lets ghettoize the arts.

settle in kids, this is gonna be a long one.

i think that PICA’s TBA festival is far enough behind me now that i can finally look back on it without being exhausted. thanks to keight, who brought me along to many of last years TBA events, i wanted to hit up as many of this years shows as possible. i spent a good amount of time looking at the schedule and doing math. the TBA guide became my bible for two weeks, i didn’t mind, there was a beautiful picture of antony on the cover.

morgan, cheryl and i went to the opening night part at leftbank, where the PICA’s after hours program called the works were all held. none of us are really good at the mingling thing so we mainly wandered around the building checking out the art and talking. there were a couple of performances first was deelay ceelay, a audio visual group comprised of two drummers and a producer, the visuals were produced earlier and projected onto a screen behind them. they were pretty good, reminiscent of don caballero and battles. unfortunatly they were playing when we got there so we weren’t paying that much attention. instead we spent too much time looking at the installation works in the basement. which we all agreed was kind of mess. the biggest piece was big skin by lizzie fitch. the installation took up a large room and there was a path that led you through what seemed ,to me anyway, to tell the story of  a little girl going through life. the piece was not successfull at all, there were plastic cast of body parts everywhere and far too much ikea furniture. it didn’t really seem like there was much planning or intent with the layout, it really needed a more editorial eye. in the gallery space there were some sculptures by corey lunn, these were better but not great, i don’t think that they really worked with the surroundings. we tried to watch some of the video pieces, but the small rooms were too crowded and stuffy. underwhelmed by the art we went back upstairs to see the sloppy mishmash of the flash choir, a large vocal group that just didn’t work right. we left thankful that it was a free event.

the next night after the amazing antony show we went back to leftbank for the neal medlyn live experience. i was looking forward to a performance artist’s redition of the beyonce live experience dvd, while doing my research for TBA i read many great reviews of his perfromance in nyc. i watched the beyonce dvd awhile ago and found it to be quite spellbinding, in a r kelly/trapped in a closet kind of way, so it is ripe for parody. when we got to leftbank it was packed and had a strong funk of body odor. neal medlyn was already performing and were turn off almost immediately. he and his backup dancers were fully commited to the horrible karaoke, but there was no real show. it was just a “look at me and how weird i can be” thing. we were expecting more of a spectacle. after neal medlyn was done someone named ice rod performed, a white rapper rapping about art school and the suburbs. bad bad bad bad. the whole night was just a level of irony that i am not okay with. it was almost to a point of brainwashing the hipster masses, who seem to  enjoy it not because they liked it but because they felt that had to.

on a beautiful sunday morgan and i met up with caleb down at the sw waterfront discovery center, which is a show room for all the condo towers that are going up on the waterfront right now. we were there to see a performance by the sojourn theater called built, we had no idea what we were in for. after we checked in we were brought to a table and asked to set up a street using cards with businesses on them, we had to decide which we want close to us and which should be far away. then we were ushered to one of the display kitchens and met our tour guide. he started talking about community and how the new developments are going to affect the future of community. the tour was interrupted by a small dance which had the various tour guides acting out getting ready for entertaining and going to other kitchens to be entertained. after the skit the kitchen groups were brought into an office and were asked to combine our streets into a community with they other members. so of course the business you don’t want to be next too ends up being next to your neighbor. one of the group almost threw down with caleb over where the art should be fuming “why do you want to ghettoize the arts?”  after that there was a short monologue and another performance about being new in the neighborhood and acceptance. we were again brought into a office and combined with another group to set up a metropolitan city using our previously set up communities. the highlight was a tightrope performance about the difficulties of choosing and buying a house, the movements and dialogue were on point. the performance ended with tour guides asking about the perfect community and screaming out the answers while someone did their best to draw the plan up as fast as she could. it was a very effective performance.

on monday afternoon cheryl, caleb and i gathered at the winningstad theater for the tiago guedes performance materiais diversos. he started out a bit slow basically moving around the stage with out any music, only the sounds of his own feet. we could tell that his movements were precise and planned but not really sure why. then he laid down on the floor and slowly pull a chair to him, on the chair were some various materials (get it?). with those materials he repeat the same movement only this time we could see that the movements had meaning. he built a landscape, a river and finally an ocean. we never really figured out the point of the performance other than the whimsy of it all maybe he also wanted to make a statement about patience, the first fifteen to twenty minutes of silent mime was a bit of a challenge. by the end though his performance turned into quite of visual piece that we all enjoyed.

later that night i went to leftbank by myself for a show by ethan rose. i have never heard of him, the TBA guide made him sound right up my alley though. the description mentioned musique concrete, found sounds, and soundscapes, i knew i would like it. like most sound artists he started slowly layering samples with a piano, a modified autoharp and a harmonica. then he slowly tweaked them on his mixing board and added some vocal samples. when he was done constructing he let the soundscape swirl to a climax and left the audience fairly stunned.

