Past
As 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
Learn more2014 Time-Based Art Festival
Learn moreCULTURE-HEALING. In this commissioned project, celebrated queer feminist artist Wynne Greenwood transforms the Cooley Gallery into a studio and performance space in order to re-engage her groundbreaking art band—Tracy + the Plastics—in relationship to her most recent experimental video, installation, and object-based works.
Learn moreTexting is tacky. Calling is awkward. Email is old. PICA and TBA are "hotspots" for Miranda July's Somebody project.
Learn moreFor the better part of a century 16mm was the medium of choice for a coterie of artists dedicated to expanding the parameters of what was then called "film art." This medium and its project are now historical. The works that remain are the dwindling trace of a once practicing Secret Society. That society was Cinema.
Learn moreAlgerian choreographer Nacera Belaza will share exercises that seek movements from within the self but remain neutral and open to the space around the body. The exercises propose a free and open movement that feels out the space, seizing it and investing it with action.
Learn moreDropping Gems takes over THE WORKS with a night of sly samples and sultry, dance-ready beats from DJ Rap Class and singer/producer Natasha Kmeto.
Learn moreNacera Belaza’s mesmerizing choreography commands attention with its spare aesthetics and focused intensity. In this one-night-only duet with her sister, Belaza concentrates on the starting point of her work, looking inwards and moving out from the intimate to the surface, until the movement disappears. It is a simple idea, and an endless and vital one.
Learn morePICA’s new Field Guide program will take off during TBA, offering up new avenues for you to explore, experience, and discuss concepts and forms in contemporary dance. Join guest Field Guide faculty Tonya Lockyer (dance artist/educator and Artistic Director of Velocity Dance Center in Seattle) for a casual, guided workshop and conversation about Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People's performance of And lose the name of action.
Learn moreA show performed by its audience. Taking the form of a theatrical “read-through,” attendees will pick up their scripts and navigate a text collectively, to create and perform a community. In the temporary microcosmic society that’s established over the course of the reading, everybody slowly but surely gets his or her role. WE ARE STILL WATCHING is a play in which the idea of “spectacle” slowly shifts to where we least expect it.
Learn moreAt this year’s Festival, Karen Sherman (Minneapolis) performs with set pieces she designs and builds herself, drawing on her skills in construction, while Linda Austin (Portland) performs with sculptural objects by artist David Eckard. Here, they talk about designing and constructing set pieces and choreographing with and for sculptural objects and visual artists.
Learn moreChoreographer Miguel Gutierrez will lead a unique walk through the world, guiding participants to awaken, explore, and illuminate their senses of the world around them.
Learn moreCombining science-fiction, electronic pop music, and audience participation, Boy Band Audition is an interactive performance night of dancing, singing, and imagining life after the future is over.
Learn moreDance, words, and scrap lumber are the raw materials for One with Others, an examination of who we become due to the choices we—or others—make.
Learn morePICA’s new Field Guide program will take off during TBA, offering up new avenues for you to explore, experience, and discuss concepts and forms in contemporary dance. Join guest Field Guide faculty Keith Hennessy (choreographer and TBA alum) for a casual, guided workshop and conversation about Bouchra Ouizguen's Ha!.
Learn moreSince the early 90s, Daniel Barrow has developed a unique style of “manual” animation, layering and manipulating his intricate drawings on overhead projectors. With The Thief of Mirrors, Barrow returns to TBA with the story of a jewel thief who wears the mask of a sad clown.
Learn moreTrue to PICA’s interdisciplinary, artist-driven focus, TBA visual artist Emily Roysdon—whose practice spans independent and collaborative work in performance, installation, printmaking, text, video, and curating—interviews visiting choreographers Bouchra Ouizguen (Morocco) and Nacera Belaza (France/Algeria) on their newest works.
Learn moreTools and tactics for dancing and performance, which may or may not include: doing movements, imagining doing movements, rolling on the floor, touching each other, talking, screaming, seeing, and being seen. Participants will access and build a sense of awareness, presence, decision making, quality, and imagination.
Learn moreInternational singing sensation DUBAIS has decided to end it all and to leave this world. The place in which DUBAIS now exists is neither heaven nor hell; both of those places actually refer to political parties, the Bible was mistranslated. All souls go to one place—the Unterwelt—a place split in two by ideologies and a wall. Using the city of Berlin as a main backdrop, this multi- media modern day pop opera investigates conceptions of morality, divisions of power, and the landscapes of political indifference.
Learn moreKim Gordon (CKM, Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, etc.) and Bill Nace (X.O.4, Vampire Belt, Ceylon Mange, etc.) will bathe THE WORKS in sound and film for the Portland premiere of their new band Body/Head.
Learn moreMoroccan choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen draws inspiration from the writings of the famed Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi to probe the obsessions lurking in each of us. In Ha!, she shares this exploration with her collaborators Fatima El Hanna, Fatima Aït Ben Hmad, and Naïma Sahmoud—a trio of Moroccan aïtas, traditional cabaret singers who are both celebrated and scorned for their performing tradition on the margins of society.
Learn more“Nacera Belaza practices the detail drawing, the imperceptible nuance, the painting of a slow-moving body with a play of light and shade. She is to the dance what Bresson is to the cinema...” —RTBF
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