CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

MFNW and TBA:
Why Make Us Choose?

Two of our town’s greatest festivals continue to vie for an overlapping patronage, rather than reschedule.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Sep 26, 2011 at 01:00PM 4 Comments

Hi, Musicfest. Hi, TBA. I know the last few weeks have been hectic for you, but now that the flurry of activity has blown over, let’s talk. What are all these townsfolk doing here with me, you ask? Well, I guess you could call this an intervention. Please, sit down. Where should we start…?

Show of hands:
~ Who bought a Musicfest wristband?
~Who bought a TBA pass?
~Who would’ve bought both, if the festivals didn’t happen at the same time?

Okay, organizers, go ahead and jot this last group down in your “debit” column. Do we really have to keep doing it this way?

We don’t doubt you could furnish myriad logistical reasons why the days you’ve chosen to overlap are the prime, perfect 4, preferable to the other 361 that the calendar offers, but understand that when you indulge your preference for these dates, not only do you make consumers choose, each of your fests also pays an artistic and promotional price.

TBA loses the music war to Musicfest. Rumor has it Musicfest makes its bands promise not to play any other gigs in town for about a month—so TBA, you can’t book the same bands as they do (which excludes some pretty sought-after acts from every genre). Meanwhile, the A-list bands that you do seduce, often don’t draw as well as they would, were they not competing with a townfull of other top acts that a Northwest concert juggernaut is better equipped to promote to its music-minded followers.The normally popular post-punk group No Age, for instance, hauled their lighting rigs and stacks of amps into TBA’s the Works for an almost-empty show. “Musicfest,” people murmured. At TBA’s opening night, I ran into a few local musicians. One guitarist had just finished a MFNW gig and trucked down to have a drink at TBA, but his other 4 bandmates hadn’t bothered with the trip; they were too caught up in the other fest. And despite his efforts, he’d still missed the Vockah Redu show. “I wish we could do both,” he sighed.

Musicfest loses the culture war to TBA. Okay okay, Musicfest, we know you have all kinds of music—but TBA still offers access to more kinds of attractions, including gallery installations, plays, dance performances, and freaky-deaky art spectacles like human candelabras, 24-hour monologues and well-dressed women clawing at clay cubes. When you force arts affiliated entities to choose—you nudge us toward the festival that covers more cultural breadth. Maybe the concert crowds are enough for you…but wouldn’t you like a few more wristband-buyers? Wouldn’t your bands like little more press? Why let world-class performance artists steal any of your bands’ thunder—and why force acts who walk the line between the music and performance worlds, to choose a side?

Organizers, Don’t tell us why, just ask yourselves. If the two festivals still happen at the same time next year, we’ll trust it’s for some very complicated and legitimate reasons. But suffice to say, many of your culture consumers and arts appreciators still won’t understand.

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Tags: Festivals, festival, MFNW, TBA, tba2011, concert

TBA 2011: Miwa Matreyek’s Silhouette Sorcery

Posted by: Aaron Scott and Anne Adams on Sep 20, 2011 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Once Miwa Matreyek steps behind a screen, her shadow self awakes and traverses sparkling other-worlds. If you missed her at The Works last Tuesday, feast your eyes on this video:

Not exactly sure how it’s done? Neither were we.

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Tags: Film, Animation, video, TBA, contemporary, tba2011

TBA 2011: What Mike Daisey Did

What the monologuist’s All The Hours In The Day did and didn’t accomplish within its formidable 24-hour time slot.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Sep 19, 2011 at 02:00PM 6 Comments