two nights later morgan and i were back at leftbank to see nollifur, another person we had not heard of but sounded good on the page. before nollifur played a group called french fry and root beer played. as a whole they weren’t that good, but i thought that their lead guitarist and drummer should really strike out on their own. the other two members seem to drag them down. nollifur was great though, dancey electro pop with a slight experimental edge that i could appreciate. he also had a smart and very well choreographed video projected onto the large screen behind him. it made me sad that he played to half the crowd that the first band did.

on friday night i again met up with cheryl and caleb at the imago theater for a performance by philippe quesne/vivarium studio called l’effet de serge. this was a charming piece all about social awkwardness. it centered on serge who likes to put on little shows for his friends, only it seems that serge does not have very good conversation skills. the show seemed to take a cue from the office, awkward silences and rather real characters. the little shows he put on were quirky, funny and rather minimal. in one he choreographed a remote control box and in another it was flashing car lights on and off. this offbeat performance was great and i hope to get to see them again someday. pictures were forbidden so these aren’t my picture’s, i got them from the PICA photostream on flickr.

after the performance we went to my apartment, where morgan was waiting for us, and killed time eating chocolate coconut bliss and pound cake. we then went to leftbank (we were pretty sick of the place by this point) for a night called our hit parade. it was suppose to be various artists reinterpreting the current music charts. the night was hosted by kenny mellman and neal medlyn. we were not that excited about it after the previous weeks beyonce experience. this wasn’t much better. some of them did okay, but for the most part it came off as bad karaoke. we spent time in the basement watching the videos that we couldn’t watch the week before. cheryl and i went back upstairs in time to catch the two of the better acts. one was an interpretive dance done to m.i.a.’s “paper planes”, a performance that wouldn’t of been out of place at burning man. the other was an operatic version of rihanna’s “disturbia”, which i was loving till the singer stopped and ranted about how stupid america is then sang his own parody called “suburbia”. i could go on about his rant but for some reason he really angered me with his rather uninformed opinion and unnecessary hatred of pop music. after that the evening really went downhill with neal medlyn stripping to a miley cyrus song, and a bad duet from a bad disney movie. we fled the venue as soon as it was over.

the last TBA event was the city dance of lawrence and anna halprin. in the early seventies portland opened a series of fountains designed by lawrence halprin. his wife anna was a pioneering choreographer of modern dance. using anna halprin’s choreography, all four of lawrence halprin’s portland sequence parks, the third angle new music ensemble, and what seemed to be every dancer portland has to offer they took us on a two hour tour through downtown. starting at the keller fountain with a group of dancers wearing light blue and white, they started at the top of the fountain and slowly descended for a small group performance. that is when this segment dragged the most, wallowing in the modern dance swishy cliches. then they ascended the fountain again before a bell rang telling us to move to the next next park, pettygrove park. i couldn’t find a good picture of the park, so just imagine the teletubby’s land, lots of small mounds. this segment was a much looser piece, and by far the most boring. the group of orange dressed dancers went from mound to mound chanting vaguely new ageish sayings. the park’s design was not meant for performance and the sight lines were horrible, so for the most part i zoned out and listened to the music, till the bell rang and they corralled us to the next stop, the lovejoy fountain. this was my favorite part of the program. the yellow dressed dancer used all parts of the fountain it really interesting ways, they did lots of separate pieces and did interesting things with upside down cups of water. this was also the only segment that seemed natural, not forced, with the music. i was a little sad when the bell rang. we were led down a narrow path and asked to hold hands and circle around the source fountain. it was all a bit much for me, as most of you know i am not big on the touching, especially with strangers. i haven’t mentioned the music yet, the music was the best part of the whole performance. the third angle new music ensemble did a fantastic job interpreting pieces by morton subotnick, pauline oliveros, and terry riley. all composers that approach music the same way that a painter would approach a painting.

on the way home we stopped by the paintallica gallery that was set up in the bottom of a large condo development near our house. the show was made up entirely of found objects and seemed to have a slightly native american bent to it. the separate works didn’t really do that much for us but as a whole it made a statement that we agreed with.

