, Mark Tompkins, Georges Appaix, Vera Mantero, Catherine Contour, Emmanuelle Huynh, and Rachid Ouramdane. Since founding “l’association fragile” in 1996, he has created over 30 performances and dance pieces, alternating with other projects or commissions for fashion and visual arts. He was an artist-in-residence at l’Opéra de Lille, and has performed his works around the world at the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, the Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou, deSingel, the Festival d’Avignon, and On the Boards.
On January 1, 2015, Christian Rizzo took over as the Director of the Centre Choréographique National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillion-Midi-Pyrénées, which has been renamed ICI (International Choreographic Institute).
Learn moreChristopher Kirkley is a self-described amateur ethnomusicologist and gentleman explorer of the West African Sahel. His work spans field recording, cultural archiving, experimental ethnography, and the role of new media in West Africa. Under the label Sahel Sounds, he has produced an extensive discography of record releases in conjunction with artists across six countries.
Selected Press
Desert discs: how mobile phones are at the root of Saharan music, Mic Wright, The Guardian, November 1, 2010. Learn moreMiner was born in 1973 and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. His videos address the impact of his upbringing with regard to religion, race, family, and sexuality. He received his MFA at Yale University School of Art and his BA at the University of Tennessee. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), the New Museum (New York), and at Tate Britain (London), among other institutions. Miner is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.
Selected Press
Christopher Miner, Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Artforum.com, January 28, 2009.
Art in Review - Christopher Miner, Ken Johnson, New York Times, February 13, 2009.
Learn moreChristopher Sutton is a longtime artist, musician, writer, and DJ who currently lives in Portland, Oregon. As a musician he has toured, performed, and recorded with bands such as Hornet Leg, Gossip, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Spider & The Webs, C.O.C.O., Hooded Hags, The Dirtbombs, and Chain & The Gang to name a few. His life as a writer has seen contributions mainly to self published fanzines like Shotgun Seamstress, Bumpidee, and his own zine Nigerian Triple Daisy. He currently writes a blog called Record Lections and some of his opines can be read in the online magazine called Network Awesome. Sutton also exhibits his work as a painter and designs album art for his bands Hornet Leg and C.O.C.O. Finally, Sutton is a DJ participating in regular soulful Portland dance parties like Soul In The Hole and Sugar Town and in various venue around the Northwest.
Selected Press:
"DJ Hornet Leg talks records," Nikki McCoy, Northwest Military, May 14, 2014
"Hornet Leg: Ribbon of Fear," Joe Hemmerling, Tiny Mix Tapes, 2009
Learn moreCinema Project is a collectively run, non-profit organization based in Portland, Oregon, and founded in 2003, Cinema Project works to promote public awareness of avant-garde cinema past and present. Featuring artists, curators, and scholars from around the world, Cinema Project’s semi-annual series of screenings, lectures, and discussions function to broaden engagement with, and deepen critical understanding of, innovative experimental film and video art.
Learn moreClaire Barliant is a writer, editor, and teacher based in Brooklyn. She writes or has written for Art in America, Artforum, Icon, Modern Painters, the New Yorker, and other places. This coming academic year, she will be teaching in the MFA program for the Visual Arts at SUNY Purchase, and in the past has been an adjunct professor or visiting critic at Parsons, the New School, NYU, and Yale. For the past several years she has regularly participated in the Writhing Society, a writing workshop based on writing with constraints, led by Wendy Walker and Thomas La Farge.
Learn moreClaire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, 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. But if the artist herself is the subjective equivalent of a urinal or a Brillo box—as displaced, deprived of its use value, and exchangeable as the products she makes—there is always the possibility of what she calls the “human strike.”
Claire Fontaine uses her freshness and youth to make herself a whatever-singularity and an existential terrorist in search of subjective emancipation. She grows up among the ruins of the notion of authorship, experimenting with collective protocols of production, détournements, and the production of various devices for the sharing of intellectual and private property.
Recent shows include El Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico D.F.; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Air de Paris, Paris; Regina Gallery, London and Moscow; MUSAC Contemporary Art Museu, Castilla y León, Spain; Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, Baltimore; Bunker Stuzki Contemporary Art Museum, Krakow; Mastermind, Casablanca; and Kunstlerhaus Wien, Vienna. Claire Fontaine is represented by Reena Spaulings Fine Art and Metro Pictures, New York; T293, Napoli and Rome; Galerie Neu, Berlin; and Galerie Chantal Crousel/Air de Paris, Paris. She is now preparing a catalogue with Buchhandlung Walther König.
Learn moreClaire L. Evans is a writer and artist working in Los Angeles. She blogs at Universe, which addresses the synchronicities between art, science, technology, and the cultural world. Her “day job” is as the singer and co-author of the conceptual, multimedia, disco-pop band YACHT. Evans has performed her earnestly cosmic PowerPoint presentations at The Kitchen and MoMA PS1, and has co-authored NA/SA: New Art Science Affinities, a collaboratively written compendium on inter-disciplinarity in the arts.
Learn moreClare Croft is a historian, theorist, and dramaturg, working at the intersection of dance studies and performance studies. She specializes in 20th and 21st century American dance, cultural policy, feminist and queer theory, and critical race theory. In all of these areas, Croft considers how dance is a way of thinking and a mode for asking questions. What does it mean to acknowledge that people have bodies and that they use their bodies to make meaning, create community, and critique social structures?
Croft's current book project, Funding Footprints: Dance and American Diplomacy (Oxford University Press), examines the history of U.S. State Department funding of international dance tours. Croft's approach to writing dance history emphasizes the role of dancers in performance, asking how history might look differently if dancers, audiences, and choreographers were seen as equal partners in the creation of meaning in dance. Croft is also editing the anthology Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance, which brings together artists and print scholars in a written volume of essays and manifestos, as well as a website of performances, documented in Michigan's Duderstadt Video Studio.
Croft's writing about dance has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Topics, and is forthcoming in Dance Chronicle. From 2002-2005, Croft was a regular contributor to The Washington Post, and from 2005-2010, she covered dance, as well as theatre and musical theatre, for the Austin American-Statesman. Her performance criticism has appeared in other popular press venues, including The Baltimore Sun, Dance Magazine, and The Houston Chronicle.
