Keyon Gaskin/PICA Keyon Gaskin performs tonight. You should go see him. 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 […]
Performance
Posted inMovies & TV
Review: Hypnosis Display
Last night at PSU’s Lincoln Hall, vocalist and musician Liz Harris (aka, Grouper) and experimental filmmaker Paul Clipson performed Hypnosis Display for the first time on US soil. The 75-minute, live audiovisual collaboration, commissioned by Opera North, is sourced from Harris’ field recordings and Clipson’s in-camera-edited films that capture naturalistic and man-made American landscapes. The […]
Posted inTBA
Chelfitsch: Ground and Floor
Photo by Misako Shimizu Japanese playwright and director Toshiki Okada’s theater group chelfitsch specialize in a certain kind of discomfort. In Enjoy, which saw it’s Portland premiere earlier this year at CoHo, that discomfort manifested in the way characters addressed the audience. His characters, members of Japan’s “lost generation,” frequently seemed to plead with the […]
Posted inTBA
GERMINAL: A Delightful Microcosm
TBA performances are winding down this week, so it seems safe to say: GERMINAL has to be one of the best performances of the festival this year. GERMINAL is a piece of theater, created by Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort, that probably shouldn’t work. (I’m not sure what I like more: this performance, or the […]
Posted inTBA
A Gossip-Free Recap of “All the Sex I’ve Ever Had”
Photo by Lucia Eggenhoffer At the beginning of Mammalian Diving Reflex’s new show “All the Sex I’ve Ever Had,” the audience was asked to stand and take a pledge not to gossip. For the next two hours, a panel of Portland’s friskiest seniors would describe, year by year, their sexual history. With admirable, impossible candor, […]
Posted inTBA
Jack Ferver Hosts an Artist Q&A You’d Actually Want to Attend
PICA/Ian Douglas “Ask me about ‘Return to Oz’!” “I never wanna stay for the Q&A.” That’s how Jack Ferver opened his TBA performance, “Mon, Ma, Mes,” at Ecotrust last night. And why would he? At worst, post-show Q&As can seem like exercises in cruelty*. So I have to admit, the conceit of Ferver’s performance—an artist […]
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Portland Stand-Up Comedy Photo Album: Live!
Jason Traeger Christian Ricketts Many comics argue in favor of stand-up being an art form; both Patton Oswalt and Kyle Kinane have said as much on their comedy albums. And there is a real case to be made on their behalf. Most long stand-up sets are arranged much like a symphony or a Broadway musical: […]
Posted inTBA
Review: Tim Hecker @ PSU’s Lincoln Hall
PICA/Tracy Van Oosten I’d follow general blogging procedure and start this post with a picture from last night’s packed-past-capacity Tim Hecker set at PSU’s Lincoln Hall, but all you’d see is a black box hovering above this sentence. When the lights went down for the hour-long, no-stops musical experience, they didn’t come back on until […]
Posted inTBA
The Triumphant Return of Critical Mascara: A Post-Realness Drag Ball
Pat Moran Host Pepper Pepper and her clipboard. Critical Mascara: A Post-Realness Drag Ball debuted last year at TBA, and was so well-received that it just might be a new festival tradition, filling the coveted Saturday night spot once occupied by Ten Tiny Dances. The Paris Is Burning-inspired drag contest features extravagant, glamorous, and occasionally […]
Posted inTBA
Macho Dancer
It was a packed house Friday night for Eisa Jocson’s two-part performance of Death of a Pole Dancer and Macho Dancer. The first thing you notice about Eisa Jocson is that she’s an incredible performer—masterful and captivating with her control—even though the majority of her first piece, Death of a Pole Dancer, consisted of Jocson […]
Posted inTBA
Chris Sutton Reads From His Tumblr
Pat Moran Before the main portion of his Re: Disc COVER lecture, Chris Sutton struck a Sarah Palin-like tone, letting it be known that when he writes about music on his blog Record Lections, he’s not concerned about facts, but rather how the songs and albums make him feel. The idea, I’m guessing, was to […]
Posted inTBA
Not About Face: GHOST PARTY!
Pat Moran It’s a Rorschach test of sorts: Fifty adults in a room, all wearing sheets with eyeholes cut out. What do you see? Ghosts, decided most people at Luke George’s Sunday afternoon show, though I heard a few comments on the resemblance to a full-body hijab. The Klan connection is there too, though I […]