Right now, Kristan Kennedy - our lovely Visual Arts Program Coordinator - is off in New York City, visiting galleries, studios, and festivals to soak up the New Year in art. Read on for the second part of a photogenic insight into the mind of one of our curators:
Oh my aching feet!
I can't see much, my peripheral vision has been cut off by the giant parka hood that I must keep zipped up at all times. It is bone-chillingly cold out here. Even with my blinders on I have noticed people here seem to be proclaiming their inner desires on the street. The other day I saw a giant scrawl that said, "Anthony I need your love now." And then there was this gem.
Speaking of trends... Most of the artists I have been visiting this trip are women. This comes right on the heels of the news that, for the first time ever, there are equal percentages of male and female artists selected for this year's Whitney Biennial. I did not seek out women artists in particular, they are just everywhere! My visits have taken me to DUMBO and Bushwick and LES and Long Island City and Chinatown and Chelsea. My new years resolution to keep studio visits to thirty minutes has quickly been tossed out. How do other curators do it? I hear stories of visits where stone faced curators enter, zip their lips, make the artist sweat, and turn on their heels without so much as a "thank you." Or others who visit seven artists in one afternoon. Do they have a magic flying carpet? Have you ever tried to get from one side of Brooklyn to the other. JEESH!
Right now, Kristan Kennedy - our lovely Visual Arts Program Coordinator - is off in New York City, visiting galleries, studios, and festivals to soak up the New Year in art. Read on for a photogenic insight into the mind of one of our curators:
I spend about a month in New York every year. It is a self imposed sabbatical and a working vacation. It is during this time that I settle into the sidewalk, finding comfort in the canyons created by tall buildings on either side. For the first week I stay way, way, way, way out in south Brooklyn, in a nameless neighborhood past the newly hip Ditmas and before Sheepshead Bay and Coney Island. This is where I grew up, and this is where I come to look at the beautiful noses and beautiful wares and beautiful handwritten signs of my beautiful people.
Junk, Cookies and Cabbages on Kings Highway, Brooklyn NYEven though I have just about had my fill of Russian elegance and promise myself that I will rage on New Years in the City, I get an invitation to go to the country, and I take it. The city is going nowhere fast and, when I return, I suspect it will be waiting for me. I head up to Hudson, NY. My friends house is a work of art, with every surface covered in some fantastic pattern, and every possible assemblage of this-and-that; the best kind of installation. They have Portland baristas here now, and Marina Abramovic is rumored to be opening a performance space soon. Other than that, there is snow and there are antiques and there is lots of old upstate glamor. We run through the streets at midnight, it is a good time.
Keith Crowe (Co- Founder and Former Owner Operator of Portland's Half and Half ), Illustrator Brent Johnson (formerly of Motel Gallery), and me in Hudson, NY.
Last week, PICA's Victoria Frey was in New York, attending the Under the Radar Festival with Jessica, Kristan, Erin, and Cathy from the PICA team. We posted her day one wrap-up last week, and now we share the run-down from her breathless weekend trying to catch as much art as she could:
Friday starts later because I skip out on the APAP Conference morning sessions. I have time to catch the Urs Fischer show at the New Museum. Really interesting. He photographed the walls, the ceiling, and all the details of the 3rd floor gallery and made wallpaper to cover the space as itself. A lone melted piano sculpture sits in the middle of the room. The 2nd floor gallery is installed with his mirrored cubes.
I walk all over the Lower East Side, the Bowery, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Orchard Street on my way to Brown restaurant on Hester. My first show is Chekov Lizardbrain by Pig Iron Theater from Philadelphia. Good production and accomplished actors. Great characters and ideas but it somehow does not all come together for me. I sit with David Henry from Boston, and we have the same schedule, so we decide to travel together. We walk up toward our next show, the Richard Maxwell piece at PS122 called Ads. We end up nearly sprinting to make it as I lead David the long way there. This pace, the sense of adventure and the camaraderie are what make the festival format so much fun.
Next we have to get all the way to 3LD in the financial district for Gin&"It" directed by Reid Farrington. This is a work-in-progress that will premeire at the Wexner in March and is based on Hitchcock's Rope. It's an inventive work based on a great film - I would love to see the finished work.
Now back uptown to the public for the late show at the lounge. Each night I have told myself that staying up really late is also part of the experience but tonight I am too tired to stay past 1. Kristan is crashing at our hotel tonight so there may be a slumber party after all.
