Since the 1970s, Michael Smith has nurtured two alter egos: “Baby Ikki” and “Mike.” In “Threshold,” his performance at Yale Union, Smith brings the baby and Mike together in a loop: Mike feeds into Ikki and Ikki feeds into Mike, going from one character to the next, like a life cycle.
Baby Ikki was born in 1975. “The baby was a reaction to a lot of feminist activity and discussion about gender at the time. I started thinking about what it would be like to have a character without gender, and I thought of an infant.” Since then, the baby has appeared on the street, in fetish videos, at birthday parties, and at Burning Man. In spite of all that time, Ikki is much the same, a feral baby whose precipitous infancy drags against Smith’s increasing age and stoop.
“Mike” is a single white male. An American. A bachelor with no dependents. Hapless but lovable, Mike believes in self-improvement, though isn’t sure how to proceed prudently. Still, he has high entrepreneurial hopes, and when they bust, he finds solace in pertness, in trying to be the happiest, most contented guy in the world. His life is spent in a situation comedy, behind the curve, attempting to fit in. He’s hatched many venture. He hosted a public access TV show, built himself a government-approved fallout shelter with a snack bar, ran a lighting company, and started a “wellness centre.” He has attempted to memorize two words from the dictionary every night to improve his vocabulary, invented a new game for kids called ‘Take Off Your Pants!”, and tried to sell his loft with all his artworks hung in it. Little of it pans out, but Mike endures loss helplessly—one might say naturally.
More writing about Baby Ikki and Mike will appear closer to the the time of the performance.
Michael Smith (b. 1951) lives in Brooklyn, NY and Austin, Texas, where he teaches performance art at the University of Texas.
We Out Here Magazine & XRAY.FM present
The Thesis - March 3rd 2016
21+ · $5 · 9 PM
Portland's best monthly live hip hop event is back with another dynamic line up for March 2016.
...featuring...
Vinnie Dewayne · Wool See (IAME (of Sandpeople/Oldominion)) · Näkyo͞oəs formerly known as Deuxpamine
of course our DJ, Verbz will be on the one's and two's.
RSVP via Facebook
About Keith Hennessy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Hennessy
http://www.circozero.org/
Keith Hennessy (born 1959 in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada) is a San Francisco-based dancer, choreographer, and performance artist regarded as a pioneer of queer and AIDS-themed expressionist dance. He is known for non-linear performance collages that combine dance, speaking, singing, and physical and visual imagery, and for improvised performances that often undermine the performer-observer barrier. Hennessy directs ZERO PERFORMANCE / CIRCO ZERO, which has received commissions from Les Subsistances (Lyon) & Les Laboratoires (Paris), FUSED (France-US Exchange), as well as funds from the Zellerbach Family Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, Grants for the Arts, and The San Francisco Foundation.
Hennessy's performances are embedded in leftist and anarchist social movements; his career began in anti-nuclear juggling, acrobatics, and vaudevillian comedy. In 1982, he hitchhiked to the San Francisco Bay Area for a juggling convention, and stayed. In his San Francisco living room he co-founded the grassroots performance art coalition "848 Community Space," which later became CounterPULSE. He was influenced by and has worked with Lucas Hoving, Gulko, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Patrick Scully, Terry Sendgraff, Karen Finley, Joseph Kramer, the collective CORE (Jess Curtis, Stanya Kahn, Jules Beckman, Stephanie Maher, Hennessy), and Contraband, a company directed by Sara Shelton Mann. His work also developed from his participation in social and political activism inspired by Direct Action to Stop the War, Critical Resistance, ACT UP and Queer Nation. In San Francisco Hennessy's work has been presented at numerous venues including Dance Mission, Theater Artaud, Mama Calizo's Voice Factory and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Free & open to the public
Join Siren Nation for their bi-annual comedy show featuring some of the funniest ladies in the business.
Hosted by Joanie Quinn
Featuring: Elicia Sanchez, Emma Arnold and Natasha Muse!
Natasha Muse is like the C3P0 of San Francisco comedy: a bunch of small bears once mistook her for a golden god but in reality she's a bumbling robot (as well as a mom, a transsexual, and a firm agnostic). The SF Weekly once declared her a “Comedian to Watch” in 2014, and in 2016 they upgraded her to an “Artist to Watch.” Natasha features at the SF Punchline and Cobb's Comedy Club, and has worked with such comedy luminaries as Maria Bamford, Roseanne Barr, Janeane Garofalo, Wyatt Cenac, and God. Natasha's comedy is so good, it's not even funny.