At the University of Michigan, Croft teaches courses in the BFA and MFA dance programs, as well as in the BFA interarts program. Her courses include Approaches to Dance Dramaturgy, Dancing Women/Dancing Queer, Fantasies and Anxieties of Racial Integration in 20th Century American Performance, Problematizing Theory and Practice, and Reading and Writing Dance Criticism. She also has a keen interest in helping students develop as choreographers and dramaturgs.
Croft holds a PhD in theatre history and criticism with an emphasis in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas-Austin and an MA in performance studies from New York University. From 2010-2013, Croft was a postdoctoral scholar in the University of Michigan's Society of Fellows.
Learn moreClaude Wampler works at the intersection of art installation and performance; engages and experiments with liveness and the art object, concealment and revelation, the performance of the spectator, and the productivity of failure.
Using video, painting, photography, lighting, sound, sculpture, costume, and texts, to explore the possibilities and the value of grafting performance technique onto visual expression and vice versa, Wampler creates an experience of immediacy/excess in which the viewer leaves with a sense of mystery or magic.
Claude has had solo exhibitions and performances at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, New Museum for Contemporary Art, and P.S. 122 (New York); The Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and in many international institutions including the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Witte de With & Schouwburg Theater (Rotterdam), the Yokohama Triennale, Kaaistudios (Brussels), and many others.
Learn moreMeza is a Portland-based artist and composer who studied music composition and digital music production at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She has recorded and toured with Japanther and Explode Into Colors, and has performed her own work in clubs, basements, dance halls, ballrooms, art galleries, and music festivals internationally. Meza started the young series New Musics to support new classical music and working avant-garde composers within the Portland music scene.
Learn moreClayton Lee is a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist. He currently serves as the Artistic Director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK. From 2019–2023, Clayton was the Director of Rhubarb Festival!, Canada’s longest-running festival of new and experimental performance, and previously served as the Curatorial Associate at the Luminato Festival. His performance projects have been presented in venues across Canada, the US, the UK, and New Zealand. He was one of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Artists-in-Residence in 2023. As part of the Living Room Collective, he represented Canada at the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Learn moreBorn and raised in Mexico City, Sofia Acosta's introduction to the music world started at university-based radio station Ibero 90.9 where she worked for Mercado Negro, a radio show about underground and independent music from Mexico. Her influences come from a wide variety of electronic genres including house, techno and deep basslines mixed with her favorite Latin American producers. She has been a resident DJ in many venues in Mexico City such as Cultural Center of Spain, Rhodesia, and El Imperial. In Portland she collaborates at the community radio station KBOO with “White Noise Radio” which focuses dance and experimental electronic music from around the globe as well as curating a monthly party Gran Ritmos, a night dedicated to Pan-American dance music.
Learn more.Compost Cooperative takes the tossed-out leftovers from digital culture and breaks them down to grow a more lush virtual landscape. In the ease of mass consumption and the gold rush for the supposedly infinite space provided by the Internet, much of our digital infrastructure and the tools used to make it go disconcertingly unexamined. We believe that through cultivating a biome of thoughtful appropriation, re-design, humor, and the surreal we can begin to glimpse a microcosm of new possibility and the recipe to get there. Together we make websites, video games, educational materials, and a range of other media that playfully percolates on our ever-decaying/blossoming digital world.
.Compost Cooperative is: Tabitha Nikolai, Myra Lilith Day, garima thakur, Zan Kerrigan, and Carly Barton. Our work has been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in the Maine College of Art and Design in Maine, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Oregon, and the Utkal University of Culture in Odisha, India. Learn moreContainer Corps is a publication design studio, printshop, bindery, and exhibition space that serves as a platform for the creation, distribution, and discussion of new arts publications. We publish books-as-projects, or books-as-works in themselves, or primary sources. Our publications use the means of their production as an avenue of expression. The books we publish are collaborations between artists and their ideas and our skills as editors, publication designers, and printmakers. They are works of art in themselves, rather than documentation of works in other media.
Learn moreCornell Alston is a long time member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a not-for-profit that uses the arts as a springboard to teach life skills to individuals both inside and outside of state correctional facilities. He initiated the Youth Empowerment Through the Arts initiative that launched in Queens NY, and he continues to work as an arts-in-education advocate. He is the recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital Award. Alston performed and collaborated with Kaneza Schaal on PLEASE, BURY ME at Baryshnikov Arts Center and GO FORTH during a Performance Space 122 RAMP residency. Other performance highlights include: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 12 Angry Men, and the title role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
Learn moreCourtenay Collins is the owner and Executive Producer of Dirty Angel Entertainment. The company currently produces The Real Comedy Spot Open Mic at Eastside Bar and Grill on Tuesday’s. DAE also produced an open mic at Harvey’s Comedy Club in Portland, OR. The company has produced showcases at Triple Nickel in Portland, Oregon and Pub 26 in Welches, OR. It also produces the NW Black Comedy Festival which is in its fifth year. The company manages comic The Real Hyjinx, who has appeared around the country and hosts all Dirty Angel Entertainment productions. He’s been on AMC and also co-produces the Festival. She also performs as DJ Wildchild and is the resident DJ for all Dirty Angel Entertainment Productions including The Real Comedy Spot Open Mics and the NWBCF. She also co-hosted the Portland Radio Project show Soulfull Saturdays.
Learn moreCraig Stephens was born in Sacramento, California in 1963. He grew up in the foothill town of Weimar. He attended American River College and later transferred to UC Davis where he received his B.A. in art studio in 1993. During his undergraduate years he had the privilege of taking classes from Gary Pruner, Roy DeForest, David Hollowell and Wayne Thiebaud. In 1996 Mr. Stephens began teaching high school art classes at Chana High School in Auburn, California.
Since 2006 he has completed a small painting on a nearly daily basis, which he shares through Instagram feed. He has found that the practice of completing a painting a day suits his disposition and aesthetic.
Mr. Stephens currently resides in Auburn, California with his wonderful wife and amazing children. His works can be found in private and corporate collections throughout North America and Europe.
Learn moreC. Riley Snorton is a scholar, author, and activist whose work focuses on historical perspectives of gender, sexuality, and race. His publications include Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (U Minn Press, 2014) and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (U Minn Press, 2017). Snorton is Professor of English and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Chicago.
