Saturday August 19
Iron Artists Compete at N Vancouver & Failing SCRAP
SCRAP collects stuff and you can get it for cheap or free. It's super useful for schoolteachers on an art material budget, which is just about every public school teacher in Portland. Today they stage a very fun fundraiser the IRON ARTIST team competition. 10 teams receive a collection of materials to which they add their secret ingredients. They have 3 hours to sculpt an art-like structure to be judged by a celebrity panel. The winner is awarded the coveted Cup du SCRAP. Cheating is allowed. The teams and audience are encouraged to wear costumes. There will be a beer garden, food, kiddish things, a raffle with of things you want to need, bands and DJ's. Cheer your fav team to victory! Gates open at 12:30. At 1 the theme is announced and the teams begin their mad competition. The sculptures must be finished by 4 and the judges go to work. Around 5:30 your votes are due for the "People's Choice". Slightly afterwards the judges critique each piece and announce the recipient of the Cup du SCRAP. The raffle drawing is held. The event ends about 8. See the website for pics from previous years to get an idea and start planning your team for next year!
$5-10 donation (it's a find raiser)
Mostlandian Games at Col. Sanders Park
This is hard to explain. M.O.S.T. is a social art group. They are having an Olympics of unusual competitions: http://www.mostlandia.com/pages/championship.htm
Rose City Rollers Rollerderby at Portland Expo Center
Rose City Rollers teams Guns and Rollers, the Heartless Heathers, Break Neck Betties and the High Rollers, face off. This wacky and highly entertaining sport does have rules in which one each of the team members, designated by a different helmet color try to pass the other team members from behind. But those mean girls try to elbow them aside, hog the court and otherwise keep from being passed. Sort of like junior high. Meanwhile an all ages and varied crowd, some costumed to support their favorites, hoot, yowl and otherwise carry on. The cheering and jeering somehow seem more real than at a pro sports event. Expensive PBR supports county programs - that would be social services and jails. A most entertaining half time show, sometimes with the Sprockettes and the Zoobombers, means that with the pairings of four teams, the event runs from 6 to 9:30 or 10. Doors 5. Portland Expo Center - go by train on the light rail as parking is expensive. www.rosecityrollers.com $12 advance, $15 day of show and $20 for VIP's, though how that applies to Rollerderby I'm mystified.
Sunday August 20
Exchange Project at Homeland
Portland is one of the world's centers for social art. Artists such as Harrell Fletcher, Red 76, M.O.S.T, Miranda July and others work in this space.
Sunday for a few hours, Portland will be host to Vancouver, BC's Nancy Nisbet's Exchange Project. With a nod and a wink. perhaps, to eToy's traveling cargo containers, the Exchange Project is a free store of stories in objects on a semi truck.
You are invited to bring objects and exchange them with others on the truck. Each object comes with a story from its previous lifetime, in turn, your story, of your object will be recorded for its future journey of highways, truck stops and even border crossings.
The Exchange Project adds sly commentary too, on privacy and surveillance: each object is taged with an RFID - a tiny radio "bar code" which can be read at a distance of feet by anyone with a reader. (Note in recent news RFID tags have been demonstrated to be able to carry small computer viruses.)
Visit the Exchange Project at the Homeland squatter headquarters at 916 SE 34th Ave, across from the Belmont Stumptown anytime between 4 and 7PM. http://www.galleryhomeland.org