November: transforming halloween to thanksgiving

You may notice several butoh events listed here, unusual to date for Portland. An improvisational dance form, butoh works to produce movement unlike any other dance form and, in doing so, transport the audience. It ranges from sublime to grotesque and these poles will all be represented here this month! If you see something you don't like, don't give up on the form. It is usually easy by asking around, to find out ahead of a performance what pole attracts the group. If you are a mover, try a workshop sometime!


November 1

Charles Jenks, architectural critic and author presents a slide lecture "The Iconic Building" themed on architectural forms which challenge the common staid conception of boring monument. "On the one hand, to become iconic a building must provide a new and condensed image, be high in figural shape or gestalt, and stand out from the city. On the other hand, to become powerful it must be reminiscent in some ways of unlikely but important metaphors and be a symbol fit to be worshiped, a hard task in a secular society." from an interview at: calitreview.com/Interviews...ks_8020.htm Sponsored by Portland Arts and Lectures. 1st Congregational Church 1126 SW Park avenue 7:30 $15/10 students



November 2

Usual preopenings


Talk at Blue Sky Gallery 7:30 by photographer Abby Robinson. See below or www.blueskygallery.org


Reed College sponsors a talk by artist MONA HATOUM 7 p.m.at the Vollum lecture hall free
Her work is on display at Reed's Cooley Memorial Art Gallery November 1–December 23, 2005 I saw her work at the Jupiter affair and remembered liking it, but I'm not sure I could describe it now...


Curator Stephanie Snyder: "Hatoum is one of the most important British artists of her generation. Born in 1952, Hatoum attended the Slade School of Art having been stranded in England after the outbreak of war in Lebanon, her country of residence while growing up. Emerging onto the British art scene during the convulsive excitement of the YBA (Young British Artists) movement in 1980s London, Hatoum's early work included physically extreme, enigmatic public performances exploring personal and public space, vulnerability, and social relationships. Moving into complex sculptural and multi-media work, Hatoum has consistently explored cultural dynamics of immigration, gender, and physical and psychological displacement. Hatoum often uses the personal space of the body and its products as a means for exploring broader cultural and political concerns. Over the past twenty years, Hatoum has created works as intimate in scale as an installation of tiny sculptures crafted from the artist's hair, to enormous large scale steel sculptures. For this unique exhibition, the Cooley Gallery is extremely pleased to be including Hatoum's La Grande Broyeuse—one of the artist's largest steel sculptures. La Grande Broyeuse replicates a common object on a massive scale—alternately threatening, humorous, and monumental. In addition to this important work, this exhibition includes video, photography, and mixed media sculpture. Hatoum's work has been featured at the Tate Britain, London; the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Oaxaca Museum, Oaxaca, Mexico; and the 2005 Venice Biennale. In 2004, Hatoum was awarded the prestigious Sonning Prize in Copenhagen, Denmark—the first visual artist to receive this distinguished honor. The Sonning Prize is awarded every other year by the University of Copenhagen to a man or woman "who has significantly contributed to the advancement of European civilization."



November 3-6

The Catlin Gabel rummage sale www.catlin.edu/news/rummage/index.php decamps at the Portland -go by MAX- Expo Center Thursday through Sunday. This event is the major fundraiser for scholarships to this expensive K-12 Portland private school. The students' parents purge their basements and attics. That means shop early and often. All items are priced, but some bargaining is possible with each section's overlord. On Thursday all items are marked up 35%, Sunday is best for bargains. Thurs 5-9, Fri/Sat 10-6, Sun 10-3



November 3 First Thursday

The F word. Forgiveness. The Forgiveness Project, a grass roots international project, based in London and working internationally presents documentation, interviews and photographs. Inspired by South Africa's response to the end of apartheid. the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the project has been active in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Romania, Israel, Palestine and yes, the US. Interestingly, the South African experience has been repurposed in Rwanda (800,000 dead over 10 weeks) and Sierra Leone as a UN program. This is a great followon to last year's presentation by artist Alfredo Jaar. In addition, Nov 8 12:30-1:30 the Forgiveness Forum presents speakers sharing their experience of community violence, reconciliation and story telling. On Nov 9 12:30-1:30, the Portland Reader's Theater will perform the play "Goodbye Oscar" a meditation on which sins are forgivable and which not. www.theforgivenessproject.com All events free at PNCA www.pnca.edu


Illahee www.illahee.org and the City Repair project present a talk by Terry Tempest Williams, www.coyoteclan.com/ , activist, naturalist, passionate about the preservation of wilderness in the West. Williams will contrast her response to a visit to Rwanda, where family, societal and cultural restoration are the primary concern with her work in the West at the interface of wilderness and society. 7PM First Congregational Church 1126 SW Park $20



Blue Sky presents Abby Robinson's photographs of photo studio backdrops in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam mashup layers of photography about photography and the cultural aspirations of their unpictured subjects. Lecture by the artist Wednesday 7:30 at the gallery. Also Melissa Ann Pinney her daughter whispering clues of the mystery of growing up. Perhaps, grown, will her daughter be a character in a Liz Haley photograph or perhaps a Justine Kurland?