Learn moreCrispin Spaeth offers private coaching, workplace trainings, and group classes that champion the beauty of our human design and its intrinsic relationship to confidence, connection, and freedom.
Her work is deeply informed by Integrative Alexander Technique (IAT), an experiential learning process that allows you to access your natural coordination so that you can move, think, and communicate more effectively and in line with your true wishes.
Learn moreIncorporating irony and humor into her work, Cristina Lucas focuses on the irrationality of human actions and ethics within contemporary aesthetics. She was born in Jaén, Spain, and earned her BFA from Complutense University, Madrid, followed by an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Lucas has recently participated in Dominó Canibal II Bienale PAC Murcia and the Liverpool Biennial. Her work has also been seen in solo exhibitions such as Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Móstoles an Carrillo Gil, Mexico DF; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, The Netherlands; and Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid; as well as in group exhibitions at NMAC Foundation, Cádiz; Aldrich Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; 28 Bienal de Sao Paulo; and X Istanbul Bienale. Lucas lives and works in Spain, where she is represented by Juana de Aizpuru Gallery, Madrid.
Selected Press
Cristina Lucas, Touch and Go, 2010, Arthur Roberts and Barbara Jones, all my colours, November 7, 2010.
Learn moreCrystal Baxley and Stefan Ransom are Portland-based artists who make events, videos, sounds, posters, prints, books, blogs, sculptures, playlists, drawings, emails, and food, individually and collaboratively. In 2012 they created a compilation album of 35 songs based on Sol LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art, titled Songs on Conceptual Art. It is available for free online at http://songsonconceptualart.com. Baxley and Ransom have organized events and exhibited projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, the Open Engagement Conference and Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, and the Kadist Foundation in San Francisco.
Learn moreCrystal Quartez (Cortez) is a Portland based musician & creative technologist. Through field recording, synthesis and self-built instruments they create “Restorative Noise”; sculpting drones and rhythms of mechanical life, natural voices, and digital timbres to form a texture rich electronic dance music. The resulting sonic landscapes offer windows into shared networks of reality, often separated by borders of space, time, and perception. Recently, their work has involved the collection of live biodata from plants and static data from climate change, to translate these numbers and electrical impulses into sound.
Learn moreCVLLEJERX is the product of our multicultural inbetweenness as second generation immigrants and the violent colonization and subsequent diaspora of colombia, mexico, and africa, which informs our mestizx and black experiences in america. CVLLEJERX was born in the whitest city in america, portland, that has deep-seated white supremacist roots. with this and other historical and contemporary circumstances in mind, it is urgent for us to reclaim space in this city. we merge fashion, performance, and poetry as a form of resistance. through the engagement of voice, clothing, and physical movement, we are reclaiming authorship. Choosing what we wear, what we say, and how we move, we are amplifying ourselves with tools accessible to us.
Learn morePart country, part Lou Reed, part Patti Smith, part performance artist. —The Washington Post Cynthia Hopkins is an internationally acclaimed musical performance artist. Hopkins writes and sings songs, records albums, and creates groundbreaking multi-media performance works that intertwine truth and fiction—blurring the lines between edification and entertainment. Through the process of making performances, she attempts to alchemize disturbance into works of intrigue and hope that simultaneously stimulate the senses, provoke emotion, and enliven the mind. Hopkins has produced six performance works and eight albums of original music. Her work has been honored with many awards, including the 2007 Alpert Award in Theater and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. Hopkins most recently premiered A Living Documentary and is currently at work on a screenplay, Alcoholic Movie Musical (a tale of self-destruction and redemption). Selected Press "In Debt to Art? So Actor’s Piggy Bank Attests: ‘A Living Documentary,’ a Solo Show at New York Live Arts," The New York Times, March 7, 2014 "Cynthia Hopkins on How to Earn a Living as a New York City Artist," The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2014
Learn mored.a. carter is a writer, teacher, and cognac sipper. He is co-editor of The Iconic Obama, 2007-2009: Essays on Media Representations of the Candidate and New President (2012). He is currently completing Obscene Material, a book examining black girlhood and scandal in 1919 Washington, D.C. and is also a member of the Queering Slavery Working Group, an interdisciplinary scholarly collective that uses Tumblr to place black queer studies in conversation with the history of enslavement: http://qswg.tumblr.com and http://qswgremix.tumblr.com. He is an assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University, with research interests in 20th Century African American History, gender and sexuality studies, and black cultural studies.
Learn moreDakhaBrakha is music quartet from Kyiv, Ukraine. Reflecting fundamental elements of sound and soul, Ukrainian “ethno chaos” band DakhaBrakha creates a world of unexpected new music. DakhaBrakha was created in 2004 at the Kyiv Center of Contemporary Art “DAKH” by the avant-garde theatre director Vladyslav Troitskyi, and given the name that means “give/take” in old Ukrainian. Theatre work has left its mark on the band performances—their shows have never been staged without a strong visual element.
After experimenting with Ukrainian folk music, the band has added rhythms of the surrounding world into their music, thus creating the bright, unique and unforgettable sound of DakhaBrakha. They strive to help open up the potential of Ukrainian melodies and to bring it to the hearts and consciousness of the younger generation in Ukraine and the rest of the world. Accompanied by Indian, Arabic, African, Russian and Australian traditional instrumentation, the quartet’s powerful and uncompromising vocal range creates a trans-national sound rooted in Ukrainian culture. At the crossroads of Ukrainian folklore and theatre, their musical spectrum is at first intimate then riotous, plumbing the depths of contemporary roots and rhythms, inspiring cultural and artistic liberation.
In March 2010, DakhaBrakha won the prestigious Grand Prix prize named after S.Kuriokhin, in the sphere of contemporary art, and confirmed its place in the culture once again. They have played hundreds of concerts, performances, and have taken part in major international festivals throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Russia, Asia, Australia, and North America. DakhaBrakha has also collaborated with such international musicians as: Port Mone (By), Kimmo Pohjonen Cluster (Fi), Karl Frierson (DePhazz) (Ge), Steve Cooney (IRL), Inna Zhelannaya (Ru), Kievbass (UA), Djam (UA-Iran), and David Ingibaryan (Hu).
