Upcoming
Using an improvised language of disintegration, How does it feel to look at nothing is an opera of the elemental, of pre-deities, of illusions of containment, and of transitional states. Visionary composer-performers, multi-instrumentalists, vocalists, and life partners Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon co-create this work of composition, improvisation, dance, ritual, and stunning sculptural and visual imagery to explore the forces and conditions that compel life’s emergence, and the spiritual act of meaning-making during epochs of decay.
Learn moreSmall Songs (2025) is a 39-minute experimental short film accompanied by an album, also titled Small Songs. This companion piece includes short-form synthesizer recordings that received a limited-edition vinyl release in 2023.
Learn moreSeattle-based artist Kole Galbraith (Sinixt/Peoria) presents Q'əssápiˀ kəsˁác'əc' snk'əl'íp'. Foraging sounds and textures in the Okanagan and Columbia Basin, Galbraith uncovers latent sonic capabilities and hidden histories. Additionally, Galbraith will be joined by musicians Lori Goldston on the cello and Noel Kennon on viola.
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Past
FEAR - the joint album from Jared Mattson of The Mattson 2 and Ruban Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra - was recorded in June of 2024. All recording and mixing took place in Palm Springs. Mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios in London.
Learn moreJoin us on Thursday, June 18 at 7 PM for the Oregon Premiere of Gasp!, a theatrical performance by Colin Self about queer ancestry, spiritual guidance, and the spirit of play.
Learn moreThis event features contributors to EARTH TO YOU: a compilation of guitar players responding to a short story about a guitar player by Sara Jaffe, as well as a reading by Sara and possible special guests.
Learn moreGet ready to get down at the TBA:25 closing party, Dirty Thirty. This high-energy blowout marks the last official night of the Festival, bringing together artists, audiences, and the entire TBA community for one unforgettable throwdown.
Learn moreTender Revolutions/Yellow Songs is a hybrid project comprised of writings, music, and visual ephemera that tend to “yellow subjectivities” and enact small spaces of connectivity across boundaries of diaspora and identity. The work features poetry and music by Dao Strom, with She Who Has No Master(s) and Fear No Music.
Learn moreJasmine Orpilla (performer and composer) and Asher Hartman (director and writer) make Blessed with Switch, an unnerving hacking and syncing of language as it cuts into the geo-psychical feminine.
Learn moreInebria me is a new, experimental opera by acclaimed LA-based musician and performance artist San Cha that queers cisgender and heteronormative tropes of telenovela and celebrates the liberating power of ascendant relationships. Led by a visionary, bicoastal, queer of color creative team, Inebria me’s live sound score—with influences from ranchera, cumbia, punk, classical, and electro—merges with bold vocal performances and innovative theatrical design to create a powerful political and poetic statement for opera’s modern stage.
Learn moreTBA:24 concludes with an epic (FREE) afterparty at PICA, DJ'd by the legendary SHANNON F (Shannon Funchess)—the "beating heart of dark techno." On September 21, we will come together in the spirit of TBA to dance and sing, yell and laugh, and share in how it feels to be alive. Bring a friend. Dress to impress. Come as you are.
Learn moreOsten Cetto : Four Snakes is a new multimedia performance from Mvskoke sisters Olivia and Celeste Camfield alongside collaborator Woodrow Hunt. Through movement as an offering, live music, film, and tattoo’s relationship to body and shape, the performers explore the relations and abstractions between stories of the Alien, Mvskoke stories of beyond the stars, and themselves as family navigating space. The performance is accompanied by a program of short films from Indigenous filmmakers.
Learn morePart freewheeling comic lecture, part podcast, and part play, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is a thrilling ride down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia and murder mystery podcasts about a case you’ve never heard of.
Learn moreJoin cultural workers Alexandria Saleem and Sarah Farahat to steep in Teta’s tea. This is an invitation to grieve, nourish, and connect with what has been passed down through love and lineage, while remembering to cultivate new futures.
Learn moreIn this performance, artist JJJJJerome Ellis presents portions of their latest project, Aster of Ceremonies. Using piano, saxophone, electronics, and voice, they perform excerpts from Benediction, a devotional song cycle attending to eighteenth and nineteenth century Black runaway slaves who stuttered.
Learn moreRave meets experimental late-night talk show at Club Alive, a multidisciplinary queer performance party. Hosted by Portland artist Kye Alive, Club Alive brings together DJs, musical acts, dance performances, live interviews, dramatic entrances, group experiments, and bizarro house band Special Permission (featuring local musician Wolfgang Black) for an unpredictable celebration of crowd power. How alive are you willing to be?
Learn moreFORCE! an opera in three acts is a Black femme story of interior lives and shared fantasies. What blooms in the shadows of the bureaucratic state, of carceral power? What dreams of a sisterhood with the power to disintegrate walls? Through sound, movement, and shared silences—as well as lessons learned from direct action, mutual aid, and emergent strategies—we put into practice the free worlds of our dreams.
