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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 2, 2011)
U 28 _______________ SEPTEMBER 2.2011 • th e a rts • Jewel Robinson PRINCIPAL REAL ESTATE BROKER B'ZILLION DOLLAR PRODUCER jew elofthepearl.com jewelrobinson.com WWW.JUSTOUT.COM Make Time For TBA:11 In its ninth year, Time-Based Art Festival ups the ante cell 5 0 3 .7 0 8 .9 5 0 8 B Y RYAN J. P R A D O jewelrocks@gmail.com As the summer event calendar winds down and the clouds begin to creep back over Portland, http://avant2d.com/sites/jewelofthepearl 2211 NW Front Ave, Ste. 101 a flurry of global artists descends on the Rose Portland, OR 97209 City. While for some folks September means office 503.459.4474 MusicfestNW, or that tingly feeling of an im pending Trail Blazers season—providing there Who is Jewel...? even is an NBA season this year—for many see for yourself — more the month means three letters: TBA. No, not the acronym for “to be announced.” The Time-Based Art Festival, now in its ninth outing, has secured its place in the art world, thankyouverymuch. Curated by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) and headquartered once again at Washington High School, TBA is a whirlwind of anything-goes art installations, stage and screen disciplines, once-in-a-lifetime musical performances, com edy, movement and anything— and likely ev erything—in between. Running September 8-18, TBA:11 opens up a crucial avenue for unique, genre-defying artists from around the world. Cathy Edwards, the festival’s outgoing artistic director, explains that it remains critical for Portland to be part of a national and international conversation about contemporary art and performance. “TBA Festival is still the only significant contemporary, multidisciplinary arts festival happening in the United States,” says Ed wards. “Its a point of entry to the [United States] for important international work.” As the first festival of its kind in the coun try, TBA organizers considered how artists test boundaries in many different ways. To Kristan Kennedy, the event’s visual art curator, M Realty LLC what has kept the festival fresh is the swell of Sugarmann’s Lido (the pride is hack) —a slow- new and exciting artists willing to go where motion car crash monument executed by way few dare, as well as the level of engagement o f positioning three Chrysler minivans atop from increasingly larger audiences. 42 inflatable air beds. The performance can be “In its ninth year, the audience is so edu seen at TBA: l l ’s free opening reception cated, they are even more curious, they push Thursday, September 8 at T H E W ORKS on us to bring more, to do more, and they push the Washington High campus. And we’d be the artists too,” Kennedy says. “I always have remiss if we didn’t mention Patrick J. Rock’s loved this line our founder Kristy Edmunds Oscar’s Delirium Tremens— an homage to O s came up with: ‘PICA is about a community car W ilde in the form of an air-inflated, inter using its energy.’ TBA feels like that to me, active jump room shaped like a giant pink el and that is why it is such a force.” ephant, on view for the run of the festival. W ith no consistent, driving theme behind Yes, it’s a jam-packed lineup, one you likely the event, audiences are in “TBA Festival is still the won’t be able to take all in. for a merry-go-round o f But for those who’ve never only significant contempo swirling, often heady but experienced the monster never dull exhibitions. rary, multidisciplinary arts that is TBA, rest assured Outside o f performances festival happening in the that it’s possibly the most by post-drag dynamo Tay engaging affair in Portland’s United States.” lor Mac, or the explosive already rich arts scene. -CATHY EDWARDS, dance vignettes of Kyle “It is fun, it is out o f the A R T IS T IC D IR E C T O R , T B A :1 1 Abraham (see profiles), ordinary, and the artists TBA’s got a bit of everything covered. Andrew showing their work will make you sit up Dinwiddie’s one-man performance piece Get straight and feel alive to new ideas!” says M ad at Sin! channels a 1971 Jimmy Swaggart Edwards. sermon, and will take place in a revival tent on “Plus people tend to fall in love at TBA, it the Washington High lawn (September 13- is just a fact,” Kennedy adds. “Love and art go 17,6:30 p.m.). Following in the one-man mi hand in hand.” lieu will be Mike Daisey and his 24-hour monologue— yes, you read that correctly—A ll TBA: 11 takes place Sept. 8-18 at Washington the Hours in the Day, an epic saga that weaves High School (SE Stark and 12th Ave.). Visual together “stories from every time zone into an art galleries and installations arefree and open to electric road movie for our time.”The daylong the public through Oct. 30. For ticket prices, show effort starts at 6 p.m. Saturday, September 17. times, venues and more, call 503-224-7422 or O ther must-see installments include Jesse visit pica.org/tba. Princess of Pastiche visit Visionl62.com 360 . 944.1911 Taylor Mac tackles the clumsy art of comparison through cabaret B Y E R IN R O O K Maintenance • Repairs • Smiles... For Your Car Taylor Mac is one-of-a-kind performer. But if you feel you must compare Mac to other artists, be prepared for him to turn that comparison on its head and feed it back to you. That’s exactly what he does in Com parison is Violence or The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook, the cabaret performance he has lined up for the 2011 Time-Based Art Festival. More than 20 international publications have described Mac’s flamboyant pastiche o f theater, music and drag as “Ziggy Star dust meets I iny T im ”— a comparison whose virility Mac attributes to the copy- and-pasting o f one reviewer’s “reductive” analysis. In reality, Mac is no more like David Bowie or the ukulele-playing Herbert Khaury than are most members o f Port land’s own Drag Mansion. “[Tiny Tim ] always performed on a uku lele, and because I perform on a ukulele sometimes that’s why [it happened]. It had nothing to do with performance style,” Mac explains. “And then David Bowie, I don’t sound like David Bowie, but I put glitter on my face, and anyone that’s genderbending and puts glitter on their face [is] described as David Bowie or, nowadays, Lady Gaga.” The last comparison seems particularly backward given that Gaga used to attend Mac’s shows in New York. Still, the whole