Elicia Sanchez has been balancing meager paychecks between comic books and happy hour while performing stand-up since 2010. The Capitol Hill Times has described her comedic style as, “…mad cap tales of social incompetence,” while writer Lindy West (Jezebel) has called her "…a grumpy nugget of delight” and one of the "...funniest people in Seattle." Elicia has performed at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival, the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Northwest Comedy Fest and is a recurring opening act for comedian Hari Kondabolu (Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell). She co-produces three Seattle comedy shows (The Good Fun Show, Wine Shots: Comedy's Happiest Hour, The Enematic Cinematic: LIVES!!), hosts a podcast about bad movies titled The Enematic Cinematic, and is the lead singer of Seattle’s only Michael Bolton comedy/cover band, Lightning Bolton. Elicia currently resides in Seattle, WA where when not performing, she splits her time between watching creepy forensic crime shows and dusting her action figures.
Joanie Quinn is a rainbow haired, menopause mom of four kids, who worked on comedy sitcoms in Hollywood before she became a breeder in Oregon. She's been saving up for her kids therapy, one performance at a time. Joanie regularly produces & performs in Portland's "Spilt Milk: you'll laugh til you cry!”, at Harvey's Comedy Club, and has appeared at Helium Comedy Club and The Legendary Ice House in Pasadena, California. Joanie performed in the "All Jane, No Dick" Comedy Festival, the 2016 Idaho Laugh Fest, and will be in the upcoming SF Mutiny Radio Comedy Fest 2016.
Emma Arnold: Described as “outrageous and hilarious”, Emma Arnold is a comedian, author, and beekeeper. She is a return guest on Doug Loves Movies, and has performed at numerous comedy festivals, including the Limestone, Laugh Your Asheville Off, Pittsburgh, SheDot, and Great American. The other day, she saw an old woman apologize to, and then thank, an automatic door, and realized she was looking at her future. When not touring, Emma lives in Idaho with her family, where she keeps children and bees with varying degrees of success.
$10 in advance • $12 at the door
http://www.secretsociety.net/event/1073919-siren-nation-hell-hath-no-portland/
The expression of México’s authentic musical heritage lives on through the voice of Sol de México®! Sol de México® embraces the romanticism of México’s land, people and beauty of the heart. José Hernández invites you to enrich your affection for mariachi by experiencing Sol de México’s® dynamic energy and rich cultural expression.
Founded in 1981 by Maestro José Hernández, the platinum selling mariachi band Sol de México® have broken countless barriers in mariachi music, including becoming the first mariachi ensemble to be nominated for a Grammy. Their original rhythms, fresh sounds and inspiring ideas have energized the world of mariachi for over 30 years. Mariachi Sol de México® is truly a traveling cultural icon that symbolizes extraordinary musicianship and communal cross-generational joy.
Mariachi Sol de México® de José Hernández, whose original rhythms, fresh sounds and inspiring ideas have energized the world of mariachi for over 30 years, invite you to experience the passion and love of the mariachi tradition.
For more information visit the Portland’5 website. Tickets are on sale now! Reserve your seats today!
CLASSIXX (LIVE)
ELIOT LIPP
After more than ten years of global touring, seven solo albums on labels such as Pretty Lights Music, Old Tacoma Records, Hefty, 1320 and Mush, Eliot Lipp's status as an electronic music pioneer is known to scene experts and weekend warriors alike.
Named one of Vibe Magazines top 10 fastest rising DJs (Summer 2013) Vibe says " Eliot Lipp is making moves! ...Signed to Pretty Lights Music, Lipp's omnivorous taste in music expands to include everything from electro to funk to indie to downtempo and trap." Lipp's music tastefully spans genres, styles and techniques. Musically, Lipp is taking chances that are paying off in big ways. In a recent interview with Jay Z's blog Life+Times, Lipp commented that "People are scared to set themselves apart from the norm, but risks need to be taken in order to progress."
Perhaps this is what sets Lipp apart from the rest. He is a risk taker, not afraid to do something a little different.
KARL KLING
In the nine years since that fateful encounter, Kling has performed and DJed around the world as part of internationally renowned collective RAC and as solo act Karl Kling. With his self-titled debut album due out in 2014, a vocal feature on the RAC album Strangers, freshly released dance tracks, and a newly founded record label, the Producer/DJ/Songwriter is only building on these auspicious beginnings.