Wednesday kicked off the Sixth Annual Under The Radar Festival (UTR) in New York, and it just so happens that a good half of our staff has flown out to catch the shows. Maybe it has something to do with the annual APAP Conference taking place this weekend, and maybe (just maybe), it's because we love UTR Artistic Director (and past PICA Guest AD) Mark Russell. Still, the real reason to be in New York this week is for the incredible lineup of contemporary performance converging at the Public Theater.
UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL 2010 from UTRFestival on Vimeo.
Along with TBA, Under The Radar is one of the few US festivals presenting consistently engaging and genre-bending contemporary performance. For PICA fans, a lot of the names will sound familiar; past artists include Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Superamas, and Mike Daisey, and this year alone, you can catch Philippe Quesne/Vivarium Studio, Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, and MK Guth. With over 20 shows running on some days, UTR is a wild and intense burst of theater.
After the jump, read a first-day dispatch from PICA Executive Director Victoria Frey...
robbinschilds perform C.L.U.E. at TBA:09. Photo: Carole Zoom.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has awarded PICA a $100,000, 2-year grant in support of the 2010 and 2011 Time-Based Art Festivals. This grant comes in recognition of PICA's cross-disciplinary programming and community engagement.
According to the Foundation's website:
"Over the past seven years, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art has secured a prominent place in the public imagination by curating one of the most dynamic multi-disciplinary events in Portland, the annual Time-Based Art Festival (TBA)."
"...Perhaps most impressive of all, however, is the way TBA manages to activate public, non-art spaces that bring the city into the Festival and the Festival into the city. This past year, the Festival's late-night programming and ON SIGHT visual arts installations were both staged in the re-purposed Washington High School, and Australia's Back to Back Theater performed its riveting Small Metal Objects to an audience wearing headphones in the middle of a bustling outdoor lunch crowd in Pioneer Square. By presenting work in diverse neighborhoods and alternative spaces, PICA is able to engage broad, new audiences in contemporary art."
This assessment was shared by TBA:09 artist Antoine Catala, who described his Festival experience by saying that,
"TBA is unique in the US, because it encompasses multi-disciplinary forms of art that lead to natural cross-pollinations. It felt like the whole city mobilized around PICA, because the festival gathers so many volunteers and so many events in a short period of time. The whole experience felt like an amazing communal effort."
We are honored to be the only Foundation award recipient in the region, and are excited to apply this funding towards another two years of leading-edge programming!
About the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
The Foundation's objective is to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process by encouraging and supporting cultural organizations that in turn, directly or indirectly, support artists and their work. The Foundation values the contribution these organizations make to artists and audiences and to society as a whole by supporting, exhibiting and interpreting a broad spectrum of contemporary artistic practice.
The primary focus of the Foundation's grant making activity has been to support the creation, presentation and documentation of contemporary visual art, particularly work that is experimental, under-recognized, or challenging in nature.
For more information, please visit the Warhol Foundation's Awarded Grant's Page.
You could argue that an idea has truly gained traction when it boasts its own Wikipedia page. Or, perhaps, when it is accredited as a degree. For that matter, being the target of a satirical anti-movement seems as sure a sign as any that you've really made it. If any of these can serve as accurate benchmarks, then it's safe to say that "Social Practice" has taken off as an artistic discipline over the last decade.
Now, go ahead and add "dedicated conference" to the list of qualifiers for success.
This Spring, Portland will play host to theOpen Engagement Conference, a free, three-day convergence of ideas and social practice art. Run by Jen Delos Reyes and our friend Harrell Fletcher, in conjunction with the MFA Monday Night Lecture Series, the conference will debate the assumptions and intentions underpinning social practice. Attendees will be invited to immerse themselves in the full conference experience by hosting guests, collaborating on new work, and sharing meals. In part, the conference itself will become a social practice project.
Sound interesting? Well, we thought we'd pass along a final call for you to submit your conference ideas.
You are invited to contribute to Open Engagement: Making Things, Making Things Better, Making Things Worse by submitting your projects, performances, tours, presentations, or panel ideas. Other formats are also welcomed. You are encouraged to think of ways to connect peers and colleagues at this conference, connect and engage a greater community and work across disciplines.
All interested individuals are encouraged to submit proposals. This conference is not exclusive to artists.
Part 1: Propose a project, paper, performance, discussion, intervention panel (or other format) that relates to the theme of the conference (500 word max).
Part 2: Write a short bio (100 words or less).
Part 3: Fill out the brief questionnaire and application form. We want to help you make interesting connections at this conference, and this will help us facilitate that.
