“The stakes are a lot higher in a space that we want to be able to welcome people into,” says Erin Boberg Doughton, performing arts program director for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). Ahead of PICA’s annual Time-Based Art Festival (TBA), which kicks off September 8, Boberg Doughton and PICA’s visual art curator, Kristan Kennedy, are weighing in about what to expect from the interdisciplinary performance festival. One major change: After 13 years of a more itinerant approach—repurposing under-utilized spaces for temporary performances—TBA has a new, permanent space in PICA’s new home at 15 NE Hancock, which will serve as one of the festival hubs.
As usual, PICA’s offerings are packed with a dizzying array of conceptual work—some of it socially engaged, some funny, some heartbreaking, some just totally weird—including a large-scale collaboration with the Portland Art Museum, “a live video essay” from filmmaker Dylan Mira, new pieces from local performance geniuses like Allie Hankins and Keyon Gaskin, and Andrew Dickson and Claudia Meza’s “Don’t Get Me Started,” an evening of “well-crafted rants” from comedians and artists curated in response to all of the depressing news items that probably made you want to cancel 2016.