Artists Archive
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Adela Demetja is a curator and author born in 1984 in Tirana, Albania. She holds a Master's Degree in Curatorial and Critical Studies from Goethe University and Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Demetja was first trained as a painter and studied from 2002 to 2006 at Academy of Art in Tirana, Albania. She is the director of Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art, Albania's leading independent art institution, which she established in 2010. As an independent curator, she has organized, managed, and curated numerous international exhibitions and events in a number of European countries. In 2016, she was appointed curator of Focus: Ex-Yugoslavia and Albania at viennacontemporary international art fair in Vienna, Austria. In 2015, she co-curated the Third Edition of the International Contemporary Project Biennale D-0 Ark Underground, which took place in the anti-atom shelter build by Tito in Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other thematic exhibitions she has curated include: The aesthetic of the small act at Action, Action Field Kodra Festival in Thessaloniki, Greece and Voices of Truth in Villa Roman, Florence, Italy. As an author, she writes exhibition reviews, catalogue texts, and articles for online platforms and publications in Albania and throughout Europe.
Learn moreAmalia DacheAn Afro-Cuban American scholar, Amalia Dache is an assistant professor in the Higher Education Division. Her experiences as a Cuban refugee and student traversing U.S. educational systems—among them urban K–12 schools, community college, state college, and a private research-intensive university—inform her research and professional activities. Dr. Dache’s major research areas are postcolonial geographic contexts of higher education, Afro-Latina/o/x studies, community and student resistance, and the college-access experiences of African diasporic students and communities. She is lead editor of Rise Up! Activism as Education, published in 2019 by Michigan State University Press. Her most recent article, “Ferguson’s Black radical imagination and the scyborgs of community–student resistance,” appeared in The Review of Higher Education in 2019.
Learn moreAntoine Defoort tries to maintain a good atmosphere and a high level of porosity between his seasonal whims, life, as in real life, and contemporary art. He therefore often finds himself struggling with blatant contradictions that are either proudly assumed or shamefully hidden through the use of mind numbing non-sequiturs and wild digressions. Failures and accidents are welcomed with open arms and create a crispy granularity particularly appreciated by connoisseurs. Together, Julien Fournet, Antoine Defoort and Halory Goerger co-founded l’amicale de production, a small production house in Lille / Brussels (France / Belgium) For greater context and a more in-depth exploration of Antonie Defoort and his collaborative work with Halory Goerger, click here to view a PDF of collected reviews, interviews, articles and links. A great resource for those who really want to dive into the Festival!
Learn moreMusician, poet, and performing artist Ashot Danielyan advocates art as an instrument for social change, a new and unfamiliar concept in Uzbekistan. The repressive political regime in Uzbekistan over the past three decades has resulted in isolation in artistic and social life leading to severe stasis. The dominance of the academic art school inherited from the Soviet past ensures that the local art community follows conformist self-censorship and aggressively rejects new ideas or socially engaged art practices.
Ashot’s project A Man With The Stool addresses many of these issues through performance, poetry, music, photography, and video. Having introduced the project in the major cities of Uzbekistan, Ashot is planning to tour it around Central Asian republics to build cultural bridges among these disconnected nations.
During his ArtsLink International Fellowship 2020 (virtual and in-person residencies), Ashot met professional and civic communities and explored cross-cultural experiences and socially engaged art practices which emerge from poetry, alternative music, and theater. Sharing interest and practice in Japanese history, language, culture, experimental poetry, performance, and book-making, Ashot and his US collaborator Mami Takahashi of PICA, launch a series of poetry readings, artist talks, and conversations. The multi-city cultural exchange resulted from Ashot’s and Mami’s virtual residency in 2020 and takes place at PICA and other cultural and educational institutions in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago in 2021.
Learn moreCarissa Dez: Dedicated advocate for social justice and policing reform. With a background in investigative journalism and involvement in community organizing, Carissa would like to promote accountability, equity, and transparency in law enforcement practices. As a panelist, Carissa brings a wealth of experience and insights to the discussion, aiming to drive positive change and foster safer, more equitable communities for all.