Kling's musical tastes are as wide-ranging as his tour schedule, resulting in eclectic DJ sets that span decades of dance music and move effortlessly between the many subgenres of house and disco. His original work is similarly expansive, drawing on both his electronic background and many years playing in and producing indie acts.
His first single, "Deep in the House of Love," is out now on MANI/PEDI Records, the record label he founded and curates with Mark Penner (Cyclist).
Paradox is a monthly comedy show hosted by Tim Ledwith and Alex Rios. House band EMS (Vern Avola).
This month's line up Includes:
Jake Silberman
Alana Eisner
Milan Patel
Featuring videos by: "Lady, Animated Series" (Emily Quindlen & André Falconer)
Headlining comic will be Christian Ricketts
(Bridgetown Comedy Festival, 2014 Willamette Weeks Five Funniest).
Last Sundays of every month TENTH DEGREE will be bringing you#AllThingsClub Dive into the sounds of BMORE, Jersey, Chicago, Detroit, UK and beyond. This is a worldwide movement. Expect guest headliners, intimate atmospheres, and heavy bass.
Guests:
GANGSIGNS // Verified, Stylss
https://www.facebook.com/gangsignsmusic/?fref=ts
https://soundcloud.com/gangsignsmusic
MASSACOORAMAAN // Fade to Mind, The Cave
https://www.facebook.com/massacooramaan/?fref=ts
https://soundcloud.com/massacooramaan
Residents:
KNATE PHA$ER https://soundcloud.com/knatephaser
b2b
ALBINO GORILLA https://soundcloud.com/albinogorilla
&
EMV KUSH
b2b https://soundcloud.com/pdxmandem
SKELLI
21+ w/ID
$5 at the door
Funktion-One (Official) Sound
Regular Fantasy (Vancouver, BC)
https://soundcloud.com/regfant
Women's Beat League DJs
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1624430434469378/
Visuals: Krystal Perez
Suggested Donation $3-$7 - all proceeds go to artists.
Renee is an artist, performer, and educator. She synthesizes techniques for physical conditioning, kinesthetic and emotional awareness, and improvisation to create collaborative and evolving choreographies that seek to both express and understand questions of purpose, power and politics.www.reneesills.com for more.
Sam Pirnak is an interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, OR.
Christopher Rose is originally from Seattle by way of Subic Bay in Philippines and San Diego. His work explores the ntersection of the Filipino and Black Diasporas and he’s recently been published in Crabfat, Fjords Review: Black American Edition, The Watering Hole Anthology and The Pariahs Anthology. He teaches creative writing, composition, and literature at Portland Community College and is a Jade-Midway District Artist-in-Residence in Portland, Oregon.
+ + +
This event is free, open to the public, 21+
Celebrating the influence coffee has on mixing.
Alyssa Beers (Women's Beat League) + WAV FUZZ = Hammer/Sickle
&
Rap Class
Free
BEACON
Welcome to the world of Brooklyn duo Beacon, who explore the dark side of the sweet melody with a sound that’s as seductive as it is subtly discomfiting. The duo – Thomas Mullarney III and Jacob Gossett – met at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, where they were studying sculpture and painting respectively. As with many other great musical partnerships, this one involves two disparate sets of influences coming together to form a sound that’s both fresh and exciting. They fuse the deceptively sweet melodies of R&B with an intoxicating undercurrent of darkness, drawing on influence as disparate as Warp’s back catalogue and Underworld.
The fusion of these two sounds – R&B’s melody and sexuality, electronic music’s complexity and, especially, the bass-heavy sound design of Mullarney’s influences (“Bass is key to our music,” he enthuses, “big, thunderous rap bass”) – would provide a blueprint for Beacon’s own sound: there’s a duality at play here, an idea of something dark lurking beneath a sleek veneer, a sense of latent conflict and uncertain resolution. “I think the balance of inhibitions is at the core of my own songwriting,” says Mullarney. “The love songs we write are ones that have an inherent guilt implied. Inside love lives a more sinister, carnal element that is constantly being subdued or released.”
The duo’s first release is the No Body EP, four songs that deftly walk the line between seductive and sinister. The production takes as much from the world of non-vocal electronic music as it does from R&B and hip hop, setting Mullarney’s vocals against backdrops that define as much of the song’s atmosphere as do the words themselves. As Mullarney says, “We’re channeling some parts of R&B’s aesthetic, and updating them with today’s ambient, electronic instrumentation.” The result? “A kind of displaced, atmospheric pop.” Music for the 21st century, indeed.
