Sixth Annual Quiet Music Festival, A Photo Journal

Only one music festival turns off the loudness button for a weekend. Stephanie Leet and I split coverage of the QMF, she attended on Friday and I went on Saturday. It was Steph’s first time and reading through her notes on the evening, it was an imaginative experience for me — she was in The Jungle Book …

Behind the Party for All the Thoughts I Didn’t Say

Samantha Shay, artistic director of Source Material Collective, provides a look into her recently revamped presentation of I Should Have a Party for All the Thoughts I Didn’t Say, at The Old Church, Portland, Oregon. Her insight about the work narrates exclusive rehearsal video, offering an immersive look into the interdisciplinary performance. This performance runs …

Who Is She?

“Alien She” exhibits the Riot Grrrl movement though art and identity creation. Forward by Kathleen Dolan The lyrics of the song “Alien She” by Bikini Kill go like this: She is me I am her She is me I am her siamese twin connected at the cunt Heart brain heart brain heart brain lung gut …

Photo Set: Bernie Sanders Rallies

Forward by Jen Scholten Portland’s rally last Sunday, August 9th drew together thousands of increasingly conscious minds — nearly 30,000 to be precise. The overall volume of physical bodies and voices was enough to boom our souls into space and away from the issues so immediate in our world. We remain grounded with a man …

The Popular Underdog

One week ago, on August 9th, Bernie Sanders lured almost 30,000 people to Portland’s Moda Center, including the overflow exceeding capacity with 20,000 packed inside, making headlines as the largest crowd in any candidate’s election campaign so far. Converging onto the NBA campus at 6pm, hundreds unloaded from trains that were gridlocked, bikes occupied every pole and banister. …

Roscoe Mitchell Headlines a Generation of Improvisers

Creative Music Guild brought together dozens of unique performers every day at Disjecta, for their annual dance and music improvisation conference. Mostly, it is music, but the importance of dance and spoken word in the program is now irreversible. When inclusive community groups do something big, you can feel it. ISP is an event that …

Photo Set: Improvisation Summit of Portland

Ambit was on the scene for almost all of Creative Music Guild’s annual festival, which brings improvised dance and music together through collaborative performance. Images of the event are special, in that they represent an immediate experience, one that cannot necessarily be replicated. Photography captures the moment which is completely fleeting, and in improvisation, the moment …

What is Erotic?

Women talking Sex: A Collaborative Take on Eleanor O’Brien’s What is Erotic? “What is Erotic to you?” was posed to the audience in a closing song and dance number at a performance of What is Erotic?, a show featured as part of the Fertile Ground Festival which wrapped up two weeks ago. We had just seen …