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