The discussion "Show and Tell: Gentrification in Portland" includes image presentations and short screenings depicting what we know about past and present Portland, and what we see happening in our midst.
In addition to pre-planned presentations by community groups such as the Cascade Stereoscopic Club (CSC) and local artist Stephen Slappe (screening the short educational film "Turning Around on Redlining"), we invite the general public to informally present images, stories, short video clips, or ephemera on the topic of gentrification. For questions email ourcityinstereo@gmail.com.
This event is presented in conjunction with Sharita Towne’s current exhibition at Newspace Center for Photography, Our City in Stereo, examining gentrification in Portland through images, sound, and historical texts. The exhibition runs through October 1, 2016.
Join OMSI and LAIKA for the kick off to the Animation Film Festival Weekend. Includes an in-depth lecture about the largest stop-motion puppet ever built or animated: an 18-foot tall giant skeleton. Following the lecture, we will enjoy 7 animated shorts produced by LAIKA employees.
6:30PM | Lecutre & Q&A: "Kubo and the Two Strings": One Giant Skeleton, One Colossal Undertaking
8:30PM | Animated Shorts by LAIKA Employees (Duration: 30 mins. | Ratings: from G to PG-13)
September 10 & 11 Houseguest will activate Pioneer Courthouse Square with its second Artist in Residence, Libby Werbel and Portland Museum of Modern Art, in conjunction with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art as part of TBA:16.
Werbel will install Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA), a weekend-long, build-it-ourselves outdoor modern art museum. The installation will be on display Saturday & Sunday September 10th & 11th, 11:00am–7:00pm with a performance series on Saturday and Sunday starting at 1:00pm. This event is free and open to the public.
Through PMOMA, Werbel orchestrates an exhibition in the heart of the city, inviting an impressive roster of visual and performance artists to engage with the space. PMOMA is an investigative project focused on the lack of major contemporary and modern art institutions within a growing metropolis. Werbel aims to draw a direct link between Portland’s lack of a contemporary art museum and the impressive output of the creative community. Does Portland’s quickly shifting economic demands endanger the cultural equity essential to maintaining the quality of any major city? Is it possible to have a museum without an established infrastructure to support it? What does a museum look like when fashioned through our ideal ethical processes? Werbel hopes to inspire dialogue around the notions of the ‘museum’ itself and larger institutional modalities for exhibition. Throughout the weekend of September 10–11, PMOMA partners with Houseguest and PICA to investigate these ideas in Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Visual art by:
Amy Bernstein, Roz Crews, Mariah Garnett, Midori Hirose, Johanna Jackson, Chris Johanson, Rainen Knecht, Daniel Long, Dino Matt, Rose Mackey, Ralph Pugay, Richart, Vanessa Renwick, Blair Saxon-Hill, Kyle Simon
Schedule of Performances:
Saturday September 10th
MC for the day: Dynasty Handbag!
1pm Mu
2pm DYNASTY HANDBAG
3pm Dragging an Ox through Water
4pm Larry Yes
5pm Michael Hurley
6pm Marissa Anderson
Sunday September 11th
MC for the day: Larry Yes!
11am - 2pm: DJ Yolo Biafra
2pm Julia Calabrese
3pm DoublePlusGood
4pm Tropic Green
5pm Secret Drum Band
6pm Fred and Toody
Larry Yes's brings us his Art in the Park Project, an arts engagement/ painting area free for all 11-4 both days!
A Museum Shop: made up of past collaborators and friends: art objects, handmade treasures, books and more. All day both days.
Through form absence becomes tangible.
A group show about nothing.
Sound, sculpture, video, and photography by Samson Stilwell, Maddy Inez Leeser, Erik Saltzman, and Tessa Bolsover.
reception / bbq
7:30 - 10pm
Do You Believe in the Bystander Effect?
