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The Thing of It All Refocusing TBA’s Visual Art Programming with End Things by Matt Stangel
Claudia Meza
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teract with them. OME OF THE WORK that I was doTo help us along: a touchable installation ing with artists that I really believed of movable sculpture from Erika Vogt; sound in was getting lost in the bustle and the mapresented as object by Claudia Meza; things nia of the festival,” explains PICA Visual Art diffused over transmuted form (stills from Curator Kristan Kennedy of her curatorial films about objects, translated to wall paintrole in TBA over the years. “I really wanted ings) by Paris-based Isabelle Cornaro; a to make a focused exhibition of only the artweek-long object-based storytelling session ists that are speaking to each other about from writer and artist Alex Cecchetti; “pasthis concept of ‘end things.’ ” tel environments,” sculptures on beanbag Kennedy is right. Digesting TBA’s visual chairs, and a fountain made from Oregon art programming has been a daunting task in clay by Mo Ritter; and Dutch collective van past years. Navigating the work can feel like a Brummelen & de Haan’s 16mm film centercomically heady StumbleUpon session: Each ing around the inaccessibility of a particular project requires detailed research and discusTurkish frieze due to its potential to spark sion and weeks of thinking and considering and political upheaval. catching up on an artist’s conceptual footing Each project, while as particular to itself as and double-checking the execution and then anything from past TBAs, has the added benefit more thinking and thinking and thinking—all the of sharing conceptual train tracks with fellow while, each project’s corresponding schema End Things contributions. Check our TBA blog of research rests in its own little compartment, (portlandmercury.com/tba) for expanded details sealed off from the other shows and steeping in on End Things projects and a one-billion-word its own expansive ecosystem of meaning. It’s a interview with Kristan Kennedy that will fill you lot to ask and expect of audiences, and frankly, in on everything you ever wanted to know about an example of the well-intentioned art snake bitTBA:12. ing its own tail. End Things is designed to defang the overload of past festivals—the exhibition uses only six of PICA’s 12 visual art budgetary allotEnd ments for the year. (The remaining six will Things be presented throughout the year in a slower, more focused fashion, cenAlex Cecchetti, Mo Ritter, tering around PICA’s new downvan Brummelen & de Haan, town office/event space.) Kenand Erika Vogt nedy says the idea of animation— Washington High School, “things” in and out of motion, and Thurs Sept 6-Sat Sept 29 the ways we understand them— Claudia Meza tie the six projects that make up White Box at the U of O, End Things together. Sat Sept 1-Sat Sept 22 She explains that the idea was born out of conversations with Isabelle Cornaro TBA:10 artist Storm Tharp: converand Mo Ritter sations about things (art things, spePICA, Fri Sept 7 cifically), why we keep them around, what Sat Sept 29 they mean, and how they never stand still physically, conceptually, or even semiotically. Also contributing to the idea of End Things were talks with TBA:11 artist Anne Marie Oliver about animation. “Greco-Roman sculpture, with all their flowing robes, was proto-animation—all that was to show movement,” says Kennedy, “and now we’re in this sort of hyper-animation state of the world. [Oliver] paraphrased some famous philosophers in saying that if something is moving it can’t be understood, and [in relation to movement] I started to think about the idea of thingness.” So how do we understand objects, let alone art, in a world of ever-quickening things, disposable things, things we don’t care about that are designed to profit off of that exact emotional disconnect? For starters, we must get reacquainted with our things—and the vast internets of potential inside each—if we’re to know how to better in-
Mo Ritter
Isabelle Cornaro
August 30, 2012 Portland Mercury’s TBA Guide P9