ON SATURDAY, September 19, the Portland Art Museum
will open its doors for Shine a Light: A Night at the Museum.
This special event will showcase the work of MFA candidates from
Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice
program—attendees are invited to check out the students’
installations, tours, workshops, and performances. Coming on the heels
of the many participatory Time-Based Art Festival happenings (and the
hip-infused art therein), the event sounds like its echo, though with a
one-night-only, arts walk spirit.
Shine a Light (a Wolf Parade reference) takes on audience
participation from the get-go: In the first hour of the event, the
Kansas City-based portable print-making outfit Print Factory will set
up a screenprinting workshop on the street. Fifty pedestrians will get
the chance to print a fake ticket to the event, and these counterfeits
will allow participants to skip the $12 entry fee (the museum approved
this, so if you’re going, get on it early and get in free).
The event will also court participation through the things we
commonly carry with us. Harrell Fletcher’s Museum Visitor Cell Phone
Photographs takes attendees’ cell phones, mines them for pictures,
and uses these pictures for a photo exhibit. A printing station will be
set up and participants will have a chance to enlarge, frame, and
display their cell pics. Additionally, Jason Zimmerman also invites
attendees to author the shape of the night’s exhibits in Portland
Silver. Zimmerman will ask museumgoers for items from their pockets
so he can plate them in silver, and these gilded everyday objects will
be added to the museum’s English silver collection.
Where Zimmerman and Fletcher offer partici-pation through
contribution, other artists aim to engage their audience via physical
interactivity. Eric Steen curated Art & Beer, asking brewers
from Laurelwood, Lompoc, and Lucky Lab to create a beer based on
artworks displayed at the museum. Attendees will have a chance to drink
up as these beers are premiered during Shine a Light. And while
it’s not drinkable, Hannah Jickling’s Score-O turns the museum
into an orienteering expedition, translating the building and the art
inside (and outside) into a topographical obstacle course.
There’s a whole slew of other activities slated: workshops on the
endangered language Mon; demonstrations on the ancient Japanese flower
arrangements called ikebana; performances based on strange
interactions between museum guests and employees; breakdancing in
Schnitzer Court; live music in the sculpture garden by Tu Fawning and
Atole. It’s an attempted balance between the hip and the informative,
and even if the night ends up feeling like a field trip, it’ll be one
where you get back on the bus having heard some music and tasted some
suds.