Genevieve Goffman
On display: September 7-29 2016
Opening reception: Wednesday September 7 6-8 pm
Do You Believe in the Bystander Effect? is the presentation of a small body of research. On the surface, it is a catalogue of the jumbled information available on the tragic and tragically misreported murder of Kitty Genovese, one that attempts in particular to trace the interlaced vines of convoluted racism, homophobia, gendered violence, fear and shame that shape the story.
The murder of Kitty Genovese laid the ground work for an entire school of psychological thought, and goaded the state into the creation of the 911 emergency call line, further cementing the mentality that ascribes public safety purely to state intervention. Although Do You Believe in the Bystander Effect? is nominally a question, it is not a project focused on the clear exchange of information between artist and audience. It hopes to be a forceful argument against reliance on the state, which is often the root of the fear and misinformation that prevents bystander from acting.
Genevieve Goffman is an artist living in Portland, OR. She graduated from Reed College, and her work has been shown in S1, The Melanie Flood Project, and HQHQ.
Much of her work involves the finding and reorganizing of fragments, in the hopes of comparing the stories that are remembered to those that fall through the cracks.
Check out their page and support Black owned business: http://www.blackbusinessmonth.com/
Places, food carts, and take-out you can visit:
Dub's St. Johns-
Po'Shines Cafe De La Soul
Poshette's Cafe
Crown Q-
Dalo's 1533 NE Alberta
Enat Kitchen
Fuel Portland Oregon
Enjoni Cafe
Columbia International Cup
Cason's Fine Meats
Ella's kitchen / Bailey's & Bailey's Soul Food
Cannons BBQ
Dixon's Rib Pit
Horn of Africa
Queen of Sheba Int'l Foods
Alle Amin
Chez Dodo
Bete Lukas Eth Rest
Gojo Ethiopian 915 NE Alberta
Emame's Ethiopian SW 9th & SW Washington
Caribbean Kook Pot 625 NE Killingsworth Open Sunday for this event!!!!!
Portland Prime 121 SW 3rd http://portlandprime.net/
Sunday Table Kitchens
Sweet Street Bbq
Solae's Lounge
Amalfi's Restaurant
Taste of the Bayou
Stoopid Burger
The Oregon Public House
Right Bayou Cajun Cuisine at Bigfoot Growlers https://www.facebook.com/rightbayoucajun
Alberta St. Fish & Chips
Peaches Ready Spaghetti cart
Eliot e-Mat cafe
Sengatera on MLK http://sengaterarestaurant.com/
Rahel's Ethiopian in the Cartlandia Pod on SE 82nd
Aberus Ethiopian Restaurant
NE Creperie
the McDonald's at 82nd and Foster 82nd and Johnson Creek, 82nd and Sunnyside, Damascus and Oregon City. "My Mother in law was the first African-American owner in Oregon 25 years ago."
Olive or Twist in the Pearl
A Heavenly Taste cafe at the Miracles Club 4200 NE MLK BLVD
Wing and a Prayer, 4549 NE 60th Ave.
Norma's Kitchen in Jantzen Beach http://goodseeddesign.wix.com/normaskitchen
Spice of Africa
Mama San Soul Shack
Jamaican Homestyle Cuisine
Pink Rose http://www.pinkrosepdx.com/ 1300 NW Lovejoy-in the Pearl
Steakadelphia http://steakadelphia.com/
Q Burger
Safari Restaurant 7815 SE Powell Blvd
Vera James and Joyl Kitchen 131st and Sandy Blvd
Batter Up, (Coming Soon)
Deliciouis Texas BBQ Pit and Catering 4322 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy
Sante Bar 411 NW Park Ave Portland, OR 97209 971.404.8216
Deadstock Coffee
Abyssinian Kitchen (Ethiopian and Eritrean Cuisine) 2625 SE 22st Ave, Portland, OR 97202 Abyssiniankitchen.com
Mama's Kitchen 611 Main Street Vancouver
DaddyD's BBQ in Vancouver http://www.daddydsbbq.com/
Goldie's Texas Style BBQ
http://www.abbeycreekvineyard.com/
Gumbo Goddess Concessions
Fathers of Abstraction
Alisa Bones
Alisa Bones lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Alisa holds a BA from Reed College and an MFA from Yale University. This is Alisa's first solo show in Portland and is the culmination of Alisa's one month residency at S1.
