Five Can’t-Miss Works of Art at the 2024 Time-Based Arts Festival

No new normal is coming, according to the organizers of the 2024 Time-Based Arts Festival. This probably isn’t news to longtime attendees of the annual festival, held for a week-plus in September at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s North Portland warehouse venue, this time Sept. 5–22. TBA is one of the Portland art world’s biggest events, attracting some of the most exciting and innovative artists to showcase new works alongside local visual and performance art heavyweights. For the uncertain future ahead, TBA organizers see this long, unstable moment as fertile ground for growing new realities to free us from outdated, burdensome ways of being.

The 21st TBA’s loftier goals include abolishing the prison system and shifting the international date line, but at this point, nothing is impossible or off the table to anyone bold enough to dream up anything. Though disabilities are not expressly mentioned in this year’s festival statement, many of TBA’s featured artists concern themselves with physical and mental disabilities, including stuttering, neurodivergence, long COVID, AIDS and addiction. Disability rights activists and organizers, no matter their capabilities, are often on the vanguard of the fight for equal rights. If only those in power would acknowledge them to see what the present moment lacks, they would see futures and possibilities beyond their imaginations.

These five works of art all address disabilities differently, some even indirectly, but all are worth your attention and belong on anyone’s TBA must-see list.

Outside Inside World by Videotones

The multimedia collective Videotones lives under the umbrella of Elbow Room, a nonprofit art studio and gallery founded in 2020 to support artists with physical and intellectual disabilities. Videotones transforms the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s 511 Gallery into a multipurpose space that’s part film set, recording studio, improv theater and rec room. Outside Inside World is a multichannel project envisioned for public access broadcast that pursues spontaneous techniques and intuitive direction ahead of linear time or narrative flow for a discordant but stimulating effect that speaks to neurodiverse experiences. 511 Gallery at Pacific Northwest College of Art, 511 NW Broadway. 5 pm Thursday, Sept. 5. Free.

Can I Be Frank? by Morgan Bassichis

Determined to prove they can think of others, writer-comedian Morgan Bassichis steps into the role of Frank Maya, an openly gay comedian whose budding career was starting to break into the mainstream before he died of AIDS-related complications in 1995. Bassichis re-creates Maya’s 1987 show Frank Maya Talks, assuming his identity not only to save his legacy from obscurity, but to breathe new life into queer jokes that haven’t been told during the lifetime of younger audiences. Portland Institute for Contemporary Art Annex, 15 NE Hancock St. 8 pm Friday–Saturday, 6 pm Sunday, Sept. 6–8. $20–$50 sliding scale.

Goner by Marikiscrycrycry

Damnation beyond salvation is a recurring artistic theme made no less terrifying with each new iteration of the idea, from the fates of Christianity’s Lucifer to Stranger Things’ sweet bestie Barb, and every ironically cursed Twilight Zone character in between. Under the moniker Marikiscrycrycry, choreographer Mailik Nashad Sharpe brings the tale of the Goner trope character to life. Embodying such topics as abuse, alienation and addiction (among others), Goner is a graphic exploration of the thrill in watching someone else’s suffering. Portland Institute for Contemporary Art Annex, 15 NE Hancock St. 7 pm Thursday–Friday, Sept. 12–13. $20–$50 sliding scale.

Aster of Ceremonies by JJJJJerome Ellis

JJJJJerome Ellis is one of many creatives proudly embracing their stutter, reclaiming it from people who would otherwise mock or patronize them. Pulling from the devotional song cycle Benediction, which was written for stuttering enslaved people on the run to freedom, Ellis delivers a multi-instrumental musical recital that remembers marginalized, nearly erased victims of one of humanity’s worst sins. Portland Institute for Contemporary Art Annex, 15 NE Hancock St. 8 pm Saturday, Sept. 14. $20–$50 sliding scale.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by The Javaad Alipoor Company

Though they do not perform with disabilities expressly in mind, The Javaad Alipoor Company looks into how investigations move forward, a common topic in the world of medical mysteries as patients and doctors often conflict with each other on whose perspective to believe. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World realizes the life and death of Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a prominent and influential Iranian singer, actor and entertainment personality forced into exile after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. His still-unsolved murder in 1992 is considered part of the chain murders of Iran, one of more than 80 critics of the Islamic Republic assassinated between 1988 and 1998. Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway. 7 pm Friday, 2 and 7 pm Saturday, Sept. 20–21. $20–$50 sliding scale.

SEE IT: Time-Based Art Festival at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 15 NE Hancock St., 503-242-1419, pica.org. Sept. 5–22.