Website: https://carissadez.com/
Learn moreCleo Davis started his education in architecture at the University of Oregon further changing to industrial design at San Jose State. He is an artist whose work takes a critical view of the social, political and cultural issues and through his work, he continues to reconstruct the cultural view modernizing while also highlighting traditions. Although he engages with multiple subjects and mediums his methodology remains consistent. He also has started the Screw Loose Studio, the Mayo House Project, and most recently, the archives project in collaboration with Kayin.
Learn mored.a. carter is a writer, teacher, and cognac sipper. He is co-editor of The Iconic Obama, 2007-2009: Essays on Media Representations of the Candidate and New President (2012). He is currently completing Obscene Material, a book examining black girlhood and scandal in 1919 Washington, D.C. and is also a member of the Queering Slavery Working Group, an interdisciplinary scholarly collective that uses Tumblr to place black queer studies in conversation with the history of enslavement: http://qswg.tumblr.com and http://qswgremix.tumblr.com. He is an assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University, with research interests in 20th Century African American History, gender and sexuality studies, and black cultural studies.
Learn moreDana Michel is a choreographer and performer based in Montreal, Canada. Her practice is rooted in exploring the disorderly multiplicity of identity using intuitive improvisation and image creation. Before entering the BFA in Contemporary Dance program at Concordia University in her late twenties, she was a marketing executive, competitive runner, and football player. In 2011, She received a danceWEB scholarship, allowing her to deepen her research process at ImPulsTanz (Vienna, Austria). She has been making and internationally touring work for the past nine years.
Michel’s newest solo, Yellow Towel, premiered at the 2013 Festival TransAmériques (Montreal) to critical acclaim. The work featured on the “Top Ten” 2013 dance moments in Dance Current Magazine (Canada) and was recently singled out as one of the most remarkable productions at the 2014 American Realness Festival (New York City) by The New York Times. In August 2014, she received the ImpulsTanz Award for artistic excellence in life.
Learn moreAtlanta, Georgia, is a hotbed of contemporary art with an abundance of choreographers and performance artists seeking affordable and accessible venues. Recognizing this scarcity of performance space as an opportunity, curator and lighting designer Malina Rodriguez founded Dance Truck: a mobile project that uses the back of a rental truck as a stage. With its inventive technical direction, diverse artistic lineup, and stunning visual platform, Dance Truck has been an enormous success in “bringing dance to the people” at festivals, museums, parks, and streets throughout the Dirty South.
Selected Press
Dance Truck Pulls into the Contemporary, Andrew Alexander, Creative Loafing Atlanta, February 9, 2011.
Learn moreDan Handelman is a co-founding member of Peace and Justice Works and its police accountability project group Portland Copwatch. In 1991 he also helped co-found Flying Focus Video Collective, which has produced a program on cable access every week on social justice topics. Dan attended nearly every police oversight meeting in the City since 1992 (PIIAC 1992-2001/Citizen Review Committee 2001-present). He was appointed to sit on four City commissions looking at the oversight system - Mayor Katz's Work Group in 2000, on stakeholder groups in 2010 and 2016, and the Police Accountability Commission in 2021-2023. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform.
Learn moreWinnipeg-based artist Daniel Barrow uses obsolete technologies to present written, pictorial, and cinematic narratives centering on the practices of drawing and collecting. Since 1993, he has created and adapted comic book narratives to manual forms of animation by projecting, layering, and manipulating drawings on overhead projectors. Barrow has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad. He has performed at The Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), The Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC), and the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago). Barrow is the 2007 winner of the Canada Council’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award and the 2008 winner of the Images Festival’s Images Prize. Barrow is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto.
Learn moreDanielle Kelly is a Las Vegas-based artist and writer, who received her BA from Beloit College and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Working in disciplines ranging from installation to performance, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Portland.
Learn moreDao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, and visual—to explore hybridity and contemplate the intersection of personal and collective histories. Using practices of polyvocality, fragmentation, and (re)assemblage, Strom writes arrangements of poetry, music, image, song, and sound, to be experienced as performance, installation, multimedia, recordings, and inside the spaces of a book. Although separate, these elements are unified by a shared (under)current that transposes itself through or despite its conduits, and endeavors toward “re-membering” and attempting to synchronize the divided ‘languages’ within the self and concerning the self as placed in the world.