Rose Dickson: Slow Mask
August 26-October 2, 2016
Friday August 26, 6-9pm: Artist Reception
Tuesday September 20, 7pm: Poetry Reading with Timmy Straw, Erin Perry, Michele Glazer, and Ryan Mills
Sunday October 2, 11am-1pm: Closing Reception
Gallery Hours: Saturday, 12-5 and by private appointment
Melanie Flood Projects is pleased to present Slow Mask, an exhibition by artist Rose Dickson, exploring the masking effect of gradual change and the undefined boundaries within transformation. Dickson’s work rests in a space between digital and analog; her photography, sculpture, video, bookmaking, and performance draw tensions between an art historical foundation and new media’s influence on making. In addition to this exhibition, Melanie Flood Projects will host a night of poetry and Dickson will present a one-night, site-specific, outdoor performance, further details to be announced.
Beginning with stone, a material which holds great historical relevance in early expressions of making, Dickson photographs rock surfaces. She then works with and re-photographs the prints in her studio. Rather than manipulating the images post-capture, Dickson concerns herself with the physical process of manipulating by hand and utilizing the camera’s natural tendency to distort reality. She intentionally lights the sculpted print to apply both weight and form to its otherwise flat surface. In this series, Ruins, the photographs move between 2D and 3D, digital and analog, again and again. The line between fragment and whole becomes loose, and the boundaries between one form and another get lost in the slow narrative of simultaneous buildup and decomposition. The resulting images, which feel more like drawings or artifacts, are, like Yourcenar says of Greek statues, “so thoroughly shattered that out of the debris a new work of art is born.” By working and reprinting these photographs multiple times, a curious ruin is left, much like the natural habit of stone.
Central to Dickson’s artistic practice is an obsession with layers and boundaries. In Nothing Between Us, the barriers between artist and viewer are made physical while the possibilities of performance, object, and video are condensed. The many layers in this piece represent a synchronized process of revealing and concealing. As the layers are dissolved, the artist is revealed and the object in the video is destroyed.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Dickson engages in the conversation surrounding digital memory and its relationship to physical material by examining concepts of fragility and permanence. Slow Mask brings together works that explore the process of transformation and question defined boundaries between what was and is.
Slow Mask is the fourth in an ongoing artist series at Melanie Flood Projects, Thinking through Photography, an exploration of artists working with photography today. The series includes a comprehensive survey of contemporary photographic practices through programming that highlights experimental and diverse approaches to image making. Facilitated by exhibitions, artist talks, studio visits, interviews, and suggested readings which aim to expand the language surrounding photography, while also unveiling progressive work by local artists in the Pacific Northwest & beyond.
Rose Dickson is based in Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. Her work has been exhibited in cities internationally, including: Portland, New York, Paris, Rome, Helsinki, Chongqing and Fukuoka. Recently she has shown work with Humble Arts Foundation (New York), Surplus Space (Portland), Recess Gallery (Portland), Hideout (Paris), Organhaus (Chongqing), Opening Titles (New York) and Upfor (Portland). With the support of the Oregon Arts Commission, Rose has been awarded multiple residencies, including Taidelaitos Haihatus, Finland (2013), Organhaus, China (2014) and Studio Kura, Japan (2015). Currently she is participating in the artist studio program Neighbors, founded by Studio J and housed in the Yale Union Laundry Building in Portland, Oregon. Her work is in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Please join September Session Houseguest Resident Libby Werbel for an Artist Talk at Likewise Bar (3564 SE Hawthorne Blvd) prior to her activation of Pioneer Courthouse Square. Webel will discuss her work as a Houseguest artist and give audiences a look inside her site specific installation of Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA). This September activation of Pioneer Courthouse Square is co-presented by Houseguest and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art as part of the Time-Based Art Festival.