Augen presents Dharma Strasser, taking ceramic multiples out of craft and into art, and the photographs of Amy Archer. Archer is fascinated by multiples as well - found in situ or constructed of multiple prints. www.augengallery.com/calendar.html


Gallery 500 presents its last opening with drawings by Nicholas Di Genova whose work would be at home in the Compound Gallery, and the dark rich scenes done as layered drawings of Troy Briggs who was part of Portland Modern #2. Gallery 500 will close at the end of the month, possibly to be reincarnated in another location in the future. www.gallery500.org


Motel gallery www.motelgallery.com presents the motel-style illustrations of Jen Corace, characterized by their sweetness.


Compound/Just Be * presents a show of work inspired by Blythe. What's a Blythe? A Japanese doll-super model with a large head and those sooo Japanese moon eyes. The doll was originally produced in 1972 for one year then canceled by Hasbro. Blythe was revived as the spokesmodel for a Japanese department store in 2001 and legions of neo-Blythes followed. The Just Be Otaku store will also show the dolls. [end trivial pursuit factoid] www.justbedesign.com


The Mark Woolley continues last month's show of Tom Cramer. An interesting field trip is to see about the complete history of Cramer's work at the Woolley Gallery at the Wonder Ballroom on NE Russell.


PDX Contemporary Art opens a group show Next. With its exapnded space it's possible to see just about all of the gallery's artists together. Included are Brad Adkins, Tina Beebe, Nick Blosser, Kevin Burrus, Bean Finneran, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Victoria Haven, Laure Heinz, Mary Henry, Elizabeth Knight, Taimuras Kozirev, Cynthia Lahti, James Lavadour, Lisa Lockhart, Nancy Lorenz, Joe Macca, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Megan Murphy, David Shratter, Barbara Stafford, Eric Stotik, Storm Tharp, Terry Toedtemeier, Molly Vidor, Marie Watt and Masao Yamamoto. Their new space is at 925 NW Flanders, not sure if they are open first Thursday


The Everett lofts will no doubt have plenty interesting. You might stop at Pause to see Paige Saez's paintings. This sculptor, performance artist, installationalist and half the Homeland Gallery can paint a mean abstract, and that is a complement.


Apotheke presents photograms and spirograph drawings.


Valentine's restaruant presents "Oldtown Union" a show of artists living or working in the Oldtown neighborhood curated by Kendra Larson. 8-late with musical interludes. 232 SW Ankeny


Art in City Hall - early 5-7 - presents some paintings which I decline to comment upon, some wine, some food, some music (actually Alfredo Muro, Brazilian guitarist) and at 6 some movement, a short performance by the b unit of Hubbard Street modern dance from Chicago who perform later in the evening for White Bird. Make these events your own, I'm sure the city government would love to converse with actual artists.



November 4 First Friday

Homeland has a new home, with 3000 sf, you would think leisure boater Paul had moved to the 'burbs, but no, it's really the perfect spot for a Paige-style skate party, and it's at 222 SE 10th, in the E Burnside aesthetic vortex. Artist Scott Wayne Indiana shows "Wallpaper", a collage themed on chairs and nose rings, experiences and self portraits, as a continuous 72 foot scroll, it's sort of a graphic version of "On the Road", without speed.
Wallpaper runs from November 4th - December 4th open Sat and Sun 12pm - 6pm
Opening night starts at 7pm , with live music at 8pm. 222 SE 10th Ave


New American Art Union presents mixed media work by Ty Ennis. Ennis is a recent PNCA printmaking graduate known for his meticulous drawings. www.newamericanartunion.com/arti...l.php 922 SE Ankeny 7-10PM


Newspace Photo presents Myron Filene and Jodi Boatman. www.newspacephoto.com/gallery/


Small A projects closes their show of metal [music] inspired art. At 8, Todd Haynes presents Velvet Goldmine. The filmspace holds about 50 people, so RSVP if you would like to see it. www.smallaprojects.com


Fix presents the paintings of outsider-artist style Jessie Reno www.circlesquarexline.com www.galleryfix.com Music and opening 7-10


The NW Film and Video Festival opens see NWFilm.org for details.


Mizu, butoh movement artist provocateur invites you to a movement workshop. She strives to awaken through her dance the psychic terrain, the collective unconscious, the ordinary, the dream, the silent archaic language of the land, and the possibilities of being human without borders.

