PICA's Time-Based Art Festival launched last night, with nighttime programming the Works bringing Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks to the Redd in inner Southeast for a free show, and the opening reception for TBA's visual art component, Pictures of the moon with teeth, at 2500 NE Sandy. Tonight, the fest's in full force, with Holcombe Waller's probably-going-to-be-legendary Requiem Mass: LGBT/Working Title, a piece combining choral music, religious ritual, and conceptual art into a memorial for members of the LGBT community persecuted in the name of religion. Keyon Gaskin will also perform Its not a thing at BodyVox Dance Center.

TBA brings back major art-school flashbacks for me, from its attendees' choices in fashion to PICA's nontraditional choices in spaces. Last year's Fashion Tech got crowded and sweaty fast, but it was also set up so that you could wander around, taking in Jennifer West's Flashlight Filmstrip Projections and other installations further away from the Works' mainstage action. This year's space, the Redd, at SE Salmon and 9th, made for an odd, slightly too-crowded venue for Thursday night's Stephen Malkmus show. The space is all industrial concrete that's the perfect blank canvas for the Works, but the stage is at the end of a narrow section that fills up quickly. At Thursday night's show, it was difficult to see much of anything if you weren't at the very front. It's possible that there's no good way to ensure decent visibility when you utter the words "FREE STEPHEN MALKMUS SHOW WAREHOUSE PORTLAND," and perhaps crowds will be a bit thinner for future Works shows. But last night's show was too packed for me to do much more than wait until Malkmus played "Cinnamon and Lesbians," then hit the outdoor beering and smoking zone to take in the normcore outfits on display, which, all told, isn't a bad way to spend an evening.

Tonight, a punk feminist sensibility comes to the Works in the form of General Sisters and the Feminist Art Gallery. Watch this space for more updates from Mercury writers embedded among TBA's reliably chaotic wonder.