Past
Luke George and Hilary Clark reflect on their collaborative process and unpack notions of intimacy and transmission between artist and audience explored in their TBA:14 piece, Not About Face. In conversation with choreographer, dance artist, and professor Linda K. Johnson.
Learn moreJennifer West launches the first of her new pre-post fragmented cinematic environments where viewers are invited into an environment of flashlights, projections, filmstrips, images, and shadows. The Los Angeles-based artist will premiere the first in this series of interactive cinematic installations at this year’s TBA Festival.
Learn moreA Living Documentary is a raw comedic reflection on the trials and tribulations of earning a living as a professional theater artist in the 21st century. Intertwining elements of musical comedy, documentary, and fiction, Hopkins’ newest work intersperses autobiographical storytelling with portrayals of semi-fictional comedic characters, all the while asking myriad questions about the realities of artistic life in New York City.
Learn moreDuet Love performs love, lust, and charged energy. Portland choreographer Tahni Holt returns to the TBA Festival with her latest work that presents coupled bodies performing gendered states around the romantic premise of the “duet.”
Learn moreOur second of two TBA Festival Flights, Seniors, Sex, Spirituality: Art and Social Change references two TBA projects: Holcombe Waller’s LGBT Requiem Mass (a work-in-progress to debut at a future TBA Festival) and Mammalian Diving Reflex’s All the Sex I’ve Ever Had.
Learn moreOlive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad of BodyCartography Project discuss the intersection of movement, empathy, and tension in their project, Super Nature with Michael Sakamota, interdisciplinary artist and Program Co-Director of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College.
Learn moreWith virtuoso chops, rock-star charisma, and an appetite for pushing her instrument to the edge of avant-garde adventurousness, Maya Beiser is the post-modern diva of the cello.” – The Boston Globe
Learn moreJoin public intellectual Madison Moore, (King’s College, London) and Portland's premier art queen, Pepper Pepper, for an unconventional lecture and discussion about their academic and artistic work and collaboration for Critical Mascara.
Learn moreIn this workshop we will use movement to reveal the connection between how we feel, how we think and how we act. We will practice enacting one-on-one performances that travels through public space. As performers’ our score is to be present. Like a therapist, we will attempt to meet our audience’s tone, energetically and physically. This non-verbal experience will challenge both the audience and performer to navigate the city through feeling and curiosity. Using this practice as point of departure we will initiate conversations that reflect on movement, behavior and transformation.
Learn moreCanadian-based musician and sound artist, explores the intersection of noise, dissonance, and melody, fostering an approach to songcraft that is both physical and emotive. Marking Hecker’s Portland debut, this rare concert will be an immersive sensory experience that includes both recent and debut material.
Learn moreOne of PICA's most popular year-round programs gets TBA treatment with five festival Field Guides facilitated by visiting and local artists and scholars. Each small-group session creates context around contemporary performance and a particular artist's social, political, cultural, and aesthetic influences through a pre-show workshop with lecture and discussion; group viewing of a performance; and post-show conversation over food and drink. Online artist interviews and other media supplement learning and engagement. Anyone curious about contemporary art is welcome.
Learn moreSamita Sinha and Tanya Tagaq join Reuben Roqueñi, Program Officer of Performing Arts at the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, to discuss aspects of voice, body, gender, colonial politics, and experimentation with traditional forms in their respective sound and vocal performances.
Learn moreSouth African dancer and choreographer Mamela Nyamza uses dance to access the deepest layers of the body, such as emotions, fears, and expectations. During this masterclass, she draws inspiration from the participants, working from the inside to the outside, guided by her and the participants' inner feelings. Part of the masterclass will be working with empty Cola cans, so every participant is asked to bring two cans. 2 hours, Intermediate/Advanced, Performance/Movement
Learn moreIn this concert for film, Inuit throat singer and famed tour de force vocalist, Tanya Tagaq reclaims the controversial 1922 silent film Nanook of the North. Tagaq’s innovative vocals and deep sense of Arctic life work to create a powerful soundscape of authentic emotion and pulsing breath against the backdrop of the film’s racially charged clichés. In Nanook, Tagaq’s haunting singing is joined by violinist Jesse Zubot, genius drummer Jean Martin, and Juno Award-winning composer Derek Charke’s original film score to frame the vintage semi-documentary of an Inuk family in a revealing contemporary light.
Learn moreOne of PICA's most popular year-round programs gets TBA treatment with five festival Field Guides facilitated by visiting and local artists and scholars. Each small-group session creates context around contemporary performance and a particular artist's social, political, cultural, and aesthetic influences through a pre-show workshop with lecture and discussion; group viewing of a performance; and post-show conversation over food and drink. Online artist interviews and other media supplement learning and engagement. Anyone curious about contemporary art is welcome.
Learn moreVisiting choreographers Meryem Jazouli (Morocco) and Mamela Nyamza (South Africa) will discuss their respective creative practices, current projects, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and cultural outreach and engagement with their communities. Moderated by PICA's Artistic Director, Angela Mattox, with time for audience Q&A.
Learn moreFilipina choreographer Eisa Jocson joins Clare Croft, Assistant Professor of Dance Studies at the University of Michigan, to share insight into her artistic process and technique and the intersection of gender, labour, seduction politics, and social mobility in her TBA performances, Death of the Pole Dancer and Macho Dancer.
Learn moreFrom pole dancing to macho dancing, choreographer Eisa Jocson investigates labour and representations of the dancing body in the service industry and exposes gender formation, seduction politics, and Filipino social mobility.
Learn morePICA's education and public engagement series, Field Guide helps audiences discover and feel more informed about contemporary performance. Through facilitated workshops with visiting and local faculty, focused explorations of artist's work, and connection with other festival-goers, Field Guide sessions include various combinations of pre-show workshops, social outings to performances, post-show conversations, and online interviews and media to more deeply contextualize the art and artists of our time.
Learn moreUnique' has generally come to mean 'slightly out of the ordinary,' but Samita Sinha's voice warrants the true meaning of the hackneyed accolade... mesmerizing. This is fusion… in the best sense: she effortlessly, seamlessly weaves [sounds] yet keeps their distinct flavors intact. —Time Out
Learn moreLos Angeles-based visual artist Jennifer West discusses her newest TBA:14 project, Flashlight Filmstrip Projections, and experimentation with the synesthetic, performative, and material qualities of film with Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Curator at PICA
Learn moreHere was a deeply intellectual experience of consciousness conveyed through physicality. Across the synapses between sensation and thought, the animal and the human, the ecological and illogical, the participants in Super Nature roared, howled, tingled, and leapt, flinging themselves over to feel out the distance and, for a moment, close the gap between the animal spirits and what it means to act naturally. — jkramer.net
Learn moreMSHR presents a cybernetic system made up of hand-built analog synthesizers and digitally fabricated hieroglyphic sculptures. Light, sound, and shape are pulled through nested feedback eddies as the system unfolds. Visitors become part of the feedback cycle, steering its course through their intentional engagement and ambient presence.
Learn moreAs round as an apple, as deep as a cup is a group of projects, perhaps an exhibition, maybe a poem. The presentations are not odes to something… the artists may or may not be poets, but all of it is OF poetry. For sure the installations, performances, and publications produced will rely on poetics… the study of how different parts come together, contributing to the never-ending search for “subject.” I hope that the endeavor feels like this. Like a thing broken apart and then put together again in the mouth—made real by reading it out loud. The projects are meant to behave like the carefully chosen discordant words in a certain kind of poem. The kind of poem that is a problem to ponder.” —Kristan Kennedy
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