DEADLINE:
January 15, 11:59pm 2010 (Pacific Standard Time)
And a few of our events from the second half of 2009
A letter from Cathy Edwards, TBA:09 and TBA:10 Guest Artistic Director
As fall settles in and we gather sustenance for the winter ahead, I hope that you stored away a lot of energy from a complex, textured, and physically charged TBA:09! I loved the candy necklaces that laced the Festival, the vast dream landscapes of America conjured for us, the geodesic domes and caves that provided opportunities for reflection, and the actors and dancers who broke into song. And each night, I relished coming together in Washington High School to share the Festival experience with an engaged, opinionated, and adventurous cross-section of Portland.
The air is turning cold and PICA's artistic staff is traveling far and wide, visiting artist studios and rehearsals in Portland and around the country. We are unpacking the boxes of DVDs we've received in the mail, doing our homework, and having lots of conversations, both brainy and brawny, that will result in the tremendous energy of ideas and bodies coming together for TBA:10. So, what are we thinking about for next year? A Festival that will be full of visceral euphoria and that will reflect on the big topics of our time. We are not shy about making a statement and we will assuredly create a Festival that adds something truly unique to the Portland landscape. To begin with, we are thinking about love, war, lies, supermen, magic, youthful fantasy, and female icons, just to name a few of our big ideas!
Some of the artists we have been talking about include The Wooster Group, who will remind us That There is Still Time.... Brother, in a new project directed by the legendary Elizabeth LeCompte that collides the 1959 film On the Beach with Paris Hilton, Iraq war imagery, and an Ohio fort in the 1700s; John Jasperse, whose new work is called Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking and Flat-Out Lies; and Maria Hassabi, who investigates feminine iconography in Solo/SoloSHOW. Plus, you can expect a return visit from perennial favorite Reggie Watts, an encore performance by Tarek Halaby, and lots more theater, dance, music, and visual arts that will have us sit up straight in our seats and then talk late into the night at the WORKS.
It's an incredible journey to put together a festival of the breadth and depth of TBA, the culmination of PICA's year-round efforts to bring contemporary art to Portland. During the year, PICA hosts lectures by emerging artists, provides artist residencies, and devotes resources to commissioning provocative new work. These activities energize Portland's creative culture and, more than ever before, we rely on your curiosity, opinions, and participation. Join our community by becoming a member or renewing your support, contributing financially, and establishing a stake in what we do all year round. I hope that you'll join us as we build PICA's energy for the coming year.
Cathy Edwards
Guest Artistic Director TBA:09 & TBA:10
PS: Download the full PDF version of our year-end newsletter to read a letter from Artistic Director Cathy Edwards and be the first to browse the PICA Shoppe including limited edition artworks by past PICA and TBA artists.
Photo Credits: July: P1C4 PICA 14th Birthday Party, photo: Point Juncture, WA. August: Mike Daisey THE LAST CARGO CULT: A Workshop of a New Monologue, photo: Mike Daisey. September: TBA:09 The Seventh Annual Time-Based Art Festival, Miguel Gutierrez photo: Wayne Bund. October: Diana Szeinblum Residency and In-Progress Showing, ALASKA photo: Jazmín Tesone. November: Philip Glass with Portland Opera and Northwest Film Center, photo: Philip Glass. December: Prints for PICA Printmaking Marathon and Art Sale, photo: Calvin Ross Carl.
Just some of our first six months of 2009 programming
A letter from Victoria Frey, Executive Director of PICA
This past year we saw the personal, professional, and cultural lives of our community turned upside down. Amid this uncertainty, PICA's commitment to remain a vital, provocative, and fiscally responsible organization never faltered, and our devotion to supporting the art and the artists who will be the enduring voice of our time was steadfast.
As we budgeted for 2009, we made difficult reductions in our programming and administrative budgets, running lean on the backs of staff and volunteers whose passion and selflessness are unmatched. We made these cuts with an eye not just toward survival, but longevity. And in spite of these reductions, we celebrated a great year of programming. We skated around Oaks Park with local composer and musician Ethan Rose, laughed and cried with Holcombe Waller, and celebrated our 14th Birthday with a trio of local bands.
We created a tremendous community in and around the old Washington High School for TBA:09. We mingled and shared the bounty of our local food on the WHS lawn for the Labor Day picnic, we explored and delighted in Fawn Krieger's National Park, and stayed up late at THE WORKS. We gathered for important and exciting new work from Miguel Gutierrez, who wowed us with the world premiere of Last Meadow; Erik Friedlander, who accompanied his autobiographical piece Block Ice & Propane with masterful strokes of his cello; and Raimund Hoghe, whose stunning choreography has been lauded around the world but never before seen in the United States until he stepped onto the stage of the Newmark. We rounded out the year with a two-week residency by choreographer Diana Szeinblum, who gave a workshop for local dancers. At the end of her residency, she presented a work-in-progress showing of a new piece that PICA commissioned her to develop.