Strom is the author/composer of several hybrid works, including the music/poetry project TENDER REVOLUTIONS/YELLOW SONGS (2025), and INSTRUMENT (2020), which won the 2022 Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and its musical companion of song-poems, TRAVELER’S ODE. She co-curated and co-edited the hybrid-literary anthology and exhibition, A Mouth Holds Many Things (2024), and released an album of ambient-folk songs, Redux (2022). She is also the author of a bilingual poetry-art collection, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else; a hybrid-form memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, with song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction. Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, Ford Foundation, Precipice Fund, NEA, and others. She is the co-founder of She Who Has No Master(s), a collective of Vietnamese women writers and artists making polyvocal poetry-art works; and de-canon, a literary social art project centering BIPOC writers. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevadas of northern California and now lives in Portland, OR.
Learn moreDarren O'Donnell is an artist, writer, actor, and city planner. He is the director and founder of Mammalian Diving Reflex, and the author of Social Acupuncture (Coach House Books, 2006), a manifesto calling for a more socially and politically profound art and theater. His art is often described through the lens of relational aesthetics. O'Donnell is the Artistic and Research Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex (which presented projects for TBA during 2007 and 2014), a "research-art atelier" that produces performances, community-based events, and theoretical texts. The organization fosters dialogue and audience participation, and creates activist performance described by the group as "ideal entertainment for the end of the world." Its programs work to dissolve boundaries between art and life in an attempt to create an aesthetic of civic engagement.
Learn moreDavid Eckard is an artist, educator, and performer based in Portland, Oregon. His practice as a visual artist includes fabricated objects, drawings and prints, installations and performances. Through these varied approaches and diverse presentational strategies, Eckard fabricates residual, fictive artifacts, creates biomorphic, sexualized schematics, assembles arrested moments and orchestrates transient theatrics and temporary monuments for incidental audiences in civic spaces. Futility, authority, theatricality and persona enter into his creative explorations as notions to investigate, critique, utilize and exploit. Solo shows include Kim Foster Galley, New York; Fassbender Gallery, Chicago; Consolidated Works, Seattle; and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland. He has performed at PICA’s TBA Festival in 2004, 2006, and 2011, and for Northwest New Works at On The Boards, Seattle, in 2005. Eckard was awarded the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship for 2010, was one of the inaugural recipients of the Hallie Ford Fellowship in Visual Arts for 2010, and was a Juror’s Award recipient at the 2006 Oregon Biennial. Selected Press David Eckard's Liveries (summer stock) at Mark Woolley Gallery, Jeff Jahn, PORT, July 28, 2007.
Learn moreDavid Thomson is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice borders on choreographic situations and installations centered around questions of identity, unconscious narratives, and the expression of presence and absence as performative states.
He has been supported or presented by The Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, BRIC Arts, Performance Space NY, The Invisible Dog, Mt Tremper Arts, The Yard and Danspace Project, among other institutions.
His work has been recognized with awards and fellowships including a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artist Award (2022), Robert Rauschenberg Residency (2018), Yaddo (2016), MacDowell (2014), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography (2013), and the US Artists Ford Fellowship (2012).
Thomson has worked across the fields of music, dance, film, theater, and performance with Bebe Miller, Trisha Brown, Ralph Lemon, Tracie Morris, Marina Abramović, Meg Stuart, Grisha Coleman|Hot Mouth, Yvonne Rainer, Sekou Sundiata, Maria Hassabi, Yanira Castro, and Okwui Okpokwasili, among others.
He has served on the faculties of Movement Research, NYU, Sarah Lawrence, The New School, Barnard, Bennington, Pratt and Middlebury. In 2017, he and Kate Watson-Wallace initiated The Sustainability Project, which serves as a platform for expanding the discourse surrounding financial, artistic, and personal empowerment within the arts community.
Thomson received an interdisciplinary B.A. from State University of New York at Purchase.
