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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (March 10, 2017)
Street Roots • March 10-16, 2017 News BY KJERSTIN JOHNSON STAFF WRITER B public access television” usually conjures mediocre musicians and - L unhinged political pundits, TV color bars and bleeding type on a low-quality picture. B u tbased on the scene Saturday night at Open Signal, the future of public access is anything but uninspired. At the comer of Northeast MLK Jr. Boulevard and Grand Avenue, a’ line stretched outside the Portland Community Media building while inside artists demonstrated VR - virtual reality - technology, short films were projected on the wall, and kids posed for photos in front of the studios’ impressive green screens. Small tours exiting from equipment rooms wove in between people mingling in the lobby underneath an immersive art installation called “Annexation & Assimilation: Exploring City Archives East of 82nd Ave,” which traced systemic displacement and inequity through ' video, archives and striking red, white and black visuals. Bright and bustling, the open house announced the transformation of Portland Community Media into Open Signal. PCM is mostly known for providing public access television in the Portland metro area for 35 PHOTO COURTESY OF OPEN SIGNAL years. It was also known for financial troubles in 2011, which attracted news since Justen H am is the executive director of Open Signal, which provides public access TV and educational and outreach programs combining arts, digital media and social justice. a significant chunk of its budget comes from the city and taxpayers. But over the past year, it has shifted and why don’t they know about us already?” at City Hall on (Feb.) 22nd. Our entire staff gears with a renovated space, an increase in So it was an interesting kind of parallel, was there. We testified and presented all staff, and a plethora of new educational and where we are this resource, this amplifier, about the improvements that have been outreach programs aimed at combining arts, this microphoneto yell into that just hasn’t made and our plans for the future. One of digital media and social justice. been as well utilized as it could have been. our new media residents (spoke): Khalimah I sat down with Open Signal’s new The energy was palpable, and the power of Abioto, who next week is debuting her work executive director, Justen Harn, the night the voices in that room were - the energy at Night Lights, which is very exciting. We before the open house. It was clear a lot of also had our board president, who is second- was amazing. I think it reminded us all why work had gone down not just in the past we’re doing this. generation Cuban American, telling the week, but in the past year. Hired in January story of what her family experienced under KJ.: You were director of programs and 2016, Harn has overseen the transformation Castro in terms of access to media, access community engagement at the Hollywood of the organization. From building to communication technology; it was very Theatre as for many years. What brought you community partners - artists in residence cool and powerful. here? with the Regional Arts and Culture Council, KJ.: Was that the City Hall meeting that podcasting with Stream PDX, and interactive J.H.: The Hollywood Theatre was a great was interrupted by protesters? (Protesters experience, and I’m grateful for it, but it got storytelling with Vanport Mosaic, to name a criticized the mayor’s handling of the homeless few - to refurbishing the space itself (he to a point where I needed a new challenge. I crisis, as well as police response to recent am a perpetual fan of the underdog. Can’t was very excited about even the slightest protests.) help i t It’s just part of my DNA. increase in natural light). It was also Seeing what a challenge PCM was was apparent how excited he was not just for J.H.: Yes, yes it was. We were locked in extremely compelling. Coupled with coming seeing everything he and his staff worked City Hall for a moment So just as I was through the space and seeing it in person, I on come together, but for everything that getting ready to get up actually, protesters couldn’t believe that this existed. I was kind would come next. took over the meeting, which was - great! of embarrassed for not knowing more about It demonstrated to us that we need to be Kjerstin Johnson: Thanks again for i t I’ve been in the film and media doing more to reach out to this community. meeting. I know ifs probably been a super community for a very long time. Just the My entire staff and myself, we were all just busy week for you. scale of the space, the sheer scale. Studio kind of like, “How do we help? How do we A, our larger production facility, was just Justen Ham: It’s been a crazy week, but help these folks tell their story? How (can unbelievable - walking in and seeing this it’s been really fun. It’s been exciting to see we) encourage them to usejEyjr platform, this all come to fruition. We just presented Justen Harn, executive director o f Open Signal - a transformed Portland Com m unity Media - is ‘a perpetual fa n o f the underdog,’ committed to fostering public engagement Page 7 gigantic green screen wall. It immediately struck me: “Why is this place not full of people?” KJ.: What is the difference between Open Signal and PCM? J.H.: Portland Community Media is still the 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and nothing about that has changed. We’re building on the legacy of Portland Community Media. But we realized the work that we were doing, the new programs that we brought over from the Hollywood Theatre, that we were a fundamentally different organization with an expanded scope of service. The exhibition programming in our lobby and main space is all new. The artist residency programs are new initiatives of the organization. We’re doing a lot more education programming and a lot more community engagement. More events, more touch points within the community in order for folks to engage with us,'to participate in our services and workshops. So our approach has transformed. We still run all of our cable access channels. We still have all of our studios, all of our gear, and we still offer traditional public access benefits, where anyone can come in from off the street and can take a class, engage with us in some fashion, and have access to our equipment library or our studios. KJ.: How relevant is public access television now? Not just because we have YouTube and the internet, but even regular cable TV now competes with on-demand services like Netflix, Hulu, etc. J.H.: We are at a place now where we have alignment and recognition - board, staff, city government and those that we serve - that television is not the be all, end all. Television is not the technology of the future that is going to unite and connect us. The success of public access and community media was limited by a couple things. One being that projects had to be noncommercial. So communities that were supposed to be served by this public benefit, those that would benefit from monetizing productions weren’t allowed to do so. And I think that we saw with the radical success that YouTube has had, that it wasn’t necessarily the model, it was rather the inability for makers to be compensated. Another issue was this marriage to television. I think that access, at its core, is always meant to utilize the prevalent communication medium of the time. Unfortunately, for too long that was television, and there hadn’t been ample consideration of other communication See OPEN SIGNAL, page 12