As 2009 comes to a close, and we head into a new year that will continue to test our mettle as a nimble and entrepreneurial arts organization, your year-end donation makes a defining difference. We need to raise $30,000 from individual donors to counterbalance a two-year trend of decreased individual donations and corporate sponsorships. Our goal is practical, responsible, and achievable. If we meet this challenge together PICA will kick off 2010--our 15th year--with the ongoing financial stability we have all worked so hard to achieve.
Great civilizations are measured not by the rise and fall of businesses or the changing tides of commerce, but by the art that distills the tenor of the time and the spirit of the people. Our world is marked by upheaval and uncertainty, and the art that is being created today is challenging, reflecting that anxiety. PICA is the loudspeaker--the megaphone--that allows the voices of contemporary artists to carry across distance and time.
At PICA, our challenge is to balance our ambitions and dreams with economic realities. But it is up to you to define those realities; that is your challenge. This letter is in your hands because you've joined us and witnessed the passion of these times on our stages, screens, and gallery walls. These moments have the power to change your life and challenge your thinking.
Victoria Frey
Executive Director, PICA
PS: Download the full PDF version of our year-end newsletter to read a letter from Artistic Director Cathy Edwards and be the first to browse the PICA Shoppe including limited edition artworks by past PICA and TBA artists.
Photo Credits: January: Ethan Rose OAKS CD Release, photo: Adam Porterfield. February: PSU Monday Night Lecture Series, photo: Edgar Arceneaux. March: Holcombe Waller and the Healers Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest, photo: Lucas Balzer. April: TADA! The Annual Gala, photo: Jeff Forbes. May: PICA HEART NYC with Ace Hotel and PAPER Magazine, photo: culturebot. June: Washington High School: load in and build out begins, photo: Kenneth Aaron.
By Eve Connell
Creativity and Collaboration: An Evening with Philip Glass
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Kridel Ballroon at PAM
Listening to Philip Glass last Tuesday night, before Portland Opera's Orphée production this weekend, was indeed a tremendous way "to give us as an audience and a community the opportunity to see how a brilliant artist works." Glass covered his influences (art house movies, Paris), collaboration with filmmakers and other artists (Errol Morris, Godfrey Reggio, Chuck Close), his experiences and initial prejudices with working in film (the missing element), but actually spent most of the evening presenting the Jean Cocteau trilogy that fueled some powerful, magical work.
Through a critical discussion of film, Glass offered us "earth, wind, and fire, the elements that make the art" - text, image, movement, music (accepting audience as the fifth element in this line up). The one big negative in film, he duly noted, is that "compared to dance, to theater...it's not an interpretative art. Film is definitive." He explained that all interpretations of a film remain intact, no matter how many times the piece is remade. "It's more or less the same every time you see it." The missing element? "The ability for other teams of people to take work and reinterpret...works live in a container they can't break out of." But, these works also take on a different life due to multiple productions over time. Such a legacy of performances and their interpretations (Glass had us think about thousands of Carmen performances) also allow the work to grow in depth and complexity. "This legacy has its own history and meaning, and takes on a super identity."
The more Glass became enamored and involved with film, and this idea of legacy from performance interpretation, the more he thought about breaking the traditional mold. (Not a surprise.) He realized that the "synchronization of image and music could work...positively." He wanted film to embrace real-time performance which has a quality that transcends any kind of recorded performance. Glass hoped to create or combine this ideal in film and, equipped with what he labels "Cocteau's coherent body of work" (La Belle et La Bête , Les Infants Terribles, Orphée), set out to do so. Why Cocteau? "Everything Cocteau had to say about art and life, life and death, is in these films." The artist's life and the creative process come alive in these stories, heavily laden with symbolism. (Key, horse, rose, mirror, glove figure prominently.) But the power of turning our ordinary world into a magical place is not just merely the power of the artist - it's actually possible for everyone to access the power of transformation. "Cocteau's transformation of the world comes from magic, magic that comes through the power of the artist, and really, everyone." Glass directs: "If we know the five symbols, we can rule our lives effectively."
Glass believes that art is a social phenomenon. That it is collaborative by its very nature. That there's a transaction that happens between composer, performer, audience. "It's not abstract. It's something that happens between us." The Portland Opera presentation of Glass' Orphée offers pure magic via collaboration this weekend and next. The piece combines real-time operatic performance with cinematic performance. Live music is synchronized with imagery. Identities and themes perhaps merge, and certainly play between stage and screen. The mold is broken. We are all in for a powerful treat.
Boy oh boy, the second act brought the PHILIP GLASS!
Posted by: Jim Withington
