It's happening again*! PICA's 2015 Time-Based Art Festival is here, and you still have four more days to immerse yourself in some of the most innovative art this city (and so many other cities!) has to offer. Here are the highlights from TBA's first week:
Given our current political climate, with the Kim Davises of the world so into using "religious freedom" as an excuse to deny basic rights to LGBT couples, we'd be remiss not to mention one of TBA's big openers, Holcombe Waller's Requiem Mass: LGBT/Working Title, a large-scale choral piece honoring members of the LGBT community who've been subjected to religious persecution. Photographer Briana Cerezo captured some amazing images of what PICA Artistic Director Angela Mattox has called "a pretty epic piece."
As you can see, she wasn't exaggerating:

- Briana Cerezo
- Holcombe Waller's Requiem Mass: LGBT/Working Title

- Briana Cerezo
- "A pretty epic piece." You don't say!
"The hard panned squiggles and lightning strikes of pings and reports shot right to my central nervous system." That's how Robert Ham described Battles' Tyondai Braxton's Sunday night performance at Lincoln Hall. Don't worry, it was worth it. "You are meant to reckon with the discordance and the beauty within each spark and pop coming out of the speakers," he continues.
Jenna Lechner took in crowd fave Ten Tiny Dances, from dancer/choreographer Mike Barber, which lived up to its reputation as a TBA mainstay with performances alluding to everyone from Beyoncé to Yves Klein.
I've seen Keyon Gaskin's performance work—which addresses drag, blackness, and curtain speeches, among other things, and has been known to draw some pretty intense reactions from audience members—but I don't think I quite understood its power until I read the last line of Thomas Ross' writeup of one of Gaskin's appearances at TBA. "[T]he fear Gaskin makes us feel has little to do with what he’s going to do to us," writes Thomas. "We’re afraid of what we’re doing to him."
We'll continue to update the Mercury's TBA blog as the festival continues. Up next: Michelle Ellsworth's Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome, Amy O'Neal's Opposing Forces, Beacon Sound Night at the Works, TBA's visual art offerings, and more!
*to be read in an ominous Giant from Twin Peaks voice