1. Did not set a public speaking endurance record—though his audience probably set a record for secular, voluntary attendance.
First, we should say that Daisey never stated an intention to record-break, but he did insinuate that a 24-hour storytelling stint was unprecedented. If you consider Daisey’s convoluted and dreamlike tale, often interwoven with off-topic rants and musings a “story,” then you can probably safely give him the “longest story” win. Unfortunately, another Mike holds the record for longest public speech by one person: Mike Frazier, according to the Guinness Book, preached for 28 hours straight at a Baptist church in 2009. A history-making runner-up is Senator Strom Thurmond, whose exhaustive 24-hour-18-minute no-breaks racist filibuster failed to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Now, Daisey’s audience members stayed put from 6pm Saturday to 6pm Sunday—and that’s certainly rare, if not unprecedented. Qualifiers are such a noisome ointment-fly, we know, but we have to say “secular” to account for the aforementioned Guinness record, as well as for religious cult members, whom anecdotal evidence suggests have long since cracked a one-day record for nonstop listening to a single charismatic leader, whether or not their attendance makes it into any books. We say “voluntary” because we assume that Senator Thurmond’s listeners stuck around out of a sense of duty to their office—not because they hung on his every inflammatory word. Daisey’s audience did hang, and seemed willing to follow him anywhere—to the flagpole for a fire drill, to the farthest reaches of credulity, and beyond the established boundaries of their own sleep schedules and attention spans.

2. Used classic campfire trickery to push “time and place” tie-ins to the hilt.
Are you familiar with the campfire ghost story about the man with a hook for a hand? Despite infinite variations, the teller of this tale always manages to mention: The hook-handed maniac attacks campers just like us, on nights just like this, in places like this. Maybe he’s even attacked right here before, and (most importantly) I think I can hear him coming right now! (At this point, ideally, the storyteller finds some way to create a noise to alarm the audience). In the same vein, Daisey created the sense that his characters were close at hand. Though they started out in New York and Seattle, he eventually turned their getaway car toward “the Duration-Based Art Festival, or DBA,” in Portland. He suggested that they’d snuck into the wings of the theater, and that one of them had pulled the fire alarm (which had gone off earlier, conveniently forcing the audience awake and outside for a minute, but suspiciously failing to summon fire personnel.)

3. Approximated the experience of a long lucid dream.
We’re here—no, wait, we’re at Disney World—and so is David Bowie, only he’s also Nicolai Tesla. And I suddenly wake up as a woman—actually, a hooker in Dusseldorf. By combining characters, distorting timelines, introducing celebrities uncelebrated into the increasingly implausible fray, and creating a vague and illogical impression of an urgent quest, Daisey’s narrative imitated the style of a more famous storyteller: The Subconscious. There were only two possible responses: pinch yourself, or just go with it.

4. Did not maximize Daisey’s amazing gift for nonfiction, nor culminate in a call to action.
Last year in The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs , Daisey recounted the injustices of the modern Mac manufacturing process, culminating in an earnest plea for audience action (Write to Mac, visit a suggested website, change your consumer choices…) But in this year’s performance, Daisey flirted with his trademark anti-corporate sentiment, suggesting that Disney and Ikea were—if not entirely evil, at least not to be trusted—but he didn’t commit. He recounted some of his deep research about Disney, and some of his shallower appreciation for Ikea, without ever spelling out a solvable problem. “But, Mike,” some devotees might cry, “what should we do? Sue Disney for false magic? Buy a generic Ikea-compatible wrench from an anarchist local parts manufacturer?” Daisey didn’t say, seeming to imply that this time we should just enjoy our collective disgruntlement, accepting his gripes as credible, even while we inherently understood that the rest of the narrative about David Bowie and Obi Wan Kenobi was a wild and far-flung fiction.

5. Ominously foreshadowed the narrator’s surrender.
In the closing scene of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the wizard Prospero makes a heart-felt speech that doubles as an incantation, removing his powers and turning him into a regular mortal man. Daisey seemed to read from this page, claiming that he’d split his palm open and spilled his blood on the stones of Disney’s Magic Kingdom, thereby surrendering his storytelling gift. He suggested that he couldn’t even finish the story he was now telling, since performing this reverse-Blarney-stone ritual had already divested him of his gift of gab. Earlier, while toying with a very real gun on his desk and describing prior suicide attempts, Daisey had checked himself: “But I want this too much. To be here, with you.” It’s doubtful that Daisey will quit anytime soon, but the implication certainly added a layer of urgency for the crowd that loved him so.