Learn moreThe Things Around Us is a solo, live-looping, music and narrative performance featuring trumpet, clarinet, everyday objects, and darkly humorous stories about other people. Composed, written, and performed by Ahamefule J. Oluo.
Learn morePart beer garden, party happy hour, and part afterparty, BEFORE & AFTER is an opportunity to come together with the TBA:24 community at PICA. These dedicated gatherings bookend the festival experience with a blend of celebration, conversation, and decompression, offering space to grab a drink or a bite before the first performance of the day, or cap off the evening after daily events have wrapped up. With a variety of food and drink options to explore, BEFORE & AFTER is more than a pit stop—it's a time to deepen your connections and extend the magic of TBA.
Learn moreThe 2024 Time-Based Art Festival opens by honoring the Portland tradition of First Thursday with a come one, come all jam session with Videotones, Elbow Room’s neurodiverse digital media collective. No musical ability required—bring yourself, an instrument,* your voice. Come make a sound or just witness our giant, undulating community band.
Learn moreDB Amorin's "long shadow" is a 45-minute soundwalk composition inspired by the desire to return to that which may no longer be familiar to us. The layered audio experience, drawing on the artist’s memories of the Ko’olau mountain range, the transition of season, and the longing for vanishing eras, is designed to trace the path of the MAX Red Line from the urban center of Portland to the Portland International Airport as a soundtrack for the movement towards unreachable places.
Learn more𝐌𝐀𝐉𝐋𝐄𝐒 is a series of sound, silence, and movement-based workshops, audience-participatory scores, and collective reflections that seek to build new governance through individual creativity in relation to each other. Each 𝐌𝐀𝐉𝐋𝐄𝐒 session is generated from a score that situates the body as a site of knowledge, enacting movement and voice from and within the physical place they occupy to explore complex relationships to space. “Majles” is an Arabic and Persian term that translates to council, which can imply government, mourning, or celebration, and in this context, refers to the creative contract as a form of decentralized governance. 𝐌𝐀𝐉𝐋𝐄𝐒 includes transdisciplinary collaborations with other programs, collectives, and beings.
Learn moreThe final night of performances for Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound will showcase Sholeh Asgary (Oakland, CA) and Nyokabi Kariũki (Nairobi, Kenya; Baltimore, MD; New York, NY). Iranian-born Asgary expansive practice includes immersive works, live performances, and participatory scores and uses visual, sound, and collective processes. Asgary will also be facilitating a workshop on Monday, March 6 at PICA (click here for details). The compositions of Nyokabi Kariũki (Nairobi, Kenya; Baltimore, MD; New York, NY) span genres from classical contemporary and experimental-electronic to sound art, pop, film, and (East) African musical traditions. She often performs with piano, vocals, electronics, and with several instruments from the African continent. A single ticket grants entry to both performances.
Learn moreNight Two of live performances for Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound begins with musician and creative technologist Crystal Quartez (Portland, OR), whose richly textured and complex soundscapes for dance music and performances are sometimes translated from data from the natural and social world. Following Quartez will be celebrated New York-based musician and producer Hiro Kone (the alias of Nicky Mao), whose expansive sounds draw from modular synthesis, noise, and field recordings. A single ticket grants entry to both performances.
Learn moreThe first night of live shows for Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound begins with a performance by San Francisco-based Lucy Liyou (San Francisco, CA), acclaimed for their innovative use of text-to-speech vocals in experimental music and piano. Immediately following, Astoria, Oregon-based Nivhek (Grouper’s Liz Harris) will perform a live version of the new project ENGINE, which uses train and car engine noise from Portland drag races, local railway tracks, and synth and other electronics. A multichannel installation of ENGINE was commissioned by PICA for the Remembering to Remember exhibition, on view at PICA through March 19th. A single ticket grants entry to both performances.
Learn moreAs an organization in residence during Remembering to Remember, Synth Library Portland will host multiple workshops open to everyone, offering both introductory hands-on teaching for beginners and instruction on how to create multi-channel sound compositions. In addition to workshops, Synth Library Portland will also provide informal open hours during which all are welcome to play with modular synthesizers and other electronic music equipment, and meet our facilitators.
Learn moreIn this training, Kite and Robbie Wing will guide participants in listening to the knowable and the unknowable: listening with and through nonhumans in the physical world and nonhumans in the unseen world. This training proposes that the frameworks for ethical decision-making must be learned in relationship with nonhuman beings. Half of this training will involve outdoor soundwalks, the other half will involve dreaming and futuring. Listening to nonhumans, on earth and in the spirit world leads to knowing how nonhumans create new knowledge. This workshop is part of Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound.
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