The Latest in Portland Arts News—Modest Mouse's Mad New Video
Radhouane El Meddeb / La compagnie de Soi Au temps où les Arabes dansaient… by Agathe Poupene
It’s brash, it’s bold and it’s on its way back—TBA has announced the line-up for its September art extravaganza with performance and visual artists convening in Portland from Italy, Tunisia, Japan, Norway and France among other far flung places. And given that it’s PICA’s 20th anniversary year, there’ll be extra special TBA treats in store (hint from the organizers: “start planning your circa 1995 ensemble now.”) Festival passes have just gone on sale—get on it!
Sara Krajewski
Portland Art Museum has a new curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Sara Krajewski, who was most recently the director of the INOVA (Institute of Visual Arts) galleries at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, steps into the shoes of Bruce Guenther. She has also held curatorial positions at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and Harvard University Art Museum. She takes over the new role on August 31.
Are new digs on the cards for the Hillsboro theater group Bag&Baggage? Next week, the City of Hillsboro’s Economic Development Council will be considering a proposal to loan Bag&Baggage $775,000 of Urban Renewal funds to purchase the former Wells Fargo Bank Building located on the corner of 4th and Main Streets in downtown Hillsboro. It’s the first step in the theater company's campaign to refurbish the building and create a performance space and home for Bag&Baggage. Now ten years old, the compay started out as a travelling troupe but found a performance space in the Venetian Theater in 2007. Now they've set their sights on their own performance and administrative space, and are set to launch their "Evolution" campaign with this as their stated goal.
Meanwhile, Oregon Ballet Theatre has sealed the deal on their new home, and has signed a lease on their new space in the South Waterfront District, Expect a move from their SE Portland studio some time in late Fall. The new home, at 720 SW Bancroft St, will be OBT’s new studio and administrative headquarters, with improvements starting this summer in anticipation of the Fall move.
And finally . . . Portland indie rockers Modest Mouse have released the video for the song "The Ground Walks, With Time in a Box", and it’s all kinds of nutty. Think Game of Thrones meets Mad Max, but with gold pants and a smidgeon of geisha thrown in for good measure, and you’ll have some sense of what it’s all about. Kind of. Directed by Jorge Torres-Torres, the video shows Isaac Brock as the crazy-eyed king, with a heavy dose of the fantastical for him to reign over. Not for the faint-hearted, this:
