Poetry Press Week Are you so sad that this year’s Open Season is now closed? Tonight’s first installment of spring/summer Poetry Press Week at Disjecta might—might—soothe the burn. Don’t be fooled by the name: Poetry Press Week isn’t actually a week, nor is it a press. Nor is it (really) like any poetry reading you’ve […]
Artsy
Posted inTheater & Performance
No Exit: Richard Maxwell’s Confrontational Hotel Room Theater
Yale Union Going to a play in a theater requires what poet Samuel Coleridge called a “willing suspension of disbelief.” For the length of the performance, you are often expected and encouraged to forget the fact that you are sitting in a huge room surrounded by a few dozen or a few hundred complete strangers […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
This Week in Art: Off-Brand Superheroes, Victorian Vibrators, and the Death of Music
Quirk Books “Featuring” is maybe a strong word here. Steve Humphrey was charmed by John Morris’ motley collection of superheroes so ill-equipped for their jobs that they disappeared from popular memory. A few standouts from The League of Regrettable Superheroes? “Bozo the Iron Man (1939) was a simultaneously silly-looking and terrifying robot whose frozen grin […]
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Disjecta Announces Big-Deal Curator for Portland 2016 Biennial
Disjecta Michelle Grabner will curate the Portland 2016 Biennial of Contemporary Art. Contemporary arts space Disjecta announced today that Michelle Grabner will be serving as curator for the Portland 2016 Biennial of Contemporary Art. Grabner’s got a hefty resume—she co-curated the 2014 Whitney Biennial and was a senior art critic at Yale from 2012-14. She’s […]
Posted inCrafty
Time, Place, and The State of Oregon Craft
I wouldn’t ordinarily lead with a lengthy quote, but much of the language in the Museum of Contemporary Craft‘s literature on its new State of Oregon Craft exhibit cuts to the heart of my interest in regional products (not just clothes!): “Craft is the stuff of everyday life. It is a tangible rubric for measuring […]
Posted inBooks
This Week in Art: The Who, Being Happy Without Being an Asshole, and David Hockney’s Cross-Hatching
Graywolf Press If you’re looking for a definitive history of the Who’s first decade, Ned Lannamann has found it. He writes of Mark Blake’s Pretend You’re in a War: The Who and the Sixties: “There’s no shortage of Who biographies on the market, but Blake’s level of research in Pretend You’re in a War is […]
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Up Now: I Spy—Art Edition! at Nationale
On Monday, Nationale’s new show, Everything We Ever Wanted, was extended through July 6, and it’s easy to see why. Though the show’s promotional materials tout an interest in the divide between what Lana Del Rey would call “the real and the fehhhhhhhk,” it’s also got echoes of post-net art, and brings an explosion of […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
This Week in Art: Alt Photo, the Aces, Judy Blume 4-Ever
Andy Batt THE ACES! McLendon and Fetters, doing what they do best. This week in art is special: You’ll notice it’s packed to the gills with GLOWING REVIEWS. You guys, with a few notable exceptions (WHY, EL JAMES, WHY?!) we all really liked what we saw and read this week. This does not always (ever?) […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Boom Arts Takes on Title IX in Innovative She is King
Katherine Brook Laryssa Husiak, being awesome. “Are you an angry woman?” an interviewer (Joshua William Gelb) asks tennis champ Billie Jean King (Laryssa Husiak) within the first few minutes of Boom Arts’ new play, She is King. Like almost all of the text in She is King, it’s a question pulled verbatim from a real-life […]
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This Week in Art: Jefferies! Grimm Actors IRL! Space Epics!
Jason Beaver JIM JEFFERIES: Sittin’ on a fire escape with the best of ’em. Jim Jefferies—Comedian Jim Jefferies heads to Revolution Hall tomorrow night. Ahead of the show, Andrew R Tonry talked to him about surviving his show’s cancellation, and what’s up next. “As he is on stage, during our conversation Jefferies seems almost physically […]
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Up Now: 30 Flags at Columbia River Correctional Institution
Know Your City Today, I spent my lunch hour at Columbia River Correctional Institution, the minimum-security men’s prison in Northeast Portland, where artist Emily Squires, art historian Reiko Hillyer, and Correctional Rehabilitation Manager Elizabeth LaCarney facilitated a dedication ceremony and one-time unveiling of 30 Flags, the result of a 12-week art project made by five […]
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Nauseated Face, Man Dancing, Prince: New Emojis are Coming! Here’s Why You Should Care.
Unicode Consortium AT LAST, ¯\_(ใ)_/¯ gets its due. Today, in great Friday news, we’re getting a whole bunch of brand-new emojis! The Unicode Consortium, which is an actual governing body in charge of standardizing our emojis, has submitted 38 new emojis for review, and—WE HOPE!—an eventual public release in June of 2016. That’s a long […]