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Tags: TBA, tba2011, spoken-word, mike daisey

TBA 2011: PNCA Students Describe Daisey

Edited by Claudia La Rocco.

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 19, 2011 at 06:00AM 0 Comments

Have you recovered from 24 hours of Mike Daisey yet?

Or maybe you’re in TBA withdrawal? I sort of am (and Portland withdrawal in general), back here on the East Coast. So it was great to get reports from several Pacific Northwest College of Art students, who, under the auspices of Barry Sanders’ creative writing course, attended “All the Hours in the Day” at various points. Here they are, a collective postmortem of sorts:

3 a.m.: After a hilarious hour spent watching hot vegans sizzling salty thick-cut bacon and also after eating a slice—and replenishing my coffee—I reentered the theater. Let me be clear from the start, this was the only hour that I attended for which I have zero notes. My notebook remains blank.
Mike Daisey began by talking about his unhealthy relationship with his high school girlfriend that shouldn’t have continued into his senior year of college. They both knew the relationship lasted too long. Now time was magnified by the fact that his girlfriend was—unknowingly to him—eight months pregnant. It wasn’t until her friend staged an intervention that she finally told him. They talked and talked for hours. Calm. They decided to give the baby up for adoption.

The picture Daisey paints is tragic. A baby that shouldn’t be. She never gave it up for adoption. Now, years later, he understands why she didn’t. After the pregnancy he describes the depression that he fell into. The nights he lay naked, trying endlessly to pull himself out of his desolation. “It’s the easiest thing in the world,” he says to himself while trying to move.

At this point I am starting to feel the weight of the gun on Daisy’s table. I am starting to feel the hole in my chest dilate. Himself as a character in his story begins to develop a routine. Every night he pulls himself out of his slumber, dresses himself and walks out into the air. It’s summertime in central Maine and he walks the abandoned streets. He walks past the burned down Boy Scout camp continuing toward the lake. Once at the lake he undresses and walks out into the crisp water. He keeps walking until he decides it’s times to float. The dead man float. He does this for hours until he can no longer stand the water. The man on stage then quickly and noisily sucks on his lower lip. As the months wade on in his story, so does the somber tone. The theater feels darker. It’s now late October in Maine. He has to push chunks of ice aside as he walks out into the water. On this particular night the lake is arctic. He can feel his diaphragm retracting as it rejects the frigid temperature. He expects the impending surge of adrenaline as his body tries to fight for the life he is so willing to give to this lake in Maine that lies just past the burned down Boy Scouts camp.
Not a soul moves in the audience. My tear ducts are betraying me. He swims back to shore. I come back to reality. It is now 3:45am and Mike Daisey has already turned his page and walked offstage for the break. The gun remains.

–Megan Savoy

6:32 a.m.: In the quiet at the break of dawn, a voice cuts through the whisper of nature’s white noise, to reveal a message in the style of a sermon. Mike Daisey stands atop the stage located in the Beer Garden of The Works dressed fully in black. Behind him a view of the city; above him the light rain falls atop us all, as he welcomes us to his church. He recites to us the message of the importance of living the human experience. A crowd surrounds him, some in pajamas and comfy clothes and most with rain jackets on. He tells us of why the world can be so difficult; he says it is because it is trying to grind us all down into a certain shape. He explains how our minds create thoughts that mimic IKEA furniture, in that we build it ourselves and no matter how hard we try to build our thoughts into perfection, they still “end up just a little fucked up.” He points to the sky, to us and to the world and tells us of our need to carry on; our worth in being present in our human experience. He notes that he is not perfect and that neither are any of us, but in this time that we spend united we are bringing fear to those who want to break us.

As his sermon comes to a close, Daisey invites a young woman with beautiful curly bright hair on stage and she invites us to sing along to Amazing Grace. One by one the crowd shows the camaraderie that has built from the many hours spent together, by sharing in the song. For some, tears manifest and for others smiles. It is a beautiful moment to be alive; together with humanity. The dawn daylight grows brighter while we all squint and rub our eyes to slowly adjust.

Was blind, but now I see.