Thanks to PICA for making me exhausted for a week, maybe next year i can afford to take some time off to make it to all the events. they do need to step up the events at the works next year though, enough with irony.

you have no idea how tired i am.

patternmaster, while being the last in the patternists series, was the first one octavia butler released. i accidentally read them in the order, first; wild seed, and second; mind of my mind. there are two other books in the series, survivor (which ms. butler ending up not liking, so she never let it be republished) and clay’s ark (which rachelle hasn’t lent me yet). the order doesn’t matter anyway, the books all stand on their own, you would just miss some of the back story.

patternmaster takes is set on a future primitive earth hundreds of years in the future where the psychic superiors, or patternists, ruled. the people without the psychic gift are called mutes, and they are mainly used as servants, laborers, on call lovers and any number of subordinate roles. i thought that she was going to make this a statement on class politics, which she did, just not in the way that i thought she would. instead she focused on the heirarchy of the patternists and all the rules and social morays of the ruling class and how that effects the lives of people who want to go the other way. again she handles the story telling in a beautiful and masterful way.

this is only the fourth octavia butler book i’ve read, i can really see how she earned the reputation that she has and why her fan base expands way beyond the world of sci-fi. also i am starting to understand why rachelle is so interested in the future primitive, and how she can extrapolate it from almost any situation or theme.

the elephant man burger.

over the past few months rachelle and bridget have inundated me with science fiction and fantasy books. while i am enjoying them immensely, i am suffering from a bit of a sci-fi burn out. thankfully rachelle presented me with gastroanomalies on my last trip up to seattle. rachelle and i spent hours laughing over james lileks book the gallery of regrettable foods, and this second book of food related ephemera doesn’t disappoint either. the only disappointing thing about it was that i couldn’t share my joy with rachelle, since i read it here in portland. morgan and i have spent a bit of time with it, laughing loudly as we flip the pages.

mr lileks specialty is collecting old cook books, recipes and ads and poking fun at them. he has similar books about interior design and parenting, both of which i highly recommend. the only drawback to the book is that sometimes he doesn’t tell you what the food is, and it is generally all unrecognizable, so it would help to know what it was meant to be. that’s really a minor drawback though.

mr lileks also maintains a website full of various craps that is a great way to waste time.
the institute of official cheer.

we, his children

mind of my mind carries on the story of doro and anyanwu’s quest to collect all the people with special psychic talents together, the story began wild seed. this book focuses on anywanwu’s granddaughter, mary, who after generations of breeding is a psychic superpower. mary uses her powers to gather other people around her and attempts to usurp the authority that doro and anyanwu have spent hundreds of years developing.

i started this book not realizing that it was a sequel to wild seed, yet octavia butler wrote and released it several years before wild seed. mind of my mind takes place a couple of hundred years after wild seed and has a totally different style to it. they way ms. butler balances racial issues and science fiction is masterful. ms. butler took on a hostile tone for this book, making for an uneasy yet captivating read.

swim with me my sister.

with antony being on a mini symphonic tour right now, the antony world is all a twitter. this week also brought two new antony related videos.

first is a video called fallen shadows produced for prada’s fall collection. a stunning song called “a great white ocean” is used for the soundtrack. the song may or may not be on the new antony and the johnsons album called the crying light. we have to wait till january to find out though.

then the video for antony’s duet with bjork “dull flame of desire”, from bjork’s fantastic album volta. “dull flame” is just a masterpiece of a song. every time i hear it i fall in love again. i am not sure how i feel about the video, i wish there were more actual antony and bjork, and they cut two minutes from the song.

a sweet surprise.

i’ll be posting a long TBA review soon, the festival has kept me busy over the last week. add in a xiu xiu show, reality show wednesday (top model and project runway), and a game night (yes, i actually played settlers of catan this time) and i have been left with very little down time.

for now enjoy these pro corn syrup ads that have been airing on television. it’s all part of corn’s ambition to take over the world.

in case you need to know why corn syrup is wrong.

say you’ll share with me.

on saturday night don and i went and saw the phantom of the opera at the keller auditorium. don was a phantom virgin, this was my second time (third if you count the bland movie version). the phantom of the opera is by far my favorite musical. i remember the music teacher in middle school introducing the class to it, using it to teach us all about musical theater, since then i was in love with the score. i think he was a little obsessed with it, because of him i know all about the costumes, the puppets used in the “masquerade” scene, and even about the curtains used in the original london and broadway productions. for some reason i didn’t get around to seeing an actual production of it till i forced morgan to see it with me in london four or five years ago, i think part of me was waiting till i could see it in london. while i loved seeing phantom, i was not all that thrilled by the actors that played the phantom or christine. neither of them had any real stage presence.

that was certainly not the case at the keller on saturday. even though four out of the seven main characters were played by understudies, it was astounding. the phantom, played by stephen tewksbury, commanded the stage with a full booming voice that took full advantage of the keller’s acoustics. trista moldovan, who took over the role of christine when the original was called back to new york, was wonderful. she embodied the vulnerability of the character and had great chemistry with two male leads.

easily the star of the show is the andrew lloyd webber composed score with lyrics by charles hart and richard stilgoe. the score is romantic, menacing, and comic within the same song. the lyric are timeless and carry the story in ways that aren’t forced, sometimes in musical the songs seem awkward. despite how cheesy phantom seems to a lot of people, it is still my favorite musical.

amazing.

