TBA at PNCA

PNCA partners with the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art for PICA's Time-Based Art Festival hosting the exhibition Bunnybrains which includes installation and performance and hosting a series of Artist Dialogues, dynamic and generative discussions with festival artists, curators, scholars, and community leaders that illuminate TBA projects and put artists and audiences in direct dialogue.

Exhibition

BUNNYBRAINS
511 Gallery at PNCA's Center for Contemporary Art and Culture

Dan Seward, also known as Bunnybrains, is a musician, curator and promoter in Hudson, New York, where he runs the celebrated (and somewhat nomadic) record store, John Doe Records. This exhibition focuses on Bunnybrains thirty plus years as a transgressive, mutable, collaborative, performative project and what it means to illustrate the life of a true muse. From live broadcasts of Bunnybrains radio show Battlefield Earth, participatory workshops, rotating guest exhibitions, spontaneous happenings and performances, the artist shares their space with you in an effort to vivify “Bunnybrains is all”.

Bunnybrains’ career highlights include a vinyl only pressing with Matador, a national tour supporting Devendra Banhart, a four CD boxset that garnered raves from the indie press, and opening for a reunited Hawkwind—a set credited with giving the many hippies in attendance bad trips.

September 12, 3:00 PM
A Tender Reading with Shanekia McIntosh
Exploring complex realities of postmodern black womanhood through prose, sound and visuals. (event is short; please arrive on time)

September 13, 3:00 PM
Tight, Electric, Dreamscapes 2.0: Capacity Building with Jamie Lee Mohr

[Primordial Games]

TED talks. That stands for Torture, Economics and Denial… Or is it Territory, Empire, and Destruction… Or was it Tight, Electric, Dreamscapes? Whatever the case Jamie Lee Mohr of Bunny Brain’s knows it could not possibly stand for something as banal and bass­ackwards as “Technology, Entertainment, and Design.” If it did, she would have to destroy it, ferally chew its marrow and serenely toast marshmallows to perfection over the smoldering embers. NAMESTE. As a great mind once said, “You can’t eat PowerPoint slides, but you can suck dick for rent money.” In this sensual bedtime story for POWs of the American Dream, Ms Mohr explores with text, spoken word, google stock images, and naked vulnerability all of the important stuff they did not teach you in school. If that even­-keeled NPR newsreader was forced to drop the brown acid, read covert history, drink a tumbler of lead ­contaminated working class piss and then attempt to explain this failed utopia we call America they might approach via wobbly fawn legs Ms Mohr’s magical misery tour.

September  14, 3:00 PM
Music Video + Sound workshop with Bunnybrains!

September  15, 3:00 PM
Skype Conversation with painter Jean Smith

September 16, 3:00 PM
Screening with Alessandra Genovese and Katherine Bauer

September 17, 3:00 PM
Live webcasting to the Soundscape Festival in Hudson, New York

Artist Dialogues

ARTIST DIALOGUE: ROYAL OSIRIS KARAOKE ENSEMBLE
with Kate Bredeson
September 13, 12:30, BridgeLab

Please note: the location for this dialogue has changed to a different room within the PNCA building at 511 NW Broadway: the BridgeLab.

Members of this New York-based, experimental theatre company elaborate on the themes of modern masculinity and desire in their TBA performance, The Art of Luv (Part I): Elliot, in conversation with Kate Bredeson, Associate Professor of Theatre at Reed College.

ARTIST DIALOGUE: TBA VISUAL ARTISTS
in conversation with Kristan Kennedy & Stephanie Snyder
September 14, 12:30, BridgeLab

TBA visual artists Dylan Mira, Keijaun Thomas, and Sacha Yanow join curators Kristan Kennedy (PICA) and Stephanie Snyder (Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College) to share insight into the artists’ festival projects and discuss the significance of making and curating visual performance art now.

ARTIST DIALOGUE: BRITT HATZIUS
with Darren O'Donnell
September 15, 12:30, Mediatheque

Artist Britt Hatzius shares her process behind the innovative and engaging Blind Cinema, and exchanges thoughts with Darren O’Donnell (Artistic Director, Mammalian Diving Reflex) on their mutual socially engaged art practices and experiences working with children and youth to generate innovative projects for intergenerational audiences.

ARTIST DIALOGUE: ALI CHAHROUR
with Maya Mikdashi
September 16, 12:30, Mediatheque

Ali Chahrour shares insights into his deeply layered TBA performance, Leila’s Death, as informed by contemporary choreography, religious ritual, and local tradition in Lebanon. TBA Guest Scholar Maya Mikdashi (Rutgers University) brings expertise in gender, art, and Lebanese politics and culture to an interpretation and discussion of the work.