— Nina Diaz

6 p.m. When something is able to reach into the catacombs of my thoughts and pull me into the light, it is undoubtedly due to a great measure of control, drama, and honesty. I am moved by genuineness and Mike Daisey truly fills the order. His truthfulness is questionable but his methods are infallible and in the final hour of this performance I genuinely believe that this could be the last time he ever performs. The last 45-minute session is dripping with implications of an ultimate end not only to this monstrous feat but also a violent end to his life by the pistol resting menacingly to his left. The pistol, one hand’s length away from pitting us against Daisey in fear of losing the constant voice that grounds us in some form of a hazy, but compelling, reality; one gesture away from testing our moral constitution. His words are building. His characters are finding their end. The audience is waiting for theirs. The conductor’s crescendo, his opus. The final statement:

“There is not enough time to tell you everything you need to know.”

He Bows.

We cheer.

We sing: Lean On Me

—Riley Huston

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Tags: author, TBA, tba2011, spoken-word

TBA 2011: Mike Daisey’s Tale

A very brief summary of key plot points we were able to retain during Mike Daisey’s 24-hour monologue.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Sep 18, 2011 at 12:00PM 4 Comments

As you may or may not have heard, this weekend TBA has been dominated by monologuist Mike Daisey ’s most ambitious oratory stunt yet: a 24-hour monologue opus. Culturephile checks in at 6-hour intervals to summarize the plot points as they unfold:

midnight
Mike Daisey and his wife Jean Michele plan for a pregnancy, but are stopped short by a miscarriage. They gradually drift apart until eventually Jean disappears altogether. Distraught, and still haunted by a perception of her continued presence in his home, Mike begins to search for her by consulting a friend who isn’t a private detective, but a novelist who writes about being one. Unfortunately, this man is also a pitiful drunk. Meanwhile, Jean Michele (in a part this reviewer nodded through) is racked with guilt about her separation from Mike. A tape (video?audio?) also plays a role.

Some side notes about the Disney empire: Walt Disney was a complicated man who spent his adult life attempting to triage his abusive childhood through the pursuit of whimsy and wonder. Ironically, he sometimes enforced his visions with brutal authoritarian tactics, and routinely sold out his “commie” employees to the CIA. These days, a trip to Disneyland/world serves as a Hajj for a modern puritanical all-American religion. Its pagan parallel is Burningman. In both experiences, participants strive to create and inhabit an otherworldly utopia.

6 am
Okay. In the story, Daisey’s wife Jean-Michele is inhabiting a futuristic dystopia in which he has already died and she’s taken up with a new (female) partner. Though she’s been living in Seattle (which hosts a cracked space needle, thanks to a recent bombing), she feels herself inexplicably drawn back to New York. She plays hooky on her human resources job and embarks on a road trip that lands her at the apartment she and Daisey used to share. She finds a mysterious tape there with a “listen to me” label, but she can’t listen because she hasn’t got a tape player.

Meanwhile Daisey is living in the present when he’s suddenly transformed into a woman—more specifically, he inhabits the body of a German prostitute, jumping into a foreign life already in progress. He likes it okay. Daisey has requested that two sexy vegans fry bacon for the crowd while he speaks; they do, and we eat.

Daisey has been taking swigs of what he assures us is real vodka, and handling what he assures us is a real gun, for some time now. He may be willing to take hostages if the moment demands it.

noon
Daisey took us out to see the sunrise and preached about the inhumanity of corporatized society. He introduced a gospel singer who compelled a reluctant crowd through four choruses of Amazing Grace. There are now two Jean-Micheles: the futuristic lesbian one is still hot on the trail of what she senses will be a transformational discovery. She follows her emotional “GPS” to the central crater of Chernobyl and surveys the wreckage. At this point, she’s also encountered a noteworthy spirit guide, Nicolai Tesla As Played By David Bowie in The Prestige. Meanwhile, there’s a current-time one whose story is continuing simultaneously with her alterego’s, and Daisey’s. By the way, Daisey is now being guided by Obi Wan Kenobi. Obi Wan tells him that he’s the master of his own destiny. Meanwhile, Daisey’s good friend, a Disney imagineer, had a religious awakening when he encountered a cult holding a ceremony at an Ikea store. He’s so distracted by his new resolve to quit his Disney day-job, that he doesn’t notice present-day Jean Michele crossing the street in front of his car. He hits her and has to take her to the hospital. Oh—and we still don’t know what the tape said.