this past friday portland’s PICA brought antony and the johnsons to the arlene schnitzer concert hall. antony and the johnson performed with the oregon symphony orchestra opening the TBA festival. i have been looking forward to this for months. it’s been about four years now that i have been in love with the music of antony, collecting everything he is apart of and devoting a bit too much time to the justonestar forum. last year i flew to new york to see antony in a very similar concert with the brooklyn philharmonic at the brooklyn academy of music.

before the show i met up with fellow antony fans rebecca and erin, who came down from seattle for the show. they have seen antony several times before, so we talked about past shows and the possiblity of new songs. then we went to the hall, in the crowds of people i found cheryl, who was my company for the evening. she smartly brought us to a back entrance that had no crowds and we walked right in. i was amazed at how good our seats we, first row of the mezzanine just to the left of center stage. erin and rebecca were a couple of rows behind us. it wasn’t long before they dimmed the lights and the artistic directors of PICA and the oregon symphony came out and gave a short intro to antony and asked us to suggest other artists that the symphony could collaborate with. i have some, but i think it would be hard to get radiohead or bjork.

then the theater went black. a moment later in the darkness you could vaguely see antony’s shadow walk onto stage. the first too songs were song in complete darkness, forcing us to really listen to antony beautiful (love it or hate it) voice. his voice is often compared to billie holliday, bryan ferry, and nina simone, but i would say his is the voice of someones soul that is fulled with beauty, pain, hurt and love. he sings from a place in his body that few artist even know exist. after the second song a light on antony slowly brightened, coinciding with the emotions of the songs. during the forth song the main curtain was gradually lifted revealing the symphony behind it, yet still shrouded by a screen. after another song or two the screen lifted and the symphony, with members of the johnsons, were revealed during a string filled flourish of the song. the lighting also took off from that point, with a small bank of yellow lights high in the background of the stage providing most of the effects.

antony standing behind a microphone stand center stage, was simply beaming. he has said that performing live is his gift to the music world, and since he hasn’t performed in over a year, he was giving us everything he had. he played a handful of new songs and many old favorites. the orchestrations were perfect, a little more subdued than the one used at BAM last year, which at times took over. they were always there to enhance antony’s vocal and to take the johnson’s music to magical new levels, without ever overpowering the original intent. the new songs are breathtaking, using natural inspirations to tell stories of love and strength. the biggest surprise of the evening was his awesome cover of beyonce’s “crazy in love”, which he also performed at BAM, but this time he really let himself enjoy it and took it to an amazing place. truthfully i was hoping they would do his version of “i will survive”, i’ve heard it is a real stunner. the ninety minute set ended with two standing ovations, and in a way three because the crowd was still standing and applauding when the symphony stood and took their bows. i have to give the oregon symphony a lot of credit, they did an impressive job, bringing a cohesion to the music that the brooklyn philharmonic never attained. everyone involved with that evening should be immensely proud of themselves, and i hope they know how affected everyone was by the performance. we left the theater basking in the glow of what we just experienced, an amazing evening full of subtle beauty.

more photos on pitchfork.

PICA’s urban honking blog.

oregon live.

the setlist:

mysteries of love (julee cruise)
new song
cripple and the starfish
for today i am a boy
fell in love with a dead boy
kiss my name
new song
rapture
ghost (!?!)
crazy in love (beyonce)
dust & water
everything is new (moondog)
new song
encore.
river of sorrow

fell in love with a dead boy

everything is new (moondog)

river of sorrow

thanks to seaman33 on youtube.

best cat ever.

kitty was by far the best and cutest cat that has ever existed. she lived a wonderful life full of loving family and friends. she will be missed.

with all the feathers.

i have long been a fan of dance movies, which i (and i’m sure others) often refer to as danceploitations. it probably started with girls just want to have fun, i remember watching that repeatedly. i have never really had many people to watch danceploitations with, here in portland though i have found a group of people. the group gathered recently to watch step up 2: the streets. i’ve never seen the first step up, i have never been a fan of balletsploitations, they tend to be more romantic and less about dance numbers.

when the trailers for step up 2 starting airing i knew it was going to be good, after failing to mobilize the group to see it in theaters we finally got to see it on dvd. wow, what a great danceploitation. at times they try a little to hard to inject a plot, but the dance numbers more than make up for the clunky forced plot.

especially this number, which is the fantastic final number, so if you plan on watching the movie you might not want to watch this.

everyones favorite character in the movie was moose, played by adam sevani. when i was looking for clips of this movie i came upon an interesting online battle between miley cyrus, her friend mandy and adam sevani teamed up with jon chu (the director of step up 2). i don’t really understand anything miley cyrus related and her part of the dance battles are horrible. miley and mandy head up the m&m cru, while adam and jon have the acdc. i won’t torture you with all the videos but the second acdc video has some pretty good dancing.

the acdc comback.

the midly comical final battle, that took place on some awards show that i have never heard of.