Learn moreDakota Camacho is a Matao•CHamoru multi-disciplinary artist / researcher working in spaces of Indigenous lifeways, performance, musical composition, community engagement, and education.
Learn moreDana Michel is a choreographer and performer based in Montreal, Canada. Her practice is rooted in exploring the disorderly multiplicity of identity using intuitive improvisation and image creation. Before entering the BFA in Contemporary Dance program at Concordia University in her late twenties, she was a marketing executive, competitive runner, and football player. In 2011, She received a danceWEB scholarship, allowing her to deepen her research process at ImPulsTanz (Vienna, Austria). She has been making and internationally touring work for the past nine years.
Michel’s newest solo, Yellow Towel, premiered at the 2013 Festival TransAmériques (Montreal) to critical acclaim. The work featured on the “Top Ten” 2013 dance moments in Dance Current Magazine (Canada) and was recently singled out as one of the most remarkable productions at the 2014 American Realness Festival (New York City) by The New York Times. In August 2014, she received the ImpulsTanz Award for artistic excellence in life.
Learn moreAtlanta, Georgia, is a hotbed of contemporary art with an abundance of choreographers and performance artists seeking affordable and accessible venues. Recognizing this scarcity of performance space as an opportunity, curator and lighting designer Malina Rodriguez founded Dance Truck: a mobile project that uses the back of a rental truck as a stage. With its inventive technical direction, diverse artistic lineup, and stunning visual platform, Dance Truck has been an enormous success in “bringing dance to the people” at festivals, museums, parks, and streets throughout the Dirty South.
Selected Press
Dance Truck Pulls into the Contemporary, Andrew Alexander, Creative Loafing Atlanta, February 9, 2011.
Learn moreLike an explosion, DBC unleashes on assault of screaming synthesizers, demonic beats, laser lit fog and passionate singing akin to a Black Mass given by Morrissey.
The Dangerous Boys Club is the baby birthed by Aaron Montaigne (singer), Mac Mann (Synth/electronique Organ) of the legendary 90′s harcore bands Antioch Arrow and Get Hustle. Started in the fog of Portland Oregon in 2009, DBC adopted Mark Burden (bass) of Silentist / Glass Candy and Sam Ott (electronique drums) of Year Future to create a very Unique experimental / pop / noise / dark wave inspired by Roxy Music, Soul Side, Suicide the Misfits and David Bowie.
in 2010 DBC released “VRIL” on Nathan Howdeshell of the GOSSIP’s Portland lable Fast Weapons and toured the west coast numerous times and tour of the east coast playing with bands such as Cold Cave, Salem, The Soft Moon and Bronze.
DBC’s second full release “PRIS” will be released on DAIS records in spring 2012 and will be touring the states and Europe.
Learn moreDan Gilsdorf is a Portland-based multimedia artist whose works address sculptural physicality using immaterial technologies such as digital video, sound, and language. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at Parko Gallery (Tokyo); the East/West project (Berlin); Artists’ Television Access (San Francisco); and Disjecta and Marylhurst Art Gym (Portland). Gilsdorf has been awarded grants and residencies from organizations including the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Selected Press
Interstate, Isaac Peterson, PORT, August 9, 2005.
Dark Corners: Dan Gilsdorf, Richard Speer, Willamette Week, November 26, 2008.
Selected Videos
Dan Gilsdorf talks about art and technology at DorkbotPDX (Vimeo)
Learn moreWinnipeg-based artist Daniel Barrow uses obsolete technologies to present written, pictorial, and cinematic narratives centering on the practices of drawing and collecting. Since 1993, he has created and adapted comic book narratives to manual forms of animation by projecting, layering, and manipulating drawings on overhead projectors. Barrow has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad. He has performed at The Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), The Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC), and the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago). Barrow is the 2007 winner of the Canada Council’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award and the 2008 winner of the Images Festival’s Images Prize. Barrow is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto.
Learn moreRepresenting from Portland, Oregon (and originally from Mexico), Daniel Girón is a well-rounded dancer with a background in a few Latin partner dance styles, House, Waacking, Contemporary and Vogue. As a voguer, Daniel has won multiple trophies in the ball scene, Holding the title of Portland’s first ever vogue champion after his victory at the 2014 Black and White Ball. He is the Father / Founder of House of ADA and is on a mission to help cultivate a strong Vogue community in the North West, teaching the history and fundamentals of this style on a weekly basis at Vitalidad Movement Art Center in Portland.
Learn moreDaniel Granias received a BFA in Fine Arts and Teaching License in K-12 Art Education from the University of Iowa in 2009 and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Ceramics from the Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2012. He is a working ceramics artist in Portland, Oregon and a full-time production assistant at Mudshark Studios, LLC. His work focuses on soft and hard forms, internal anatomy, touch and intimacy, and social engagement across all age levels.
Learn moreDaniel Kok is an alumnus of BA (Honours) Fine Art & Critical Theory at Goldsmiths College (London), MA (Distinction) Solo/Dance/Authorship (SODA) at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT, Berlin), and the Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies (APASS) in Brussels. From 2005 to 2010, he was Associate Artist at The Substation (Singapore). In 2008, he received the Young Artist Award from National Arts Council (Singapore).
His performance work deals with the relational politics in spectatorship and audienceship. Q&A (2009), Planet Romeo (2011), Cheerleader of Europe (2014), ALPHA (2014), PIIGS (2015) and Bunny (2016) have been presented across Asia, Europe, Australia, and the USA. Kok is currently researching queerness and a notion of trans-individuality.
As a pole dancer, he won the SG Pole Challenge (2012) and represented Singapore at the International Pole Championships (IPC, 2013). He also identifies as a bondage practitioner and Thai masseur.
Learn moreDanielle Kelly is a Las Vegas-based artist and writer, who received her BA from Beloit College and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Working in disciplines ranging from installation to performance, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Portland.
Learn moreTrained in the humanities, she got her start in the art world. After graduating from Yale in 1996, she moved to New York, where she worked for Goldin in her studio on the Bowery. Following a brief stint working at an art school in France, she returned to Manhattan where she resumed working for Goldin before departing for graduate school at NYU. In her master's program, she studied critical theory – “post-structuralists: Derrida, Baudrillard, all that kind of stuff.” In 2001, she began to work as the art director for Byrne, the former lead singer of one of the most acclaimed bands of the ‘80s, Talking Heads.