THE PSYCHIC DANCE BODY (melange of butoh, contact, improvisation and play):: Beginning with the spine, the serpentine.... Matrices of a dual pathway: tension and release Inside/Outside....seamless My world, yours, intersecting in unknown ways. Each player essential Every moment divinely planted undesigned in its perfection, flowing into it. Mutating every detail Like mating periodic elements Into alchemical future How do we refine the prima materia Come again to be the primal ingredient...The first?

ARTIST BIO: Mizu is Japanese for water, Desierto is Spanish for desert, meaning "water in the desert." The name was offered in a dream while dancing in Japan. It represents Mizu's homeland (in the Arizona desert) as well as the emphasis in her work on cultural exchange and the dualities woven throughout all of life. This past year she toured throughout France and into Spain with the Pachamama Project. She has danced in Tokyo, Mexico, New Zealand, New York, Boulder, Chicago, San Franciso, Portland, Phoenix, Seattle, Tucson, the Mountain Aire Festival, High Sierra Music Festival, and the Burning Man Festival. She has performed with Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno, Harupin-Ha, The Carpetbag Brigade, Flam Chen, and Human Nature (amongst others).

Friday Nov 4 10AM-12:30PM at Performanceworks NW www.performanceworksnw.org/ and foodandshelter.blogspot.com 4625 SE 67th Ave off Foster $30

See the website for a weekend of workshops and performances Nov 4 & 5



November 5,6,13,17 Seattle performance/film hybrid artist

If you happen to be in Seattle, this sounds too fantastic to miss... The Henry presents the films of Lynn Hershman Leeson. I am not making this up:

Saturday, November 5, 2 PM
Teknolust (2002)

85 minutes/ Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Davies

"Anxious to use artificial intelligent robots to create companions in a lonely world, Rosetta Stone, a bio-geneticist devises a way to download her own DNA into a "live” brew she is growing in her computer. She succeeds in breeding three Self Replicating Automatons that look human, but were bred as intelligent machines. All of the characters struggle to find meaning in a world where love is the only thing that makes things real. In the process they find harmony between the real and the virtual worlds. Lynn Hershman Leeson and exhibition curator Robin Held will introduce the film."

and

Sunday, November 6, 2 PM
Conceiving Ada (1997)

85 minutes/ Tilda Swinton

Themes of love, sex, artificial life, and DNA-transference history intertwine in Hershman Leeson's first feature film. Emmy Coer, a computer genius, devises a method of communicating with the past by tapping into undying information waves. She manages to reach the world of Ada Lovelace, founder of the idea of a computer language in the nineteenth. Emmy has a plan to defeat death and the past using her own DNA as a communicative agent to the past, bringing Ada to the present. But what are the possible ramifications?

Sunday, November 13, 2 PM
Short Films and Videos

A sampling of shorts filmed from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s that explore identity, gender, and technology.

Thursday, November 17, 7 PM
The Electric Diaries (1984-1995)

75 minutes
The Electronic Diaries derives from feminist performances in the 1970's. Both are concerned with documentation and articulation of identity. The Electronic Diaries, however, is specifically designed to be electronically distributed to a mass audience. Each video is produced privately, using no camera person or technicians. The completed works are, paradoxically, widely distributed and internationally broadcast. Exhibition curator Robin Held will discuss Hershman Leeson's provocative series of videos shot as intimate confessionals. A 75-minute film program will follow."

The Henry Art Gallery is on the campus of the University of Washington www.henryart.org each show is included in the gallery admission which is $8, free for UW students



November 5

More workshop'n: 10am - 1pm at TLC Alberta (The Little Church): 5138 NE 23rd Ave (& Sumner) $30
State of Becoming: with Delisa Myles
Experience with greater awareness the dance that is- in you- in relational exchange-in group consciousness. Use imagery and poetic stimulus to tune into individual physical and psychic territory. Practice qualities of permeability, availability, and sensitivity to the dance of another. Increase the field of play by opening to the emerging composition of the group. Guided improvisational experiments range from deep internal listening to partner work, to playful romp, to witnessed spontaneous compositions.

Mizu performs "Devil's Apples" with Delisa Myles (Lily Noir), a butoh-burlesque excavation of the feminine psyche at Suono Angelica a Kaosmosis costume party. Loren DJ's late. Bossanova Ballroom, 722 E Burnside 9PM-4AM $15-25 sliding scale


Kalakendra presents a tribute to the greatest Sufi singer of modern times, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, to benefit earthquake relief in South Asia. Sufiism is a mystical branch of Islam that holds that the deity is within each person, not external. Kahn, 1948-1997. was part of a 600 year unbroken family lineage of qawwali singers which his son continues today. 7:30 Flanagan Chapel Lewis and Clark College $30 advance (Tix West or indogram.com)/$35 door



November 6

Aa part of the EnterActive Language Festival for the LANGUAGE OF NIGHTMARE, Societas Insomnia, the Nightmare Company will perform. The performance features fire dancing, body modification, hook suspension, domina betka schpitz, improvised experimental music and butoh inspired movement.
www.societasinsomnia.com www.2gyrlz.org Sabala's Mt. Tabor, doors at 9pm. $5-$15.