Werbel will install Portland Museum of Modern Art (PMOMA), a weekend-long, build-it-ourselves outdoor modern art museum. The installation will be on display Saturday & Sunday September 10th & 11th, 11:00am–7:00pm with a performance series on Saturday and Sunday starting at 1:00pm.
Through PMOMA, Werbel orchestrates an exhibition in the heart of the city, inviting an impressive roster of visual and performance artists to engage with the space. PMOMA is an investigative project focused on the lack of major contemporary and modern art institutions within a growing metropolis. Werbel aims to draw a direct link between Portland’s lack of a contemporary art museum and the impressive output of the creative community. Does Portland’s quickly shifting economic demands endanger the cultural equity essential to maintaining the quality of any major city? Is it possible to have a museum without an established infrastructure to support it? What does a museum look like when fashioned through our ideal ethical processes? Werbel hopes to inspire dialogue around the notions of the ‘museum’ itself and larger institutional modalities for exhibition. Throughout the weekend of September 10–11, PMOMA partners with Houseguest and PICA to investigate these ideas in Pioneer Courthouse Square.
About Libby Werbel:
Libby Werbel is an artist, curator, and social organizer living and working in Portland, OR. In 2012, she founded the Portland Museum of Modern Art project to create and instigate art and dialogue serving both artists and audiences. With an emphasis on accessibility and engagement, Werbel makes site-based works using community as her medium. Her investigation in space-making has included alternative exhibitions models in Barcelona, San Francisco, New York City, Joshua Tree and Santa Fe. Werbel has received public and critical acclaim for her DIY organization methods and creative mobility within the PMOMA project.
About Houseguest:
Houseguest is a new residency program hosted at Pioneer Courthouse Square (PCS), Portland, Oregon’s largest and most accessible public plaza. It’s an experiment in site-specificity, collaboration, and participatory public art. In 2016, Houseguest will host four artist residencies to engage the space, the public, and relevant Portland issues through participatory practices. Houseguest is made possible through the generous support of Oregon Community Foundation, The Miller Family Foundation, and Pioneer Courthouse Square, Inc.
PSIC: Women of Color Organizing (in the arts and beyond)
Project Space Industrial Complex de-centers and provokes the standard actions and motivations of independent art spaces. Co-taught by Chloe Alexandra, Carmen Denison, Eleanor Ford and Devin Ruiz, each class of PSIC will present candid discussions of standard institutionalisms alongside experimental constructions of space and community building beyond the heteropatriarchal white supremacy of the status quo. The subject matter of each course will build upon the last, with a resultant expanded discourse that includes space construction, art markets, social/political structures and the function of ‘alternatives’ within white supremacist institutionalizes.
The second class of PSIC will be a forum on the subject of Women of Color Organizing. Inspired by Andrea Smith's essay Rethinking Women of Color Organizing, and with a sharp awareness of the amount of work carried by women of color, we felt this topic would present an occasion to come together and recognize the necessary labor put forward by woc in the arts and beyond. Multiple speakers will join instructors to give short presentations on and around the topic of Women of Color Organizing – ranging from personal experiences to textual readings.
Cover photo: Where We At (WWA) Black Women Artists Collective (1973)
The class will be livestreamed and archived for those who can't join us at this place and time.
Cherry | Lucic
cherryandlucic.com
Emily Goble
the same thing multiple times
8.19.15
6:30-10:00pm
Cherry and Lucic presents the same thing multiple times, an exhibition of new works by Emily Goble, a painter who lives and works in Portland, OR and Lille, France.
More info here.