Learn moreDan Seward, also known as Bunnybrains, is a musician, curator and promoter in Hudson, New York, where he runs the celebrated (and somewhat nomadic) record store, John Doe Records. This exhibition focuses on Bunnybrains thirty plus years as a transgressive, mutable, collaborative, performative project and what it means to illustrate the life of a true muse. From live broadcasts of Bunnybrains radio show Battlefield Earth, participatory workshops, rotating guest exhibitions, spontaneous happenings and performances, the artist shares their space with you in an effort to vivify "Bunnybrains is all".
Bunnybrains’ career highlights include a vinyl only pressing with Matador, a national tour supporting Devendra Banhart, a four CD boxset that garnered raves from the indie press, and opening for a reunited Hawkwind—a set credited with giving the many hippies in attendance bad trips.
Learn moreDao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, and visual—to explore hybridity and contemplate the intersection of personal and collective histories. Using practices of polyvocality, fragmentation, and (re)assemblage, Strom writes arrangements of poetry, music, image, song, and sound, to be experienced as performance, installation, multimedia, recordings, and inside the spaces of a book. Although separate, these elements are unified by a shared (under)current that transposes itself through or despite its conduits, and endeavors toward “re-membering” and attempting to synchronize the divided ‘languages’ within the self and concerning the self as placed in the world.
Strom is the author/composer of several hybrid works, including the music/poetry project TENDER REVOLUTIONS/YELLOW SONGS (2025), and INSTRUMENT (2020), which won the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and its musical companion of song-poems, TRAVELER’S ODE. She co-curated and co-edited the hybrid-literary anthology and exhibition, A Mouth Holds Many Things (2024), and released an album of ambient-folk songs, Redux (2022). She is also the author of a bilingual poetry-art collection, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else; a hybrid-form memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, with song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction. Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, Ford Foundation, Precipice Fund, NEA, and others. She is the co-founder of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of Vietnamese women writers and artists making polyvocal poetry-art works; and de-canon, a literary social art project centering BIPOC writers. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevadas of northern California and now lives in Portland, OR.
Learn moreDarren O'Donnell is an artist, writer, actor, and city planner. He is the director and founder of Mammalian Diving Reflex, and the author of Social Acupuncture (Coach House Books, 2006), a manifesto calling for a more socially and politically profound art and theater. His art is often described through the lens of relational aesthetics. O'Donnell is the Artistic and Research Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex (which presented projects for TBA during 2007 and 2014), a "research-art atelier" that produces performances, community-based events, and theoretical texts. The organization fosters dialogue and audience participation, and creates activist performance described by the group as "ideal entertainment for the end of the world." Its programs work to dissolve boundaries between art and life in an attempt to create an aesthetic of civic engagement.
Learn moreDavid Byrne is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist, and filmmaker. He was a founding member, principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.
Learn moreDavid Commander’s In Flight questions the reliability of two modern comforts: airplanes and news media. Aboard a crashing airliner, a banal drama unfolds as the puppet passengers relax with daytime talk show reruns and SkyMall infomercials. In Flight mocks our cultural embrace of misinformation and our limitless potential for mass apathy, even in the face of immediate danger. Commander has been a member of Big Art Group for 12 years, working as a performer, assistant director, videographer, and miniature set/prop builder. Outside of the group, he has written, directed, and performed in his own works at the NYC International Fringe Festival, the 2007 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and the Toy Theater After Dark Festival in Minneapolis
Learn moreDee's love of movement and music led him to experience a wide assortment of dance styles including hip-hop, house, capoeira, and his favorite, Vogue Fem. A former Burlesquire dancer and no stranger to performance, Dee is excited to share the art of Vogue Fem and its Five Elements with the ever-growing ballroom scene in PDX!
Learn moreDavid Eckard is an artist, educator, and performer based in Portland, Oregon. His practice as a visual artist includes fabricated objects, drawings and prints, installations and performances. Through these varied approaches and diverse presentational strategies, Eckard fabricates residual, fictive artifacts, creates biomorphic, sexualized schematics, assembles arrested moments and orchestrates transient theatrics and temporary monuments for incidental audiences in civic spaces. Futility, authority, theatricality and persona enter into his creative explorations as notions to investigate, critique, utilize and exploit. Solo shows include Kim Foster Galley, New York; Fassbender Gallery, Chicago; Consolidated Works, Seattle; and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland. He has performed at PICA’s TBA Festival in 2004, 2006, and 2011, and for Northwest New Works at On The Boards, Seattle, in 2005. Eckard was awarded the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship for 2010, was one of the inaugural recipients of the Hallie Ford Fellowship in Visual Arts for 2010, and was a Juror’s Award recipient at the 2006 Oregon Biennial. Selected Press David Eckard's Liveries (summer stock) at Mark Woolley Gallery, Jeff Jahn, PORT, July 28, 2007.
Learn moreDavid Harrelson is the Cultural Resources Department Manager for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. He is a Grand Ronde tribal member from the Bean-Menard-Sengretta family. He was raised by a mountaineer and grandparents who worked in education and health care. Among his lineal Oregon ancestors of recent memory he counts the owner of a logging company, a mobile butcher, chief of police, and Kalapuya headman. David is active in his community and currently serves on the Oregon State Advisory Committee for Historic Preservation (SACHP) as well as the Oregon Arts Commission. He is a former board member of the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg, OR, and has previously been a conversation leader for Oregon Humanities' Conversation Project, where he led sessions on the topics of monuments and place. Working for over ten years in the field of cultural resources, David continues to champion the protection of archaeology sites, maintenance of ancestral lifeways, and proliferation of indigenous art forms throughout his Tribe's homelands centered in Western Oregon.
Learn moreDawn Kasper is an interdisciplinary performance artist. Kasper's work has been exhibited widely; The Migros Museum, Zurich (2005), Human Resources, LA (2011), Tramway, Glasgow (2012), 2012 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2012) Redling Fine Art, LA (2014) David Lewis, NY (2014) Kasper lives and works in New York.