November 10 2nd Thurs

Local 35 on Hawthorne opens a new show. Other Hawthorne locations may join in for art events each month.



November 11

Osseus Labyrint will be performing in “the Language of Random Mutations”. OL has for over 10 years of translated the movements of bats and insects to their own bodies. Some would draw a direct connection with butoh styles. www.2gyrlz.org www.osseuslabyrint.net/ at PNCA 8PM
1241 NW Johnson Street Sliding scale $5 - $15, all ages are welcome, there will be beer and wine with 21+ ID



November 12

LANGUAGE OF THE EAST encompasses performances by Seattle butoh artists the Degenerate Art Ensemble and P.A.N. butoh with interludes by Portlanders' Sardonik Grin, Soriah, the Venerable Showers of Beauty Gamelan, and Hop Frog from LA. details: 2gyrlz.org/calendar/ELfest05/12NOV.htm Backspace Annex 115 NW 5th ave $5-$15 doors at 8:30pm


The Film Center's NW Film and Video Festival, in its 32nd year, and running Nov 4-12, closes with a program of more abstract works and a special showing by Vladimir of her latest Viewmaster opus, "Actaeon at Home" www.vladmaster.com/actaeon.html . Experience a Vladmaster event - the artist constructs micro miniature dioramas, shoots them in stereo, then assembles them into Viewmaster wheels, adding a soundtrack. Tonight the Apt Ensemble provides the soundtrack live. www.vladmaster.com/pdx01.html . Amaze your friends, you can have your own Vladmaster show, Vladimir may sometimes be found at the Urban Art Network's 13th Street First Thursday Street Art Show! See nwfilm.org for details. 7PM Guild Theater



November 16

Artist, sculptor, architect Maya Lin www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/# discusses her Confluence Project www.confluenceproject.org, a series of sculptures along the Columbia River. In an open competition, Lin won the commission to design the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC at age 20. She has continued to design elegant minimalist memorials and sculptures with emotional taproots miles deep, complementing her sublime architectural work. Lin was the subject of the Academy Award winning documentary "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision" Sponsored by Portland Arts and Lectures. Schnitzer Concert Hall 7:30 $30



November 17

Small A Projects opens Will Rogan's "Getting Through" with a conversation between Will Rogan and Harrell Fletcher at 8.



November 18

For the month of Halloween, Disjecta walks the earth. Why? To collect money, which is what artists and arts institutions do. Courtesy of www.ultrapdx.com: Baddoll shoes opens their new store at 1639 NW Marshall. Urb-style artists Seth Neefus, Tim Karpinski, Taylor Brubaker, and Dave Wien--are, John Baldwin Gourley, Wesley James Hubbard, Makenna Combs, Ryan Bubnis, Corey Smith, Crack la Rock, Mukgora, Fash-izm and A.W.E. will mod up shoes to be auctioned to benefit Disjecta who have secured a warehouse space at 2nd and SE Burnside. Music by Dj Black Keys, Dj Roomate, Dj Izm, Dj Makeout, Dj Belo. 5-11PM 1639 NW Marshall



November 20

Nexus presents "Disciplines for the Hungry Body" a Butoh Workshop in the afternoon and later, at 8, a performance by Shinichi Momo Koga www.inkboat.com/ "Only a dance on the edge of control brings real life. Such risk traces a path to fear and joy. Each quickly becomes the other. Our work is to transform the space between, the body map, with sensitivity and dynamism." Workshop Conduit 12-4 918 SW Yamhill, Ste. 401 $48 Send registration to: Alenka Loesch 1832 SE 48th Ave, Portland, OR 97215 Performance 8PM, same place, sliding scale $10-15



November 24

Thanksgiving is the last holiday that is pure. Not commercialized. No need to buy, buy, buy, party, party, party, no regrets. Just pure love and family. The best to you and yours.


November 25 Last [Thursday] but not least [Friday]

Last Thursday is on last Friday this month for obvious reasons.

The (relatively) new kids on the block, OFFICE, 2204 NE Alberta, will open a show of 20 works: "Employee of the Month". Artists Adam Bayer, Apak, Arbito, Brad Simon, Bwana Spoons, Carson Ellis, Chris Hutchinson, Corey Lunn, Corey Smith, Driscoll Reid, Evan Harris, Jerry Inscoe, Justin B. Williams, Lina Hitomi, Martin Ontiveros, Matt Clark, Le Merde, Molly Anderson, Shawn Wolfe, Snaggs and Wesley Younie interpret the 20 years of the building's history with imaginary portraits of employees of the month spanning that time.

7-9 Friday, then regular OFFICE hours.