Learn moreDawn Kasper is an interdisciplinary performance artist. Kasper's work has been exhibited widely; The Migros Museum, Zurich (2005), Human Resources, LA (2011), Tramway, Glasgow (2012), 2012 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2012) Redling Fine Art, LA (2014) David Lewis, NY (2014) Kasper lives and works in New York.
Learn moreDB Amorin (b. Honolulu, Hawai'i) is an interdisciplinary media artist who explores audio-visual non-linearity as a container for intersectional experience. He frequently emphasizes the generative role of error as an opportunity for creation, resulting in media-centered projects driven by DIY methodologies, lo-fi translations, and persistent, inquisitive experimentation with available materials.
His work has garnered awards from esteemed organizations including the Jersey City Arts Council, Oregon Arts Commission, the Ford Family Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, the Precipice Fund grant funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Calligram Foundation and administered by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). His visual art, performances, curatorial & collaborative programming have been presented internationally at A4 Arts Foundation; the ImagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival; Onassis Foundation; ICA at MECA&D; Luggage Store Gallery; Soundwave ((7)) Biennial; PICA; Portland Art Museum; the Honolulu Museum of Art; Honolulu Biennial 2019.
Learn moreDeborah Hay is an American choreographer, dancer, dance theorist, and author working in the field of experimental postmodern dance. She is one of the original founders of the Judson Dance Theater.
Learn moreDemian DinéYazhi´ (born 1983) is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their practice is a regurgitation of purported Decolonial praxis informed by the over accumulation and exploitative supremacist nature of hetero-cis-gendered communities post colonization. They are a survivor of attempted european genocide, forced assimilation, manipulation, sexual and gender violence, capitalist sabotage, and hypermarginalization in a colonized country that refuses to center their politics and philosophies around the Indigenous Peoples whose Land they occupy and refuse to give back. They live and work in a post-post-apocalyptic world unafraid to fail.
Instagram @heterogeneoushomosexual
Learn moreDontavious Body, Meet Me On Da Floor Chief Executive Officer and Founder
Dontavious Body is the young urban professional who had the forethought to establish MEET ME ON DA FLOOR, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit company, as well as the courage to use his company to embark upon the journey to be a positive force of enlightenment, change, and inclusion for society. Prior to him establishing this company, he served in corporate America for both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations; most notably Microsoft and with Forever family, Inc. While at Microsoft, Body served as the company’s Product Advisor and Community Development Captain where he was responsible for introducing the world of MICROSOFT to corporate partners and non-profit agencies, launching new product lines, and facilitating corporate education. He has earned a number of Microsoft certifications.
Learn moreDon’t Shoot Portland is an arts and education organization that promotes social justice and civic participation. Our year-round programming allows us to advocate for community members facing racism and discrimination by providing legal representation and direct advocacy. Since our inception in 2016, Don’t Shoot Portland has hosted its own dialogues, community forums and workshops focusing on history, archiving and social culture. The art proponent of our work acts as a communicative tool to facilitate discussions about race in America while providing educational assets to those most affected by discrimination in public policy.
As we uplift and amplify social movements around the world, your solidarity and commitment to change is the impact needed. We must continue to evolve alongside one another to extend this work. Our community action plan provides direct essential resources, legal advocacy and more to support communities that have been systemically marginalized. Our programming will remain free and low-barrier to keep our resources accessible to all.
Teressa Raiford is a community organizer, philanthropist and fourth generation Portlander. Her experiences with gun violence inspired her to demand accountability from leaders and lawmakers surrounding public safety. In 2016 Teressa established a human rights organization, Don’t Shoot Portland, focusing on civic education, art and nonviolent direct action while providing legal access to vulnerable communities.
Tai Carpenter (she/her) is a writer, gallerist and community archivist with a passion for social impact in the realms of art and civil rights. She is also the founder of Compose Yourself Magazine, an independent online publication spotlighting music, culture and social justice. She has curated political art installations, facilitated panel discussions and organized artmaking workshops centered on civic action with Portland Art Museum, University of Oregon’s Special Collections and University Archives, Society of American Archivists, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Shift Collective and Documenting the Now, among others.
