Since its founding in 1995, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) has become a magnet for artists who take creative risks. Through exhibitions, performances, artist residencies and educational programs, PICA allows artists and audiences to push the limits of artistic expression and explore provocative new ideas that illuminate life in the here and now. But, like many artistic venues in the last decade, PICA faced shifting audience behaviors, increased competition and the challenges of attracting increasingly limited resources in the face of a recession. The organization needed a sustainable solution.
In September of 2003, PICA launched its first annual Time Based Art (TBA) Festival, compressing two years of season activity into a 10-day immersion in the art of our time.
Kristy Edmunds, PICA's executive and artistic director said, "The Allen Foundation came in to support the TBA Festival while we were in the early planning phase. These funds were essential in getting others to the table and served as ballast for many of our artist fees. The Allen Foundation had a solid understanding of the Festival, of its impact regionally, and what it could signal abroad and throughout the U.S. Their early support allowed the Festival to become a significant cultural event."
The TBA Festival brought together a remarkable group of artists representing 10 countries, including Burkina Fasso, Romania, England and Brazil. Featuring new projects by artists who explored alternative directions in theater, video, media, dance and music, the performances often created hybrid forms that defy categorization. The festival presented leading contemporary artists such as Akram Khan, Eiko & Koma, Donna Uchizono, Ros Warby, Cie Felix Ruckert, John Moran & Eva Muller, Miranda July, Quasar, Coco Fusco, Manuel Pelmus, Daniel Bernard Roumain and many others.
Festival headline performances were held at various venues around Portland. Nightly cabaret acts and parties followed at the TBA after-hour club "MachineWorks." Through salon discussions, master classes, workshops and lectures, a daily collaborative dialogue took place between artists and the public. More than 10,000 people came out for this dynamic festival, which was praised by audience members and critics alike.
Edmunds described the festival as, "a ten-day moment where artists and audiences could jump over the fence-line of the familiar and discover something or someone they had never experienced before ... all in Portland's urban core." For PICA and its local and global community, the TBA Festival was an opportunity to reaffirm the organization's capacity—staying true to PICA's mission and programming objectives, inventing new pathways for artists and audiences and contributing something challenging and meaningful to the changing art ecology of the Northwest region.
<< PREVIOUS | NEXT >>
|
|
Time Based Art (TBA) Festival
Akram Khan
Photo credit: Ryan Stevens
Courtesy of Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Time Based Art (TBA) Festival
Akram Khan
Photo credit: Ryan Stevens
Courtesy of Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
|