Fun & Games

Real or Nah? Guess the Actual TBA Performance!

Which of these outlandish acts truly went down at the Time-Based Art Festival?

By Marty Patail August 14, 2017 Published in the September 2017 issue of Portland Monthly

Static1.squarespace nrclut

TBA returns September 7–17.

Image: Courtesy PICA

On September 7, the Time-Based Art Festival returns for the 14th year. Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s interdisciplinary, 10-day event is known for avant-garde, sometimes outlandish, occasionally shocking performances. So, a game: of these five possible past TBA acts, which one really happened?

A) A woman writing a 20,000-word novella on a typewriter and shrieking the dialogue of each character over the course of a weeklong performance 

B) Two men dancing around, gripping each other’s penises, capped by one man bellowing into the other’s foreskin like a blow horn

C) Audience following performer out of gallery to Northwest Fred Meyer, where performer silently fills grocery cart and checks out

D) Dancer gyrating and twisting to match the movements of Oklahoma tornadoes playing on a grainy VHS tape next to her

E) A farmer, wearing nothing but a straw hat, on stage shearing a sheep, also wearing a straw hat

Scroll down for the answer...

...

...

...

Answer: B, performed at the Winningstad in 2013 by a Belgian and a Portuguese dancer (check out our full recap from that show)

Tba13 campo 960 2 qj0yjy

Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido in Still Standing You, just getting to know one another

Image: Phile Deprez 

Filed under
Share
Show Comments