6pm

Jean-Michele shoots Daisey’s novelist/PI friend in the head. Warren Zevon emerges as the villain in Daisey’s recounting of The Shining. However, Warren soon reconciles with Daisey and decides to join him on his pilgrimage to Walt Disney World. (Please note, the guy in the Obi Wan Kenobi outfit, we’re told, is actually sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick.) Dick, Daisey, Warren, Jean-Michele and her new friend the imagineer, all end up converging on the magic kingdom, where Dick leaves Daisey and Warren to their own devices. An unknown Magic Kingdom villain crucifies Warren on a cross and forces Daisey to endlessly narrate a ride, The Carousel of Progress. Meanwhile, Jean-Michele and the imagineer take a monorail to find Daisey and Warren. When they get near, the imagineer agrees to hold the monorail while Jean-Michele performs a rescue. However, because the magic kingdom is on fire and circumstances are so dangerous, she’s never able to make it back to the imagineer again, nor is she able to rescue the crucified Warren. She does rescue Daisey by “killing” an animatronic robot from the Progress ride, and the tale ends when, through a blood-letting ritual on the stones of the Magic Kingdom, Daisey surrenders his storytelling powers. As the story ends, we learn what the tape said: “There’s not time to tell you everything you need to know.”

More analysis pending, after this breaking nap.

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Tags: Review, mike daisey

TBA 2011: Ruhr

Going the Distance with James Benning

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 18, 2011 at 10:57AM 0 Comments

I hadn’t even planned to see Ruhr. I missed the earlier of its two showings and, at this point in a festival like TBA, I’m typically so far past the point of saturation that the heart quails at the thought of a two-hour durational film comprised of seven discrete shots—with the final one lasting a full hour. There’s no way I can uphold my end of the bargain.

But Friday night I ran into Robert Tyree, a thoughtful dance-artist who has been blogging TBA for PICA, and the force of his response to the film convinced me to follow my own advice and check it out.

And … oh my. Thank you thank you Robert.

All the places the mind goes when the eye is still. All the places the eye goes when the mind is still. Ruhr made room for both, plunging into that rich, quiet space where “small” things, things we typically don’t take the time to notice, become big events. A lone man on a bicycle, hustling through a gunmetal gray tunnel. The way a wind kicks up in a stand of trees after a jet passes hard and low overhead. Someone playing piano music on a drab street: familiarity can breed beauty, too.

When the lights rose, someone near me actually gasped. I felt that, too; we had been so fully immersed in something, to have it over just like that felt almost violent. A rupture. Kinda like … well, kinda like it feels to be at the end of another TBA. So long, and yet, already?

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Tags: Film, TBA, TBA, tba2011

TBA Picks: Sunday

No Time Like the Present

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 18, 2011 at 09:57AM 0 Comments

What are you doing? Right now, what are you doing? Whatever it is—well, maybe not whatever but most activities—please stop at your earliest convenience and get yourself over to WHS. There are lots of things still to be seen, and limited time in which to see them before TBA 11 is past-tense.

And if, for some ridiculous reason, you choose to spend your Sunday doing something other than looking at art—well then, God help you. At least you can still come have dinner with us. And, obviously, drinks.

See you there. And, I hope, see you next year.

clr

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TBA 2011: Rachid Ouramdane

Considering our differences

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 17, 2011 at 08:21PM 0 Comments

Photo: Patrick Imbert

“The experience of the piece is not coming only from the stage. It needs the participation of the audience. The contract of the piece is based on the capacity I will have the day of the performance to establish this [relationship]. Not by speaking. Just by giving time.”

That was the French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane speaking on Thursday about World Fair, a solo dance (performed with the composer Jean-Baptiste Julien) which had its American premiere yesterday at the Winningstad Theatre.

I loved him for saying this—the vulnerability and the confidence of it, especially coming on the heels of his having told Cathy Edwards, who was interviewing him at one of those noontime chats, that he wasn’t so sure he had yet succeeded in this establishing, that he was “still trying to figure that out.”

I so wanted to fulfill my end of the contract. I first saw Ouramdane’s work a few years ago in New York, and it seemed that I was pretty much the only person in the free world who wasn’t in love with his work. Taste is taste, marvelously subjective and bewildering—but when so many people whose opinion I respect are raving about an artist who interests but doesn’t dazzle me, I always want a second and a third look to see what I’m missing.

Well, shoot. Whatever it is, I’m still missing it. Ouramdane’s work is accomplished and polished, and he is a gorgeous mover, creaturely and elegant and smart and spooky … but, as with my previous encounters, on Friday I found myself sliding off the slick surfaces of his craft. I got alienated—which can be a really interesting thing to have happen to you with an artist, but doesn’t seem to be what he’s after.

In World Fair Ouramdane sets his body through a process of constant negotiation: with itself, with the objects on stage, with menacing and iconic self-portraits. Again and again he straightens into rigid, martial salutes, the salutes of a dictator, only to wiggle out of and through them. All of this information and history in the body—some of it personal, some of it cultural, some received—and what to do with it? How to live in the present time, the present moment?

At the noontime chat, a woman asked Ouramdane about all of the pain and darkness in his work (World Fair comes to New York later this fall, where it will be paired with Ordinary Witnesses, a work which utilizes the testimony of torture survivors). He took a long and thoughtful time answering this question.

“This notion of pain, which is really present in the world—I’m trying to reach something beyond that…To get to the certain reality of a situation, just to describe the facts are not enough,” he said (he was referencing a Rwandan writer’s approach to capturing that country’s recent history; I didn’t catch the name). “If you are just listening to heavy testimony, usually you are just stuck—the separation between your imagination and the real experience cannot be bridged.”

I stayed unhappily stuck. But hope springs eternal, every time we walk into the theater. Maybe with Ordinary Witnesses I’ll figure out my way over the bridge.

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Tags: Dance, Review, TBA, modern, tba2011

TBA 2011: Big Terrific

A few of the funniest (repeatable) bits from the raucous Brooklyn comedy show.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Sep 17, 2011 at 01:00PM 0 Comments

Illustration: Lindsay Mount

GIRAFFES
I love the TV shows that have animals, and I especially love the ones with giraffes. You see a giraffe, and you’re like, “What ahhh you? And WHAT is that OUTFIT?” Like, they’ve got the high heels, and the lwong eyelashes…it’s like “Whatever you’re doing there, you’re doing it all for your bad SELF.” Nobody knows what they’re doing, nobody even knows what sound they make…I think if all the giraffes were to suddenly disappear, everybody would go, “Well…we never did know what they were for anyway.”

~Jenny Slate

A FART
It happened as I was drifting off to sleep, and it was so huge it woke us both up. I knew right away because the sheets were on the ceiling, and the windows of the apartment had shattered, and outside, cars were turned over on their sides and alarms were going off….

~Gabe Liedman

NACHO PARTY
As anyone who knows me knows, I will never be late to your nacho-making party. You say you’re having a nacho party? Well great; I’m at the front door to your apartment; actually, I just let myself in with a key that I found under your mat in the foyer, after I broke the glass out of your front window with a brick.

Oh, it’s next week? Well that should give us plenty of time to perfect our recipe. I hope you’re not going to pile up all the chips first, and then put the toppings on top—I mean, it’s your party and I don’t want to tell you how to do your job—but you will end up with dried-out brittle chips in the middle, and goo around the sides. You know what? Really it’s sort of our nacho party now.

~Max Silvestri

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TBA Picks: Saturday

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 17, 2011 at 11:06AM 1 Comments

There are lots of decisions to be made about today, folks. Evidence of Bricks is only up for two more days [CORRECTION – the exhibit is up through October …sorry Patrick]. And it’s the final day of stage presentations, with the exception of Mike Daisey’s 24-hour extravaganza, which begins at 6 p.m.

