It was once a given that art audiences associated Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) with its flagship fall fete, the Time Based Art Festival (TBA). But due to the pandemic and major leadership changes in 2023, Portland hasn’t seen a typical TBA since 2022 and before that 2019.
Not that a festival named for the placeholder phrase “to be announced” was ever meant to be predictable.
Now in its 21st iteration, TBA returns this September with fresh energy and three (!) weekends of performance, dance parties, conceptual stand-up comedy, and an exhibition of worn down rubble from ancient mountains that may never have existed—to name just some of what is planned. PICA just dropped the festival’s full schedule, and by all appearances, this one is set to be a doozy!
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In keeping with recent years, TBA 2024 is set to take place at venues all over the city, radiating from PICA’s inner Northeast headquarters, reaching into Downtown, and spreading out as far as Performance Works Northwest in Foster Powell.
Interactivity—always an element of TBA—is a major force of the fest’s opening night as music and digital media experimenters Videotones invite the public to bring their own instruments and jam out a cacophony at PNCA’s 511 Gallery. From there, audiences filter forth to explore local galleries participating in the Pearl District’s First Thursday art walk, offering a graceful way to bring the festival into conversation with the wider arts community.
The following night, TBA kicks into high headiness with performances like Sam Hamilton’s experimental opera based on the political implications of global mapmaking, Te Moana Meridian. If that doesn’t entice you, how about a dance performance that evokes a new aesthetic tradition of Black horror? You’ll want to check on Marikiscrycrycry’s Goner. On September 14, a conceptual music performance called Granular Synthesis will likely hit a sweet spot in the city’s weird music niche.
Interested in a deeper dive? TBA’s free “Institute” sessions, scattered throughout the fest, are a great way to hear how contemporary artists come up with these eccentric, sometimes even profound, ideas and turn them into brilliant performances. Q&A fiends, here is your thing.
But if you’re not ready to go back to school with Institute, that’s okay too—PICA has a long history of viewing the party as art. Late night TBA events have worn a number of names over the years, and this year’s hottest night programming is now called “After Party.” Look for plenty of dancing, movies, and drag performance.
So, does 2024’s return to compressed fest form mean TBA is finally settling into a predictable, standardized framework? Of course not! As artistic directors Erin Boburg Doughton and Kristan Kennedy wrote in this year’s program, the fest’s flexibility is a feature, not a pivot, and it’s even more necessary in these uncertain times: “21 years in, we know that there will not be a new normal,” the intro reads. “We will keep changing.”
Find the whole TBA 2024 schedule here.
The Time Based Art Festival will be at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) and various other locations, Thurs Sept 5–Sun Sept 22, schedule and ticket info.