Her work allows her to intersect two passions, art and civil rights, to create a more equitable and creative world by utilizing critical research to facilitate dialogues around art in relation to current social movements.
Tai is currently the Board President of Don’t Shoot Portland, a community-based advocacy nonprofit and Director of The Black Gallery. Most recently she was Gallery Coordinator for the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, Gallery Manager at HOLDING Contemporary and an Archives & Records Management Coordinator at the City of Portland Archives.
Learn moreDorothée Munyaneza (Marseille, France) is a singer, writer and choreographer who spent her childhood in Rwanda. Her style of creating and performing on stage is directly inspired by what life has so intensely given her. Her artistic research draws from the diversity of her cultural heritage but more so by her appetite for encounters. In all her projects, the human dimension is especially of great importance. Her artistic curiosity and interest for a dialogue between music and other modes of expression blossomed through her participation in François Verret’s shows. In 2013, she created Compagnie Kadidi to start developing her own work, including “Samedi Détente,” her first work as a choreographer which has been presented 100 times touring all over Europe and in the USA.
Learn moreDrew Michael was born in Bethel, Alaska, and raised in Eagle River, Alaska. He started his art career at the University of Alaska Anchorage in a carving class with Joe Senungetuk in 1997. From there, his practice has developed through the study of other artists' work and through his own experience in trial and error. He has learned under the guidance of Kathleen Carlo and Larry Ahvakana in Anchorage, AK.
His art is deeply influenced by the people and events he has encountered in his life. Currently, his work uses imagery of religious iconography blended with traditional mask making with the hopes of bringing to light different ways of healing. His work is created with a focus on using new materials and combinations of mixed media. He uses carving as a form of expression, to draw understanding and compassion from within, and is constantly using new materials to broaden the form of his work.
"With everything I create I aim to exemplify my thoughts on how our humanity exists within this world, emotions about my relationships with others, perceptions of energy in all things and the constant acceptance into balance. As I learn about my own path I blend my traditional knowledge with everyday living experience and somehow try to connect with that ancestral wisdom that I see us all having within and around."
Learn moreDr. Simonis has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University and is the Owner & Lead Scientist of DAPPER Stats, a Portland, OR-based quantitative ecology consulting company. They are also the Founder & Director of the Chemical Weapons Research Center, a research, education, and activism organization focused on understanding the impact of chemical weapons on people, communities, and the environment.
When not working, Dr. Simonis plays competitive roller derby, and is a current member of the four-time, currently defending world champion and #1 ranked Rose City Rollers Wheels of Justice. Alongside competing, Juniper has been recognized for their activism and advocacy for inclusion of transgender athletes.
Website: https://www.juniperlsimonis.com/
Learn moreDylan Mira is an artist moving between video and text, recording how language makes bodies within the limits of representation and the thickness of time. Her recent projects have been presented at Performa, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles Nomadic Division, and Human Resources. She holds an MFA in New Genres from University of California Los Angeles and a BFA in Video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Learn moreFaye Driscoll (b. 1975, California, lives and works in New York) is an award winning art and performance maker who uses an alchemy of bodies and voices, objects and live sound to conjure worlds that are, like ourselves, alive and forever changeable. She creates immersive worlds of sensorial complexity and perceptual disorientation aimed to rile up the passive, numb, screened-out body. These interventions come in the shape of intimacies: a performer holding your hand, death metal song made through recording your stomping feet, a place to rest and a private guided choreography in your ear.
In Thank You For Coming, her recently completed trilogy of performance works—Attendance (2014), Play (2016), and Space (2019)—each took a distinct genre blurring while summoning the unnamed forces that surge between the viewer and the viewed. For her first solo exhibition, at Walker Art Center, Driscoll brought the immersive experience of theater into the exhibition space, inviting viewers to become active participants through a series of prompts and subtle directives from her series of audio works, Guided Choreographies for the Living and the Dead.
She is currently the Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts, and is the recipient of a Doris Duke Award, Guggenheim fellowship, a Bessie award and the Jacob’s Pillow Artist Award, among many others. Select presentations include Kunstenfestivaldesarts, La Biennale di Venezia, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Walker Art Center, Melbourne Festival, Wexner Center for the Arts, Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, Centro de Arte Experimental in Buenos Aires.