NATASHA KMETO
Born into a musical family in California, Natasha began to develop her talents as an artist from a young age. It wasn’t until almost two decades later, on the verge of becoming a career session musician, that she took the wheel and broke out in a direction that truly inspired her. Her artistic growth has vastly accelerated since her arrival in Portland and alliance with hometown crew Dropping Gems, and she shows no sign of slowing down. The string of releases since this period showcase Natasha in her most self-realized form, dealing in matters of love, independence, and a re-affirmed outlook on life. She released her sophomore LP Crisis 6/18/13 on Dropping Gems to praise from many tastemakers including NPR, Pitchfork, Fader and Spin. Her upcoming album, Inevitable, is slated to be released early 2015 on rising label Federal Prism helmed by Dave Sitek of TV On The Radio.
Natasha’s long list of notable and acclaimed live performances include a 2014 national tour supporting TV on the Radio, gigs at Coachella, Bumbershoot, MusicfestNW, Symbiosis, SXSW, Low End Theory, and Decibel Festival. She has shared the stage with a number of talented artists including Fourtet, Squarepusher, Flying Lotus, Kid Cudi, Flume, Gold Panda, Dam Funk, Kode 9 and Shlohmo. Her radio experience includes live performances on Boiler Room and KEXP, and her tracks have been played by numerous tastemaking DJs including the legendary Mary Ann Hobbes.
Join Heidi Schwegler as she discusses her 2015 residency at Bullseye Studio and the ideas behind her work in "The Emotional Life of Objects."
Queer Hip Hop Dance Party est. 2012
Residents:
II TRILL ( https://soundcloud.com/iitrill )
ILL CAMINO ( https://soundcloud.com/ill666camino )
H/IPH/OP/R/NB/T/RAP/B/OOTY/B/OUNCE
Wheel Chair Accessible Entrance & Bathrooms (No Stairs)
21+
Sarah Neufeld is a violinist and composer based in Montréal, Canada. Best known as a member of Arcade Fire, she is also a founding member of the acclaimed contemporary instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre, and most recently as half of an exciting new duo with renowned saxophonist Colin Stetson.
Neufeld began developing pieces for solo violin in a formal sense in 2011, though she has made improvisation and solo composition part of her process and practice since first picking up the instrument at a young age. Neufeld counts Bela Bartok, Steve Reich, Iva Bittova and Arthur Russell among the formative influences for her solo work, in tandem with an ear for the textures and sensibilities of contemporary electro-acoustic, avant-folk and indie rock music.
Neufeld's debut solo album Hero Brother, released August 20/2013 on Constellation Records, indeed channels all of the above, flowing through shifting atmospheres and oscillating between restrained, stately ambience, emotiveétudes, and raw kinetic energy. Small touches of wordless vocalisation, harmonium and piano supplant the violin in a few places. The album was recorded in Berlin by pianist and producer Nils Frahm, with Neufeld's performances captured in a number of locations with site-specific acoustics, including an abandoned geodesic dome.
Neufeld has recently finished a second full length album, to be released in early 2016. It is a body of work that sees Neufeld moving away from Hero Brother's classical minimalism and sepulchral ambience, and into the worldof rhythmic pop minimalism. The new album employs more emphasis on vocalizations than Neufeld's previous works; the interplay between Neufeld's voice and violin has become strongly integrated and narrative. The album also features Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara on drums, adding greater layers to the compositions, creating an intense, dynamic atmosphere, and a captivating listen from start to finish.
In addition to touring as a duo with Colin Stetson throughout 2015, Neufeld will be touring extensively as a soloist, in support her upcoming sophomore release in 2016.
Peridot ( http://peridotmusic.bandcamp.com/)
Pedestrian Death Gang (https://soundcloud.com/user-688134982/sets/pdg-demos)
Samuel Hertz, composer and performer, received his MFA at Mills College, where he studied composition and electronic music with Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, James Fei, Maggi Payne, John Bischoff and Chris Brown. Though classically trained, his studies in experimental literature and musical techniques steer his compositions and performances to include a wide variety of acoustic and electronic media such as: sensor technology, prepared guitars, piano, electro-acoustic percussion instruments, instruments of his own design, electronically modified traditional instruments, and movement.