Michael E. Smith
August 19 - October 8 2016
Opening Recption
Friday, August 19
5-7pm
Michael E. Smith was born in 1977 in Detroit, MI, USA. His objects and pictures as well as his videos seem like physical reconstructions of emotional disfigurement, his exhibitions like an archeology of humanity. He counters the ecological and economic disaster of our era with a materialism of basic needs, displayed as a layout of ruined bodies. Smith studies at the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit from 2004 until 2006. In 2008 he graduates from Jessica Stockholders' class at the Department for Sculpture at Yale University, New Haven. His latest exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial (2012), Culturgest Lisbon (2012), Les Ateliers de Rennes - Biennale D'Art Contemporain (2012), Ludwig Forum Aachen (2013), CAPC musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux (2013), The Power Station, Dallas (2014), SculptureCenter, Long Island City (2015), De Appel, Amsterdam (2015) and Kunstverein Hannover (2015). Smith lives and works in Providence, RI
In this lecture/slapdash powerpoint/conversation, Sara Jaffe will discuss examples of “productive ambivalence” in writing, music, and visual art, offering strategies for conveying a sense of both/and in form as well as content. Likely touchstones include George Nakashima, Nina Simone, Thomas Bernhard, more. She will conclude with a short reading of new work. Conversation to follow.
Sara Jaffe is a writer, musician, and teacher living in Portland. Her novel Dryland was published by Tin House Books in 2015.
This event is sponsored by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Join Ross Fish of Møffenzeef Mødular for a conversation & workshop about drum sequencing and synthesis in the Eurorack modular synthesizer environment. Topics will include subtractive drum voices, FM drum voices, karplus strong synthesis, granular synthesis, timbre control, dynamic sequencing + clock modulation, etc.
Enrollment for this course is $5 for Synth Library members and $10 for non-members. No musical, audio, or synthesis experience required. If you have any questions please write us at s1synthlibrary@gmail.com. You must be 18+ to attend this course.
http://s1portland.com/workshops/drumsequencing/
On view: August 8-31 2016
Reception: Wednesday August 10, 6-8 PM
Maddy Inez Leeser & Tony Chrenka | crumbs of paper
"...crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognizable" - Michel Proust, Swann's Way (1912)
Maddy Inez Leeser is an LA based artist, currently practicing in Portland Oregon. She obtained her BFA at Pacific Northwest College Art with a major in Intermedia Arts and a focus in Printmaking and Sculpture. Her work integrates ideas of neuroscience such as our senses and how they drive us psychologically. She works with concepts that deal with human’s relationships to objects and collections. She is currently working with ideas of pseudoscience, alchemy, memory and smell.
Tony Chrenka (b. 1992, Minneapolis, MN.) is an artist and curator living in Portland, OR. He has shown in one person exhibitions at S1 (Portland, OR.), and through Amur Initiatives. Recently he has been shown along other artists at Reed Art Week (Portland, OR.), Keenan’s Room (Los Angeles, CA), threefourthreefour (New York, NY.), WAKE (New Haven, CT.) and Umi No Hi (Brooklyn, NY.). Tony collaboratively curates shows with Flynn Casey under the gallery name Muscle Beach in Portland, Oregon. Artist website: tonychrenka.com
The Littman and White Galleries are student-run exhibition spaces at Portland State University. Our mission is to provide tools for a critical experience of contemporary art for students and community members through comprehensive programming. We envision the Littman and White Galleries as centers for cultural enrichment where an indispensable art experience is accessible to all perspectives and levels of education.
Gallery site: littmanwhite.tumblr.com
Exhibition dates: July 29 – October 1 , 2016
Opening reception: Friday, August 5, 6-8pm
*The Cascade Stereoscopic Club will offer a short demo, 'Introduction to Stereoscopic (3D) Photography' from 7:00 to 7:30pm.
Check bit.ly/NSupcoming for info on related programs.
Our City in Stereo, a project led by local artist Sharita Towne, combines the old medium of stereo views with stereo interviews to explore the topic of gentrification in Portland. The project relies heavily on community collaboration and site-specific conversation, featuring extensive interviews with local residents—teachers, artists, organizers, and local business owners. In this way, viewers can see in depth, but also hear in depth how gentrification operates and the ways in which people contend with it. This combination brings us to a third depth—a conceptual depth—in a rapidly changing city.