Learn moreA multi-disciplinary artist and 2006 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography, Dayna Hanson has been creating dance, film and performance in Seattle for more than 20 years. She was one-half of dance/theater company 33 Fainting Spells and a founding member of Run/Remain Ensemble. She has performed her work at venues including Dance Theater Workshop, On the Boards, Wexner Center for the Arts, Walker Art Center, and ICA in London. Hanson’s award-winning dance films have screened worldwide at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, New York Film Festival and Melbourne International Festival of Arts, and can be found on First Run Features’ Dance For Camera DVD.
As Co-Artistic Director of 33 Fainting Spells, Dayna Hanson co-curated New Dance Cinema from 1999–2003. With 33 Fainting Spells and independently, Hanson’s award-winning dance films have screened worldwide, including at Edinburgh International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Festival Internacional de Videodanza de Buenos Aires and Los Angeles International Short Film Festival. Hanson recently directed a mini-documentary for MTV.com about Seattle band The Dutchess and the Duke and choreographed a dance scene for Korean director Tae Yong Kim’s feature film, Late Autumn.
Selected Press
A clever musing on our demise, Alice Kaderlan, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 2, 2006.
Learn moreDB Amorin (b. Honolulu, Hawai'i) is an interdisciplinary media artist who explores audio-visual non-linearity as a container for intersectional experience. He frequently emphasizes the generative role of error as an opportunity for creation, resulting in media-centered projects driven by DIY methodologies, lo-fi translations, and persistent, inquisitive experimentation with available materials.
His work has garnered awards from esteemed organizations including the Jersey City Arts Council, Oregon Arts Commission, the Ford Family Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Precipice Fund grant funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Calligram Foundation and administered by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). His visual art, performances, curatorial & collaborative programming have been presented internationally at A4 Arts Foundation; the ImagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival; Onassis Foundation; ICA at MECA&D; Luggage Store Gallery; Soundwave ((7)) Biennial; PICA; Portland Art Museum; the Honolulu Museum of Art; Honolulu Biennial 2019.
Learn moreDean & Britta are Dean Wareham and Britta Philips, formerly of iconic 90s band Luna. Started by Wareham in 1992, Luna made seven studio albums and played their final shows in 2005. Prior to Luna, Wareham fronted Galaxie 500. Philips joined Luna in 2000, before which she played in several bands, starred in the movie Satisfaction, and was the singing voice of 80s cartoon character JEM. The duo released L’Avventura, an album of covers and duets, in 2005, and Back Numbers in 2009. Dean & Britta have scored several films, most notably Noah Baumbach’s The Squid & The Whale.
Selected Press
For Warhol Visitors and Would-be Superstars, 4 Minutes of Mystique, Stephen Holden, The New York Times, January 19, 2009.
Learn moreYou seen her on BET comic view, and also she was a finalist in funny is Mom’s in America. She has been in the business over 30 years and has open for all the fellow comedians such as Jamie Foxx,Sinbad, And recently perform at the Northwest black comedy festival with Marsha Warfield that is just a few. She believes laughter is a healer and is known as comedy nurse because she knows the power of laughter, she is the diva Comedy Debbie Wooten.
Learn moreDeborah Hay is an American choreographer, dancer, dance theorist, and author working in the field of experimental postmodern dance. She is one of the original founders of the Judson Dance Theater.
Learn moredee bustos is a queer, genderfluid multimedia artist living in Portland. with family roots to méxico— dee loves color, texture, sound, memory, and the vivid language of dreams. they are curious about death, grief, and the ways to creatively and compassionately tend to those wounds. their chrysalis has cracked open.
Learn moreFounded in 2015, Deep Under Ground (DUG) is a community-based arts platform that curates intentional gatherings in support of local artistry striving to encourage young, diverse talent to change the landscape of the Portland arts community. Through organizing and making art, DUG’s intention is to uplift individuals and synchronize different avenues of expression; emphasizing artistic cultivation as an essential outlet to every individual and community.
Learn moreDemian DinéYazhi´ (born 1983) is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their practice is a regurgitation of purported Decolonial praxis informed by the over accumulation and exploitative supremacist nature of hetero-cis-gendered communities post colonization. They are a survivor of attempted european genocide, forced assimilation, manipulation, sexual and gender violence, capitalist sabotage, and hypermarginalization in a colonized country that refuses to center their politics and philosophies around the Indigenous Peoples whose Land they occupy and refuse to give back. They live and work in a post-post-apocalyptic world unafraid to fail.
Instagram @heterogeneoushomosexual
Learn moreDennis Nyback was an American independent film archivist, found footage filmmaker, historian and writer. Nyback operated the Dennis Nyback Film Archive, which has over 13,000 short films, from 1895 onward, mostly in 16mm. It is located in Portland, Oregon.
Learn moreDennis Scholl is the Vice President of Arts for the Knight Foundation. He oversees the foundation's national arts program, including the Knight Arts Challenge and Random Acts of Culture. He is well known as a collector of contemporary art for over three decades. Scholl is also the founder of a series of initiatives dedicated to building the contemporary art collections of museums, including the Guggenheim, the Tate Modern and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. He is a four-time regional Emmy winner for his work in cultural documentaries. His first feature documentary “Deep City: The Birth of Miami Sound,” premiered at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival. Dennis is also the co-founder of Betts and Scholl, an award-winning wine project. In 2012, Scholl was a Harvard University Advanced Leadership Fellow, focusing on the role of culture in community engagement. Dennis is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. Previously, he was a practicing attorney and CPA.
Learn moreDescending Pharaohs is an ethno-psych project soundtracking the alleyway fight scenes to near-eastern films of the ’70s. Half structure/half improvisation, drawing influence from Arabic/Anatolian electric music, spiritual jazz, British psych, and the heavier side of Krautrock, Descending Pharaohs is Ricardo Esway (Militant Children’s Hour, Gazillions, Gamelan Sekar) on guitar; Larold Will (Les Etrangers, Topiary Kings, Brainwarmer) on drums and electronics; and Theo Khoury (Tunneler, Gaza Tunnels) on bass, oud, and djoura.
