The Beginner’s Guide to the 2015 TBA Festival

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Jack Rushall, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Tyondai Braxton is performing.

Calling all local artists who still have a few days of sick leave available at work. The Time-Based Art Festival is back and at it again.

With a concrete reputation for redefining experimental art for a local audience, 2015’s TBA Festival will take place from September 10th through September 20th. If you are a beginner looking to experience the magic for the first time, there are a few tidbits (and/or highlights) that might aid you in attaining a proper taste of PICA’s ten-day annual event.

Firstly, you must know that the TBA is split up into three parts: individual Performances, Visual Arts, and The Works. The individual performances run daily and feature different artists who are featured at alternative venues around the Portland metro area. Remember: locations will fluctuate! On the other hand, the Visual Arts portion includes many experimental art expositions that are all based in one trusted location as part of one exhibition, so you can kill many birds with one stone (or ticket).

"The Works” is essentially the TBA after dark, with additional shows and dance-oriented mingling taking place each night at 10:30 PM at the Redd, a purposefully gutted warehouse redecorated specifically for the festival. “The Works is a temporary community gathering at night,” says PICA Artistic Director Angela Mattox. According to Mattox, “The TBA is a social festival.”

Also, it might be good to note that there is an “Institute” portion of the festival that takes place each day during the day (sometimes multiple times during the day), largely featuring Q&A’s with performers. So, if you’re still stumbling to grasp the takeaway message from a particular performance, some clarity could be offered here. Note: these lecture-based Q&A’s often feature performers from the night before but not always.

Generally speaking, the TBA festival is all about making experimental art interactive and diverse. “In the same festival, you can see a dance company from North Africa as well as a visual art presentation from a graduate student from the PNCA,” Angela Mattox said. “I love a collision of really diverse cultures and aesthetics: a convergence of the most visionary artists. We want to be a place for experimentation, and we want to support progressive ideas.”

See Slideshow Below: 10 Things to See As a Newcomer to the 2015 TBA Festival

Indeed, the TBA festival is about exploration and discovery for both the audience – and the performers. “It’s not that we are obsessed with the new, but we are trying to push boundaries.” And this year, the TBA conceptualizes this philosophy: expect a performer who is cooking while conducting a dance routine, an LGBT-rights related mass that takes place in a church, and the lead singer of Battles (Tyondai Braxton) doing a fresh solo show (modular synthesizer in tow) at PSU’s Lincoln Hall.

One thing to keep your eye out for as a newcomer to the festival, in particular: the cost on opening day. "The opening day on September 10th (7-9) is free and from there, the opening of The Works at 10:30 is also free," Mattox said. It is suggested that as a first-timer, you might get a taste for the opening events and gauge an opinion on whether or not you would like to attend following, more expensive activities. Last year, the opening night at The Works attracted an audience of around 2,000 individuals.

So, if you're a local artist, you might want to bring along one of the sketchbooks most demonstrative of your talent. It looks like anybody who's anybody in the Portland art scene is likely to bump into you accidentally during this late night cocktail hour.

Related Slideshow: 10 Things to See As a Newcomer to the 2015 TBA Festival

Ready to have your mind blown? Luckily, there's a whole festival looking out for you. Though it may be impossible to narrow down the festival to a few key events, the following performances and exhibitions are perfect for those inexperienced with the festivities.

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Holcombe Waller

LGBT rights and religion. There's a great dinner table conversation for your family when you return to Kentucky for Christmas. Fortunately, you can talk about it sooner and perhaps in a safer space. On Friday, September 11th and Saturday, September 12th at 6:30 PM, the Requiem Mass: LGBT / Working Title will take place at the historic Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. The event is a tentative "requiem of those who are persecuted in their communities in the name of religion," according to PICA Artistic Director Angela Mattox. The event is also a Portland-specific with these two shows representing a world premiere.

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Philippe Quesne

In order to pay for returning performer Philippe Quesne and his piece "La Mélancolie des dragons," PICA had to reel in funds from art institutes in both LA and Seattle. Still, imagine this scenario: a band's car breaks down in a snowy area on the way to their concert and they create a DIY amusement park out of on stage materials. Apparently, the show will contain a real car and a real dog. For any TBA novice, this show is sure to be a "spectacle," according to Mattox. After all, the whole West Coast is depending on it.

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Tyondai Braxton

Any Battles fans? Lead singer of Battles Tyondai Braxton is attending the TBA festival this year just like you. Braxton is performing solo with his modular synthesizer and some original samples at PSU's Lincoln Hall, a space that is both large and intimate. "He (Braxton) wants to be seen in an experimental art scene context and not just a commercial music setting," Mattox said.

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Critical Mascara

A sequel to last year's hit drag ball, Critical Mascara "A Post-Realness Drag Ball" is hosted by Portland's very own Kaj-anne Pepper and ‎Chanticleer Trü. "Pepper creates categories each year and the queer community can come out and participate," Mattox says. Word on the street is that this one returning performance at the TBA is a must-see "dance-off drag spectacular "with competitors vying for $666. Where that number came from? We would rather not know.

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Lars Jan

Who knew that hunting men under a kinetic light structure can stimulate keystrokes from a 50s typewriter. Lars Jan wants you to know what this looks like firsthand in a subtle exposé of his father, a Cold War operative. For understanding the dark mechanisms behind the politics of personal privacy, Jan offers us this personal tragedy.

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Michelle Ellsworth

Michelle Ellsworth is dressed to impress (seriously, her dress matches her website) with her performance in "Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome." On September 15-17 at 6:30 PM at the Winningstad Theater, Ellsworth will debut this performance which intends to showcase how to navigate a website when men die while incorporating absurdist humor, web technology, a male gaze simulator, and choreography. This is a can't miss opportunity for those looking for something "really funny and inventive," according to Mattox.

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Amy O'Neal

Have you ever thought of a type of dance as masculine, or even hypermasculine? In Opposing Forces, a performance taking place as part of The Works, you can watch five "B-boys" conduct interpretative dance battles on stage that question binary perceptions of gender. From September 17th through September 19th, gendered dances shall be questioned at 8:30 PM at The Redd (831 SE Salmon St.).

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Radhouane El Meddeb

Yes, cooking while dancing is possible. Just take Radhouane El Meddeb, for example, in his performance La Compagne De Sol. Meddeb keys into the sensuality of food and his love for dancing while preparing couscous and the North African traditional dish of tagine on stage. Just to be safe from a sudden lapse from hunger, maybe eat before the show.

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Dawn Kasper

With Dawn Kasper, the coordinators of the 2015 TBA grant the Visual Arts performer a good deal of trust. PICA Artistic Director admits, "We don't really know what she's going to do -- but there's going to be some live performance and some spontaneity to it." Kasper is typically unpredictable, but the best time to see her is most likely on the Visual Art exhibition's opening day (which *ahem* is also free).

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Steve Malkmus

Lead singer of Pavement Steve Malkmus & The Jicks kick of the TBA:15 with a free nighttime performance at The Redd as part of the opening night at The Works. There's no better way of being integrated into a festival than being initiated for free!