A Time-Based-Brt performance:
“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t”
Artists: Zoe Scofield & Juniper Shuey
September 2007 | Escape the Pace
Carless in Portland...
Hop a train south for a mind-altering arts festival, cheap eats and mass transit that works.
By Crai S. Bower
Portland isn’t interested in playing the bright lights, big city game. Half-a-million Portlanders aren’t obsessed with mentions in the New York Times or the status of their Fortune 500 businesses. Just being Portland, a regional leader in urban living, mass-transit and affordable housing, has been more than enough. The city’s laissez faire attitude has led to a blossoming of arts and artists—a cool essence that recalls what the entire Northwest was like before it began admiring its own reflection in the raindrops.
Though sisters in geography, Portland’s creative vibe alone is reason to depart Seattle for a long weekend. Neighborhoods still sprout organically here, (independent) café squatting remains a lifestyle choice, and there are more wilderness trails within this city than in many state parks. I craved an infusion of urban bohemia, so I hopped a train south for a Rose City transfusion. While there, I check out the fifth annual “Time-Based Art” (TBA), the most unique arts festival in North America.
I arrive at Union Station via Amtrak, which offers four runs a day and transforms mind-numbing “gotta get there” angst into four hours of chill, work, or whatever. (I wrote this piece on the 8:30pm northbound.)
I’m jazzed to play my favorite role of flaneur or to roll on MAX, the city’s esteemed light rail system. You’ll be able to step from heavy to light rail in 2009, as Portland Transit is tearing up 5th and 6th Avenues to install a new north-south line. Today, you can still get from the historic station to anywhere in the city via mass transit of course, especially if you’re traveling light and willing to walk a few blocks west to grab the Portland Streetcar.
Stepping onto the clean and Euro-cool streetcar (as visions of Seattle streetcars traveling a Ballard to U-District route dance through my head), we glide to bustling Northwest, a neighborhood filled with outdoor cafés and galleries—made Greenwich Village intimate by hovering oaks and maples. Northwest is now considered “passé” by Portland’s avant-garde standards (see Alberta St. below), but new restaurants like 23 Hoyt, with its tall ceilings, sleek interior and outstanding menu still hold plenty of appeal.
I loop back into the Pearl District, the oft-heralded, converted warehouse district and home to the Ecotrust Building, a Gold LEED Certified pioneer with eco-roof gardens and ingenious gray water program. The Pearl is also home to Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), the founders of TBA.
“TBA is the only festival in the North America that showcases performance and visual art in layers with new media forms,” explains PICA’s Philip Iosca, “But to understand it, you really have to see performances like Guido van der Werve’s ‘The Clouds are More Beautiful from Above,’ which is absolutely breathtaking.”
The 100-plus performances range from Gary Wiseman’s “Tea Project,” an interactive tea party of revolving themes, to Melia Donovan’s “The Clandestine Periphery,” an invisible mural to tEEth’s “Normal and Happy,” a dance manifestation of the human psyche.
“Mixed media performers from around the world submit to be a part of this festival,” Iosca tells me. “But PICA is also dedicated to local performers, and our audiences [over 21,000 last year] should be also.”
My favorite venue is The Works, late night host for the most provocative performances, as well as a café and beer garden. It’s part salon, part casual conversation where attendees unwind from a day of cerebral stimuli or rewind, as old lovers sway against each other to a musical assemblage once thought acoustically incompatible.
The Works is staged at the Wonder Ballroom in Northeast, not far from Alberta Street, the latest semi-converted (Portland neighborhoods are rarely fully converted; you’ll still find sushi next to a vacant lot of iron scraps) row of galleries, clothing boutiques, ethnic restaurants and hangouts like the Alberta Street Tearoom.
When heading to The Works, pause at Terroir along MLK Blvd., chef-owner Stu Stein’s provender of northwest cuisine in a wonderfully loud room, insanely reasonably priced fare ideal for gnashing on TBA-muddled conversations while imbibing flights of regional wine.
Time-Based Art wouldn’t be possible in Seattle because our cultural festivals (Bumbershoot, Folk Life) are too humongous to shift adroitly, and our tempos too rapid for a mid-week, 7-hour read of Fitzgerald. Yet, Portland stages this mixed-media celebration perfectly, a seductive escape on the rails to the boards, toward an aesthetic fantasy of what could be.
Crai S. Bower spends plenty of time in downtown Seattle and Vancouver, reviewing restaurants and hotels. “Escape the Pace” provides him with the opportunity to “turn off” (the road) and “tune out” (the world).
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