The exhibition at Newspace will invite viewers to engage with stereography in different forms, spanning from early twentieth-century stereoscopic viewers to modern-day stereo technology. Visitors will also have the opportunity to hear stories and testimonials by Portland residents who have witnessed and experienced firsthand the changes to their immediate surroundings, and contribute their own experiences and points of view into an interactive timeline. Our City in Stereo will release a tri-weekly podcast throughout the exhibition that can be found at www.ourcityinstereo.com(URL will be activated in conjunction with exhibition opening).
Schedule of podcast release:
August 20: Episode 1 available online (includes gallery audio + more)
September 10: Episode 2 available online
October 1: Episode 3 available online
About the artist:
Sharita Towne works collaboratively in research, education, print media, video, and socially engaged art projects. She’s pursued work at concentration camp memorials in Germany, at Saharawi Refugee camps in Algeria, in Brazil, Chile, Spain, Palestine, and gentrifying cities like Portland. Her work takes place in museums, schools, print shops, community centers, neighborhoods, and within her own family. Towne works within the collective URe:AD Press (United Re:Public of the African Diaspora) and the postcolonial conceptual karaoke band Weird Allan Kaprow. She currently teaches at Pacific Northwest College of Art and is 2015 Art Matters Grantee.
About the Gentrification in Portland residency program:
In Summer 2015 Newspace announced an open call for projects by local artists employing image-based practices that represent, track, and investigate the issue of gentrification and displacement in Portland, with a requirement of community collaboration in the development and presentation of the project. Towne’s project Our City in Stereo was selected and developed in residence at Newspace and C3:Initiative from January to July 2016 for an exhibition in summer 2016 at Newspace.
What's it like for people of color working in arts organizations? Real Talk builds off input from PEAL (Portland Emerging Arts Leaders) Equity Committee's last event, Why Are the Arts So White?: A Think Tank on Racial Equity in the Arts by featuring stories from arts administrators of color. Focusing on personal accounts of hiring, applying for work, job interviews, retention, and leaving as they relate to being a person of color in the field of arts administration, these stories will be read aloud to prompt discussion and brainstorm strategies for creating people of color-friendly arts organizations.
Register for Real Talk through Eventbrite here: http://tinyurl.com/RealTalkEvent
$5 suggested donation. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Doors open at 6pm, and the event begins at 6:30pm. Light refreshments will be provided.
Have a story to share? PEAL is collecting stories from people of color who work or have worked in an arts organization at http://tinyurl.com/PEALrealtalk.
3-5 stories will be selected to be read at Real Talk. All stories will be archived as part of a permanent blog at pealrealtalk.tumblr.com.
The Synth Library is pleased to announce an improvisation workshop on July 31st, 2016 with Norwegian free-jazz musician Ingebrigt Håker Flaten. The workshop will include two performances from Flaten: one on electric bass & one utilizing a modular synthesizer. Each performance will be followed by personal reflections on his practice with the instrument in an improvisation & free-jazz context. The event will conclude with a Q&A with Ingebrigt and Alissa DeRubeis, Co-Founder of the Synth Library, and will focus on incorporating modular synthesis into an improvisational-based musical practice.
Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten exploded on the Scandinavian avant-garde jazz scene in the mid-90s. By 2014, after his move to the US in 2006, he have become one of the hardest working bassists in jazz, constantly touring the globe and having appeared on more than 150 albums both as a sideman and as a leader. Ingebrigt has been listed in the Downbeat Magazine’s 60th, 61st, 62nd and 63rd Annual Critics Poll as a Rising Star on both acoustic and electric bass, in the 63rd edition he was also listed as one of the most important electric bass players of today. His work with his own bands The Young Mothers and IHF Chicago Sextet, as well as with The Thing, Atomic, Free Fall, Scorch Trio, Sun Rooms, Dave Rempis Percussion Quartet and in duo formats with Joe McPhee, Evan Parker and Håkon Kornstad have put him at the center of a large pool of improvisers with strikingly different modes of operation.
