10 days of bleeding-edge performance art in Portland

It was in the line at Whole Foods Market in Portland's Pearl District this time last year that I was introduced to the latest development in Northwest hipster lexicon.

Two twentysomething women were excitedly chatting in line, Odwalla juices in hand. There were murmurs about upcoming performances around town as they pored over a pint-size guidebook, then came an especially delighted squeal over what one girl described as "awesome-looking Asian girls with basketballs in white dresses." A duetted sigh was released. "That's so TBA."

If that colloquialism has little resonance for you, no worries: Over the next 10 days in Portland, you can find out exactly what is so TBA for yourself, as the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA – that's "pie-ka" to the locals) holds its fifth annual Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival. It opened Thursday night, Sept. 6, with a free massed-choir performance of a commissioned work by avant-garde composer Rinde Eckert, in the open-air environs of downtown Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square. The festival, which features vanguard contemporary performance and visual artists from across the region and across the globe, runs at venues throughout the city through Sept. 16.

As an accelerated birth from animus to animalistic arts fest (the audience has shot from 7,500 in 2003 to 21,000 in four years), the TBA Festival is an astonishing story exemplary of Portland's pioneering spirit, creative grit, and DIY spirit. Emerging as one of the leaders in the field of contemporary arts presenting, it's hard to imagine that just 12 years ago, PICA was barely a pipe dream.

Artist-curator Kristy Edmunds is spoken about with the kind of reverence usually reserved for untouchable spiritual visionaries. And in a way, Edmunds was.

It was Edmunds' vision and grit in Portland in the 1990s that helped shape PICA. The organization's first seven years of hop-scotch programming, then year-round, brought world-class artists (Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Donna Uchizono) to Portland whom audiences wouldn't otherwise see or hear, short of a trip to New York.

But without a real home residence - outside of their gorgeous offices and education space in the acclaimed Wieden+Kennedy building in the Pearl - PICA found itself a vagabond in a vagabond's town, skipping from venue to venue with each new installation or performance. A new model was needed.

Taking a cue from multi-week European arts festival models - the Edinburgh Festival, most notably - PICA reinvented itself in 2003 as a predominantly festival-based organization, focusing their energies on producing one slam-bang contemporary arts festival every year and leaving the year-round programming (a few lectures and ancillary events aside) to other organizations in town on the ascendant, like White Bird Dance.

"The festival was a real strategic move for PICA, to figure out how to be relevant and exciting for audiences without having a home venue," says Lane Czaplinski, artistic director of Seattle's On The Boards, a like-minded organization.

Angelle Hebert and Phillip Kraft, co-founders of the Portland performance troupe called tEEth, had just moved to Portland when the first TBA Festival was taking off. Now, five years later, their company is premiering a new work ("Normal and Happy") during the fest. Even in 2003, they recall being "just blown away" by the quality and range on display at the festival. "Sometimes we feel a little isolated here," Hebert says, "and the festival helps us feel connected to what's going on in the world."

Soon into TBA's formative years, PICA made a bold move, restructuring organizational leadership and bringing on its first festival guest artistic director: Mark Russell, longtime leader of New York's influential P.S. 122 and a major player on the contemporary performance scene. This shook things up considerably.

Victoria Frey, whose position at PICA changed from managing director to executive director during that restructure, says "moving to the guest-artistic model was an enormous transition and one that has brought new ideas and expanded our relationships. Mark has been the right leadership at the right time and has challenged and inspired us to think outside ourselves."

On The Boards' Czaplinski agrees, pointing again to TBA's unique model and international influences: "The very idea of having a festival and a guest artistic director is not a traditional idea. ... It's more a European model," he says.

Portland's Holcombe Waller, perhaps one of the most singular songwriting performance artists in the region - who makes his TBA mainstage debut this year with "Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest" - adds that Russell's presence is one of many factors which have contributed to the TBA Festival's surge in impact and popular appeal. "There are three things that are totally unique to TBA," Waller says, "the first being the completely world-class artistic direction – Mark Russell and Erin Boberg," PICA's performing arts program director, "and historically Kristy Edmunds. The second is that TBA is uniquely artist-centric and artist-supporting to a degree that almost defies expectation. ... The third is that they really engage the community." Pointing to the hundreds of docents, technical/venue assistants, and other helping hands that bring the event to life, Waller says: "The amount of volunteer support and artist/community engagement is unbelievable."