Learn moreDez Ramirez is a writer, filmmaker, artist and DJ. Known as DJ La Cosmica, Dez has been a member of the Noche Libre DJ Collective since 2018, and has hosted, recorded and produced episodes of Radio Noche Libre! on XRAY FM. Currently living between the Mojave Desert, Los Angeles, and Portland - La Cosmica's style and musical curation ranges widely as she draws from the influences of dramatic wilderness, urban vibrancy, and the pulse of collective and radical liberation in the communities in which she lives and creates. Recent flavors consist of electrocumbia, electronica, house, synth, R&B, bass, reggaeton, norteno, salsa, and disco.
Find her at:
@silver_mother
Learn moreDisorientalism is an ongoing collaboration between Katherine Behar and Marianne M. Kim. Through live performance, video, and photographic projects, the duo explores how technologized labor, junk culture, and consumerism mediate race, gender and bodies. In character, the Disorientals expose our hapless submersion in junk culture, and our failed attempts to rationalize it by mistakenly resorting to industriousness and work. Recent exhibitions include de la Cruz Collection in Miami, the Poznan Biennial, and The Wassiac Project. Behar and Kim have individually been supported with grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund, NEA/Dance USA, Meet the Composer, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and the U.S. Consulate General in Leipzig.
Learn moreSeattle native DJAO, aka Alex Osuch, is a producer/vocalist of electronic music: hazy bass, sung echoes, swungout drums, zones. Alex began to produce in earnest after joining up with Dropping Gems in 2010, and his live performances have since evolved to their current state: a combination of singing, triggering, and dancing. His music covers a wide fuzzy swath of the electronic spectrum. It exemplifies the progressive tradition of mixing elements from different disciplines into a cohesive whole, all in service of a central harmonic vision. It confronts everything from sadness to relaxation to the warm revelation of a burden lifted. Behind it all is a profoundly mundane daily routine.
Selected Press:
"The Alchemist: Alex Osuch aka DJAO," City Arts, by Jonathan Zwickel, January 2, 2014
"DJAO / Running in the Fog / Natasha Kmeto - 'Bass Camp SF'," Tiny Mix Tapes, by Top Heavy, May 30, 2014
Learn moreDJ Klyph has been bringing the very best from the northwest and worldwide to the airwaves since ’09. Featuring hip hop, funk, soul, and providing a platform for artists that are often underserved to share exclusive content like in-studio interviews and on-air rhyme sessions. A fan of conscious hip hop with a lean towards the golden era east coast sound, Klyph utilizes the multimedia platforms of radio broadcast, podcasting, and visuals to impact the community consciousness and real good music.
Learn moreLamar Leroy has been a music fiend from birth reared on the sounds present in 90’s era Detroit and Chicago. His DJ sets are based on a core of R&B funk and branch out in all direction imaginable. Lamar has been introducing himself and others to new musical discoveries since he got his first set of turntables in 1998. As the resident DJ and Co-founder of Y.G.B.Portland, Lamar sets the vibes for all of their events. He is also one of the most sought after DJs in Portland and plays regular gigs at Jacknife, Dig A Pony, Century, White Owl and Killingsworth Dynasty. His show Twilight Deluxe can be heard every Friday evening on XRAYfm
Learn moreDJ Mixed Messages is a local Portland, OR DJ and electronic music artist. They perform at regional venues, art spaces, and events—such as the Sines and Vines electronic music series and local club sets—often supporting community groups like the Synth Library Portland or Elbow Room.
Learn moreD’Lo is a queer transgender Tamil Sri L.A.nkan-American, political theatre artist/writer, director, comedian and music producer based in Los Angeles, California. D’Lo has performed and/or facilitated performance and writing workshops extensively (US, Canada, UK, Germany, Sri Lanka and India). D’Lo is also the creator of the “Coming Out, Coming Home” writing workshop series which have taken place with South Asian and/or Immigrant Queer Organizations nationally (LA, NY and SF). D’Lo’s work has been published in various anthologies and academic journals, most recently: Desi Rap: Hip Hop and South Asia America and Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic (co-edited by Sharon Bridgforth). D’Lo holds a BA from UCLA in Ethnomusicology and is a graduate of New York’s School of Audio Engineering (SAE).
Learn moreDNVN is an alternative R&B project by Portlanders Damon Boucher and Donovan Edwards. The duo met in 2013, through mutual friend Chanti Darling. After Edwards had a particularly hard break up, the duo released first EP, "Ex-Boyfriend" on SoundCloud in 2015. Between the two they have worked with various local artists including Sassy Black, Natasha Kmeto, The Last Artful, Dodgr, Chanti Darling, and Maarquii. "SOFT PINK" the duo’s debut LP is due later this year
Learn moreFounded in 2014, Dohee Lee Puri Arts (DLPA) is the producing organization of performance artist, Dohee Lee. Our mission is to create and tour multi-disciplinary performance rituals under the direction of Dohee Lee. We utilize art to heal fractured relationships in the urban environment – relationships between humans and the land and between individuals and their communities. We say "performance ritual" because Dohee's work arises from her intensive training in the practices of mudang (Korean shamanism). This tradition combines singing, dancing, drumming, costuming into communal village healing gatherings. DLPA applies this ancient, indigenous approach to community healing to our urban village of the Bay Area, updated with modern tools of multi-disciplinary immersive art. Since her arrival in the US in 2002, Dohee Lee (Artistic Director) has been a vital contributor to both the traditional and contemporary arts landscape of the Bay Area, working with Kronos Quartet, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Anna Halprin, Amara Tabor Smith, inkBoat, Kunst-Stoff Dance. Recent awards: 2016 Alpert Prize, Music; 2016 Rainin Grant; Korean Americans for Peace, 2016 Korean American Peace Award; 2015 CCI; 2015 Doris Duke Impact, Theater; 2015 Gerbode, Choreographer; 2015 Ucross Residency; 2014 Djerassi Residency; 2014 William and Flora Hewlett Honorary Fellowship; 2013 East Bay Community Foundation; 2013 Creative Capital; 2013 MAP.
Learn moreHailed by Ms. Magazine’s end of the century issue as “a choreographer making great leaps forward into the 21st century,” Donna Uchizono is the Artistic Director of Donna Uchizono Company, a New York-based company established in 1990. Since her choreographic debut in 1990, Uchizono rapidly emerged from the “downtown scene” as a choreographer known for her spicy movement, wit, and rich invention. Donna Uchizono Company has toured throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Asia and Australia and has created work for notables Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright, Paula Vogel, MacArthur Fellow, David Hammons, and neurologist/writer Oliver Sacks.