Enrollment for this class is a sliding scale for $15-20 for the one day 3 hour workshop on Sunday, July 31st from 6:00pm-9:00pm. Please follow the link to register: http://s1portland.com/workshops/ingebrigthakerflaten/
If you cannot afford this workshop, but would like to attend pelase write to s1portlandinfo@gmail.com
À reading featuring performances by Sidony O'neal, Juleen Johnson, and Tommy Pico!
Special guest host Julian Smuggles
♪┏ ( ･o･) ┛♪┗ (･o･ ) ┓♪┏(･o･)┛♪
The First Annual Portlandia Mermaid Parade is a grassroots artistic event aimed at showcasing and celebrating all things mermaid, and helping to bring magic, mythology, and joy to the City of Portland. The parade highlights the pageantry of Portland’s artistic communities, and recognizes how these communities have historically been eliminated via gentrification, and/or through the culture of business/corporate elitism. The parade is a revitalization of this artistic energy, and an opportunity for creatives to have a more public forum for fantasy based self-expression.
This is a secular, noncommercial, and non-specific political event. This means that there is no single cause or agenda that can represent the diversity of the participants in attendance, and no corporate sponsorship. However local and small businesses may sponsor if they so choose, and individuals and groups are encouraged to promote their secular--political, artistic messages which are in the general spirit of the event and its themes.
A Portland version of the summer-solstice celebration, this parade takes place in mid-summer due to the NW inclement weather pattern in June. As an artistic framework, the parade celebrates oceanic myths, legends, symbology, spirituality and the water festivals associated with many global traditions including but not limited to: Celtic, Nordic, Pagan, African, and Eastern cultures.
Although the event is NOT a protest, it is an organized gathering intended to promote artistic expression, a paradigm shift, culture gender, and body positivity, as well as other social concerns deemed harmful to a future of peace, artistic expression, and environmental well-being.
It is with this mission, The First Annual Portlandia Mermaid Parade invokes the following:
• Freedom to peaceably assemble
o Freedom from unreasonable bureaucratic or financial barriers which limit (either intentionally or unintentionally) the grassroots intention of said event; such barriers will be considered excessive and discriminatory based on the level of unequal impact it has on different organizing echelons within the community (as seen historically through business elitism, and gentrification practices)
o Freedom from city ordinances which are invoked as a means to deter, or suppress any of these State and Federal protected amendment rights
• Freedom of expression & personal creativity
• Freedom of speech
Vehicular floats, or motor assisted floats (NOT including disability personal assistance devices) are not permitted at this time. Smaller, hand push floats which easily fit within the size parameters of an average sidewalk width are ok, and encouraged.
Individuals or groups found to be in violation of the community agreements; who do not acquiesce to the requests of the parade peace team will be asked or required to leave.
Those who elect to go bare breasted may want to consider the use of shells, pasties or body paint to help decrease the risk of law officials interpreting the toplessness as lewd. There are no Portland laws regarding toplessness. Indecency laws in Portland specifically refer to the revealing of genitalia for the purposes of causing sexual arousal, or in matters of public sexual acts. Bare breasts have often not been interpreted as genitalia, but people should be aware that the matter is somewhat left to personal interpretation of law officials. Anyone ticketed or cited as a result of accused lewdness or indecency have been for-warned, and so the First Annual Mermaid Parade supports the freedom of artistic expression, however, the event and its associated organizers are not responsible for any fines or consequences that may arise as a result of people electing to express this freedom.
All parade participants should know that while there are no expected instances of danger, personal risk, or injury, this IS a public event being held outdoors, so there is always a certain level of risk present. The First Annual Portlandia Parade and its associated organizers are not responsible for any physical or financial losses, or personal injuries, which may arise as a result of acts of nature, inclement weather, accident, or terrorist attacks, or behaviors in violation of the community agreements.
Currently the framework for this event is just a parade. Vendors of any-kind who wish to sell goods, wares, or food must do so under their own license and permits in accordance with the City of Portland. The parade is not organizing or having any official vendors.
Please bring sunscreen, drinking water, and snacks for self care. This event will be happening mid-summer, and heat stroke is a reality.