Past
Interdisciplinary artist Manuel Solano and Roy Pérez (Asst. Professor of English and American Ethnic Studies, Willamette University), discuss Manuel's TBA project and the artist's broader practice across visual art, video, performance, and music, drawing from pop and celebrity culture, appropriation, and personal queer narrative. In English and Spanish.
Learn moreInterdisciplinary theatre and performance artist and Reed alum Tina Satter joins Catherine Ming T’ien Duffly (Asst. Professor of Theatre, Reed College) for a conversation about her creative process and the influences and inspiration behind her TBA performance project, Ghost Rings.
Learn moreChoreographer Faye Driscoll shares her creative process, collaboration with dancers, audience and artist co-creation, and the underlying themes and concepts that drive the Thank You for Coming series. With Rachel Carrico, PhD, Dance Faculty Fellow, University of Oregon.
Learn moreDead Thoroughbred artists sidony o’neal and keyon gaskin discuss process, concept, collaboration and their new TBA performance project in depth with Sampada Aranke (Asst. Professor, Art History, Theory, & Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and Kemi Adeyemi (Asst. Professor, Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of Washington, Seattle).
Learn moreBecca Blackwell shares insights into the creation of They, Themself, and Schmerm, including themes of gender and transition, strategies of humor, and forms of comedy and personal narrative. In dialogue with TBA Guest Scholar bart fitzgerald and Shawna Lipton, Chair, MA in Critical Studies, Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Learn moreTBA artist Morgan Bassichis and Guest Scholar Keith Hennessy talk comedy, queer performance histories and strategies, gender politics, maybe some mysticism or improvisation, and dive deeper into Bassichis' TBA Festival projects. Just a guess. With Keith Hennessy, dance and performance artist, activist, and writer.
Learn moreIn celebration of Pepper Pepper and friends’ fifth and final edition of Critical Mascara: A Post-Realness Drag Ball at TBA, don’t miss this roundtable and mimosa kiki by and for the growing Pacific Northwest ballroom scene. A diverse group of local dancers and performers will come together to get critical and connect about their practice and presence.
Learn moreArtist and writer Will Rawls discusses his durational performance, i make me [sic] for PICA, touching on the range of forms and influences in his choreographic and broader practice, most recently including an attention to "authorship, memory, race, and subjectivity as intersecting monuments in need of constant undoing." With TBA Guest Scholar Lydia Brawner, Curatorial Fellow, Performa.
Learn moreRenowned musical and performing artists Stew and Heidi (The Negro Problem, Passing Strange) discuss the impulses and influences behind the creation of their TBA performance, Notes of a Native Song, inspired by the life, work, and politics of James Baldwin. With TBA Guest Scholar d.a. carter, Assistant Professor of Black Studies, Portland State University.
Learn moreInternationally esteemed choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen (Marrakech) sheds light on the creative process and visual, sonic, and movement elements or Corbeaux, which celebrates the power of the feminine through intensive, intimate public performances in collaboration with several artists from Morocco and over twenty local Portland participants. In dialogue with Angela Mattox, PICA Artistic Director.
Learn morePICA Creative Exchange Lab artists Ntsikelelo "Boyzie" Cekwana (Johannesburg) and keyon gaskin (Portland) exchange thoughts on making critically engaged dance, choreography, and performance that attends to questions of race and the persistence of colonialism and apartheid in artistic and cultural contexts. In conversation with Vivian Phillips of Seattle Theatre Group.
Learn morePICA Creative Exchange Lab artists Dorothée Munyaneza (Rwanda/France) and Moya Michael (South Africa/Belgium), discuss their performance practices, political and personal influences, and transnational perspectives on working artistically between Europe and their native countries. In dialogue with Lili Chopra, Artistic Director, French Institute Alliance Française.