In 2011, after decades of critically-acclaimed dance works that toured nationally and internationally, Donna Uchizono was identified by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Dance Heritage Coalition as a master choreographer whose works require preservation. Donna Uchizono Company received a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts award for Phase 1 of the archival and preservation of her work.
In addition to being a Unites States Artist, Guggenheim Fellow and a “Bessie” award winner, Uchizono has been recognized by many awards including United States Artist Award in dance, an Alpert Award in Dance, Rockefeller, the National Dance Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital Foundation, Altria Group, Inc., the Jerome Foundation, Dance Magazine Seed Grant, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Arts International, Foundation for Contemporary Performance, Metropolitan Life Foundation/ADF Commission, the National Performance Network, the Suitcase Fund, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Greenwall Foundation, Meet the Composer, and the Bossak Heilbron Charitable Foundation. Uchizono has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and five New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.
Learn moreDorothée Munyaneza (Marseille, France) is a singer, writer and choreographer who spent her childhood in Rwanda. Her style of creating and performing on stage is directly inspired by what life has so intensely given her. Her artistic research draws from the diversity of her cultural heritage but more so by her appetite for encounters. In all her projects, the human dimension is especially of great importance. Her artistic curiosity and interest for a dialogue between music and other modes of expression blossomed through her participation in François Verret’s shows. In 2013, she created Compagnie Kadidi to start developing her own work, including “Samedi Détente,” her first work as a choreographer which has been presented 100 times touring all over Europe and in the USA.
Learn moreSeattle’s [self professed] hottest postmodern nightlife performance duo, Drama Tops was born of the artistic partnership of Elby Brosch and Shane Donohue. They began making work together seven years ago with the creation of a solo on two bodies. The dynamic between their trans body and cis body has created beautiful moments of frustration, competition, tenderness, and comedy. Drama Tops blends the worlds of nightlife and concert modern dance to create an interesting and unique blend of accessible and funny modern dance. You may have seen Drama Tops perform their smash hit Boys! Boys! Boys!, presented by Velocity Dance Center’s Made in Seattle program, or their self-produced show, Drama Tops, this is for you at Washington Hall in Seattle. Other performances include NW New Works Festival presented by On the Boards, Seattle, WA; Family Meal and Catharsis at Kremwerk, Seattle, WA; Heels! at Cha Cha, Seattle, WA; High F@ggotry, Seattle, WA, and more.
Learn moreDrew Michael was born in Bethel, Alaska, and raised in Eagle River, Alaska. He started his art career at the University of Alaska Anchorage in a carving class with Joe Senungetuk in 1997. From there, his practice has developed through the study of other artists' work and through his own experience in trial and error. He has learned under the guidance of Kathleen Carlo and Larry Ahvakana in Anchorage, AK.
His art is deeply influenced by the people and events he has encountered in his life. Currently, his work uses imagery of religious iconography blended with traditional mask making with the hopes of bringing to light different ways of healing. His work is created with a focus on using new materials and combinations of mixed media. He uses carving as a form of expression, to draw understanding and compassion from within, and is constantly using new materials to broaden the form of his work.
"With everything I create I aim to exemplify my thoughts on how our humanity exists within this world, emotions about my relationships with others, perceptions of energy in all things and the constant acceptance into balance. As I learn about my own path I blend my traditional knowledge with everyday living experience and somehow try to connect with that ancestral wisdom that I see us all having within and around."
Learn moreMiller & Shellabarger create artist books and public performances that examine queer identity, politics, and displays of affection and intimacy. They are recipients of a 2008 Artadia Chicago Award and a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award. Together, Miller & Shellabarger have presented their projects at venues across the United States and at art fairs including Volta in Basel; Switzerland; NEXT in Chicago; NADA in Miami; and the Affair at the Jupiter in Portland, Oregon. The two artists also maintain separate artistic practices. Miller & Shellabarger are represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago, where they live and work.
Selected Press
Run, Don't Walk, Carlos Suarez de Jesus, Miami New Times, September 17, 2009.
Learn moreDylan Mira is an artist moving between video and text, recording how language makes bodies within the limits of representation and the thickness of time. Her recent projects have been presented at Performa, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles Nomadic Division, and Human Resources. She holds an MFA in New Genres from University of California Los Angeles and a BFA in Video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Learn moreEast Rodeo has recently become popular in the European experimental sound scene under the leadership of the Sinkauz brothers—Alen and Nenad—who were born in Pula and formed the band while studying musicology in Italy. Since the release of their third album, Morning Cluster, they have been noticed by important critics, and have gained the affections of their audiences. At the same time, the brothers Sinkauz also work in the theater, but all too rarely.
Learn moreEd Bourgeois is a theater artist of mixed—French, Iroquois, Algonquian, Italian, Scottish, diseased, orphaned, alcoholic, KKK, displaced and runaway—heritage. His Alaska Native Playwrights Project trained 32 Native playwrights from 2010-2013. Bourgeois’ plays have been included in Native Voices at the Autry’s Short Play Festival: Trail Trees; and Backstage, Blue Moon, which won the 2016 Von Marie Atchley Excellence in Playwriting Award. River of Blood was workshopped at Autry’s 2018 Playwrights Retreat and Native Earth’s 2019 Weesageechak Festival, received staged readings at LaJolla Playhouse and Oklahoma City Native American New Play Festival, and was a Semi-Finalist for the 2019 Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Through papier-mâché, recycled cardboard, and improvisational comedy, he’s working to disrupt family trauma and pass down good stories to his grandchildren.
Learn moreEdie Tsong received her MFA in ceramics from Louisiana State University. Telecommunity Portrait was recently presented as part of Bay Area Now 4 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Her video Thank-you America was recently on view in April Meetings: A Festival of Expanded Media in Belgrade, Serbia. She has performed collaboratively with Pete Kuzov in the EnterActive Language Festival in Portland, Oregon, for the past three years. Tsong has held residencies at Women’s Studio Workshop in New York, the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado and the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program in Roswell, New Mexico.
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