http://www.samhertzsound.com/recent-works/
Christi Denton is a Portland based composer and sound installation artist who works with found sounds, electronics, and homemade and modified instruments. She has a degree in Music Composition from Mills College and a graduate certificate from the Centre de Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis (France). Christi has built giant chimes as part of the Music for People & Thingamajigs Festival and amplified exhibits in the Exploratorium. She played at the Spark Festival and her music is part of the exhibit Six Seconds Around Me in the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Italy. In 2011 and 2012, her work was featured in collaborative performances for Ten Tiny Dances at the Time Based Art Festival in Portland, where dancers controlled music through light and flex sensors. She competed in the 2012 Guthman Instrument Competition, was in residency at Caldera in 2014, and has played in every Electrogals festival since 1995.
https://soundcloud.com/christidenton
Jesse Mejía (Portland, Or) is a composer, performer, engineer and educator with a cross-disciplinary, collaborative process. He received his MA from Bangor University, Wales and BA from Sarah Lawrence College with a focus on composition, generative technology and physical interaction. Mejía directs a 20+ person experimental choir (CHOIR) and is part of Acid Farm, a live Nu Acid/Balearic Beat duo with Morgan Hynson. Mejía has performed at PICA's TBA festival, Northwest New Works festival, Dance+, Disjecta, composition gallery, False Front and various dance clubs and warehouses.
LL LL is a new collaboration between performers Phull Collums and Woo Lee Allen, dedicated to living at least two moments at once. They create maps which unfold across wrinkles of time that guide split parts of self back to a place of play. As art is the home where these maps are most alive, they often appear inside the video, sound and performance work of LL LL. Most recently, Phull and Woo, performed New Dream Room, a dance party installation performance piece for this year’s Spaceness event up in Long Beach, WA.
Phull Collums aka Sean Christensen:
http://phullcollums.bandcamp.com/
http://seanchristensenabt.tumblr.com/
https://vimeo.com/109753350
Woo Lee Allen aka Lucy Lee Yim:
www.cargocollective.com/lucyyim
Recommended donation is $3-$5 - all proceeds go to the artists.
The music of Rachmaninov, Mahler and Frank Zappa
Performed by the PSU Orchestra and conductor Ken Selden
featuring the PSU Concerto Competition winner, pianist Saelin Ho and singer Harry Baechtel of the PSU faculty
All ages welcome
$15 advance, $20 day of show (students and seniors: $10 advance, $15 day of show)
Presented By: McMenamins and Portland State University
The music of Rachmaninov, Mahler and Frank Zappa
Church of Film is a weekly gathering for the reverence and worship of cinema, with the hope of bringing the long lost, forgotten, overlooked, obscure or unavailable to a hungry audience unable to get their fill from the local theater offerings.
FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES
Director: Toshio Matsumoto
Country: Japan
Year: 1969
Runtime: 107 minutes
In the hidden dens of Tokyo's homosexual clubs, drag queen Eddie vies for the heart of club-owner Gonda. Darting between documentary and fiction, FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES follows Eddie through the parties, drugs, and romantic entanglements, and at last into a distorted recreation of the Oedipal myth. One of the first films to seriously explore transgender culture and homosexuality, Toshio Matsumoto's masterpiece is a breathless and revolutionary work of cinema, and reportedly inspired Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange!
Parallel universes, bi-location, autohypnosis, alternate dimensions, and past lives. Taking a cue from filmmaker Basma Alsharif in discussing her new film Deep Sleep, mental movement between these imagined, physical, or psychological spaces is also at the core of the cinematic experience. For the 39th annual Portland International Film Festival, Cinema Project presents an evening of short videos that explores the resonance of space and how one can be in two places at once. The program is bookended by two films shot on the same beach in Southern Morocco: In Shezad Dawood’s Towards the Possible Film is a hazy golden dream where blue-skinned astronauts emerge from the ocean waves, while in Ben Rivers’s A Distant Episode another view is unveiled that is newly mysterious and fragmentary via grainy black-and-white imagery. In between, is a “hypnosis-inducing pan-geographic shuttle” between modern sites of ruin in Deep Sleep; abstract images made from concrete ones and visualized as a strangely familiar shimmering portal of gradually changing colors in Makino Takashi’s Cinema Concret; heavily-processed video footage from 1980s and early 1990s awards ceremonies laid beneath the prophetic ramblings of an unseen narrator in Michael Robinson’s Mad Ladders; and beneath the pops of fireworks and rhythmic mechanical hums is a shuttling between two temporal realities in the collaboratively-made Bunte Kuh from Ryan Ferko, Parastoo Anoushahpour, and Faraz Anoushahpour.