Anticipatory chatter has been growing around Daisey’s project, as well as methodologies for watching. (Some people are picking strategic hours for popping in, others are going to go as long as they can or go in as a team and watch in shifts. And then there are those—you can tell by the mad gleam in their eyes—who are following the artist’s wishes and making a commitment to stay for the whole shebang). Other TBA-ers are plotting how best to squeeze as many performances in as possible.

Good luck, everyone. Have at. And, sorry to complicate matters further—but may I suggest you consider making room in the day for the one formal feature-length TBA On Screen offering? This would be James Benning’s Ruhr. A durational exercise in looking, Ruhr promises to be a stamina-challenging feast for the eyes, and perhaps more. Your second of two chances to catch it comes at 4 p.m. today.

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TBA Picks: Friday

13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 16, 2011 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

So, I’ve been talking a lot about what it means to work as an audience member. But I’m not a total puritan (actually, my idea of working is really quite hedonistic … you get back what you put in…).

And, sometimes, you know, a girl just wants to be shown a good time. Especially a smart good time—one that, should she so desire it, gives her the space to dream and think.

“It’s pure seduction.” That’s how Cathy Edwards described Dean & Britta’s 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests as we slid into our seats last night at WHS.

Yes, yes it is—seduction of surfaces, of images, of sound …. there’s a reason musicians and movie stars get a lot of play, and 13 Most Beautiful plays right into these tropes (really, they’re more like the American versions of Greek mythologies; celebrity culture never changes). The results are delicious.

Of course, the source material is, too: Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, filmed between 1964 and ‘66. For this concept concert Dean Wareham and Britta Philips (formerly of Luna fame and many other cool things, including JEM) have set 13 of them to songs, both original and covers, in between offering wry, low-key narrations. Filled with drugs, sex, madness and death, their selected details encapsulate the lives of Warhol’s subjects—even as those subjects, like all good enigmas, evade capture.

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TBA 2011: Cathy Edwards

Posted by: Claudia La Rocco on Sep 15, 2011 at 05:53PM 0 Comments

There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the arrival of Angela Mattox as PICA’s permanent artistic director—and well there should be. The proof is in the programming, and we’ll have to wait a little while to see how she is going to lead. But her energy and artist-oriented ideas have folks around the festival buzzing.

This doesn’t mean people aren’t sad to see Cathy Edwards go after three years as guest artistic director of TBA (for those curious, Edwards and PICA are parting on good terms; she wasn’t in a position to consider moving to Portland, a prerequisite for the new position). And while I’m sure Edwards is sorry to go, she’s planning already to be back next year—as a civilian, that is…until then, as we approach the second weekend of TBA 2011, here are a few of her thoughts.

On working in PICA’s collaborative environment: “It’s really a set of ongoing conversations. The goal is never to compromise; the more we talk the more we push ourselves.”

On not giving into temptation: “The festival’s really fun, but I try not to pander to the fun factor. That’s one of the tensions in my programming. I’m trying to put together a program that has a lot of integrity but isn’t monochromatic in its feel or aesthetic. The format of a festival is enough of a spectacle.”

On what she’s proudest of: “In all honesty, something like bringing Rachid Ouramdane to Portland, or a Miguel Gutierrez or Meg Stuart … it’s really a risk to bring artists with an uncompromising vision in when they aren’t so known.”

On what gives her pause: “There’s an initial discomfort when it comes to bringing back artists who have already been here. But there’s not a huge group of artists making consistently adventurous and important work—whether it succeeds or not—and those artists needs to be brought back every few years…it’s important for artists to feel they can have a consistent platform for their work.”

On PICA’s shift from guest to full-time artistic director: “I think Angela’s going to be a great next artistic director. She’s really thoughtful, really informed, really knowledgeable. Although in a way it’s sad to say goodbye to the guest-artistic director model, there will be an increased opportunity for artists year-round. The trade-off is worth it.”

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