Learn moreChoreographer Alessandro Sciarroni returns to TBA with Untitled, featuring the nuanced repetition, gesture, and durational movement of professional jugglers against a live ambient soundscape. Esteemed Portland choreographer and TBA Guest Scholar Linda K. Johnson invites Sciarroni to unpack the conceptual and aesthetic influences on this meditative experimental work.
Learn moreAli Chahrour shares insights into his deeply layered TBA performance, Leila’s Death, as informed by contemporary choreography, religious ritual, and local tradition in Lebanon. TBA Guest Scholar Maya Mikdashi (Rutgers University) brings expertise in gender, art, and Lebanese politics and culture to an interpretation and discussion of the work.
Learn moreArtist Britt Hatzius shares her process behind the innovative and engaging Blind Cinema, and exchanges thoughts with Darren O’Donnell (Artistic Director, Mammalian Diving Reflex) on their mutual socially engaged art practices and experiences working with children and youth to generate innovative projects for intergenerational audiences.
Learn moreTBA visual artists Dylan Mira, Keijaun Thomas, and Sacha Yanow join curators Kristan Kennedy (PICA) and Stephanie Snyder (Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College) to share insight into the artists' festival projects and discuss the significance of making and curating visual performance art now.
Learn moreMembers of this New York-based, experimental theatre company elaborate on the themes of modern masculinity and desire in their TBA performance, The Art of Luv (Part I): Elliot, in conversation with Kate Bredeson, Associate Professor of Theatre at Reed College.
Learn moreChoreographer Morgan Thorson discusses her TBA project, Still Life, an ongoing installation that processes loss, killing, and extinction through movement and stillness, and features both local and visiting dance artists performing in galleries of the Portland Art Museum. In conversation with Sara Krajewski, Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art, Portland Art Museum.
Learn moreA.K. Burns’ epic four-channel video installation, A Smeary Spot, is infused with a constellation of queer bodies and futurities; feminist theory and sci-fi; dance, performance, and cinematic image; and radical politics and philosophies of space and time. Burns shares the impetuses and influences of her TBA project in dialogue with TBA Guest Scholar Stephanie DeGooyer. See DeGooyer’s essay on A Smeary Spot in this year’s TBA Visual Art publication.
Learn moreFor the first time, we've invited six visiting and local scholars and artists to immerse themselves in TBA as an experimental site for critical inquiry, engaged research, and intellectual exchange with artists and audiences. In this program of brief presentations followed by Q&A, our inaugural TBA Guest Scholars will share their current academic and artistic research, critical questions, and deep reflections spanning disciplines and forms. Catch our our Guest Scholars in action throughout the festival as lecturers, conversation and panel moderators, Field Guide facilitators, essayists, bloggers, manifesto-makers, and resident provocateurs.
Learn moreNarcissister talks performance, dance, video art, photography, and activism across popular and experimental media with TBA Guest Scholar Ariel Osterweis, whose critical research and writing closely consider race and movement in Narcissister’s practice.
Learn moreTBA opening night artist Juliana Huxtable discusses her multidisciplinary practice across music, poetry, performance, and the politics of race and gender with TBA Guest Scholar, Sampada Aranke (Asst. Professor, History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute).
Learn moreFor this culminating conversation, join PICA's Creative Exchange Lab artists will share their experiences and interpretations of the festival and residency, including TBA as a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, critical inquiry, creative research, and community. Moderated by Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Curator, PICA.
Learn moreIn light of rapid economic development in West Coast cities, how are local artists and cultural institutions faring? What opportunities and challenges have arisen? How do race, class, and other factors influence our experiences? How do intergenerational artists and arts leaders recount Portland’s past and imagine its future? What can we learn from other cities’ shifting landscapes? Featuring Victoria Frey (PICA, Portland); Andre Middleton (Black Creative Collective and RACC, Portland); Julie Phelps (CounterPulse, San Francisco) and more. Moderated by Ethan Seltzer, Professor of Urban Studies & Planning, Portland State University.
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