Learn moreDancing has been in my blood since I can remember. It started off with hip hop dancing for my high school -- I began to recognize my skill and talent. After 4 years of that, I was introduced to the world of J-Sette by women. J-Sette historically refers to Jackson State University’s female drill team that began in the 1970s. They “created” the dance style, and thus far have made it a distinctive form of dance. I was interested in this type of dance, but not entirely until I saw a group of males performing it. At that point, I claimed the style for myself and perfected it on my body. Currently, I have my own J-Sette line, Mystic Force, and plan to increase our already considerable renown in this style of dance in our community, and eventually internationally. Previously, I served as co-captain of Dallas’ Texas Teasers. I have participated and competed in several events and competitions, including 2 SetteItOff video challenges, Atlanta Pride 2010, Tennessee Classics 2009, and Memphis Pride 2008. In 2015, I was named New Legendary by the Meet Me on the Dance Floor J-Sette council, and have gained many titles since then, such as, Best Dancer and Most Entertaining.
Re-Sette the Stage—a three-part conversation series happening in August, September, and October 2021—was conceived by Jermone Donte Beacham in partnership with jumatatu m. poe and Jamarsa Peters.
Learn moreKayin Talton Davis started off in an artistic direction from a very young age, but later learned her love for math and science and pursued a Bachelor's in mechanical engineering at Portland State University. Her design projects were always influenced by a drive to be accessible to all. She started the soapbox theory in 2001, as a way to express herself creatively. And through these mediums, her interest is always in creating something that is positive, helpful and accessible to all but especially children from culturally underrepresented communities.
Learn moreLaKendrick (ChoreoJazzy Elite) Davis, is a native of Greenville, MS. He is owner/cfo of ChoreoJazzy Elite, Southern Leadership Academy for Majorettes, inc., C.U.N.T.S, Atlanta, inc., Potionx all-star alliance, elite honors awards gala, KhoreoKreations, llc. And director of the Sensational Sassettes Dance Company. LaKendrick is a nationally acclaimed, award-winning choreographic consultant with over 20 years as a performer and 15+ years as an instructor in the majorette / performing arts arena. He is a well-rounded choreographer based in the metro Atlanta, GA area with the passion and determination to uplift, support, and provide resources that will change the performance dynamic of programs all over the country.
Instagram: @choreojazzyelite, @slamjam2016, @atltoxic09
Learn moreMatthew Day Jackson (born 1974) is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, painting, collage, photography, drawing, video,performance and installation. Since graduating with an MFA from Rutgers University in 2001, following his BFA from the University of Washington in Seattle, he has had numerous solo exhibitions. His work has been shown at MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, Colorado; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA; the Portland Museum of Art Biennial in Portland, Maine; and the Whitney Biennial Day for Night in New York.
Learn moreMike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times for his groundbreaking monologues which weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism, and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and heartbreaking stories that cut to the bone, exposing secret histories and unexpected connections. His controversial work, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, was recognized as one of the year’s best theater pieces by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, San Jose Mercury News, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian.
This fall he will premiere All the Faces of the Moon, a 29-night epic monologue performed over an entire lunar month, at the Public Theater in New York City. That work will be available for free online for people around the world to listen and watch as the story unfolds. At more than forty hours, All the Faces of the Moon will be the largest piece of sustained theatrical narrative since the 13th century medieval mystery plays.
As a playwright, his transcript of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was downloaded over 100,000 times in the first week it was made available. Under a revolutionary open license it has seen more than sixty productions around the world and been translated into six languages. The first Chinese production opened last year in Beijing, and will tour to Hong Kong and Shenzhen this year.
Since his first monologue in 1997, Daisey has created over fifteen monologues, including the critically-acclaimed The Last Cargo Cult, the controversial How Theater Failed America, the twenty-four-hour feat All the Hours in the Day, the unrepeatable series All Stories Are Fiction, the four-part epic Great Men of Genius, and the international sensation 21 Dog Years.
He has performed in venues on five continents, ranging from Off-Broadway at the Public Theater to remote islands in the South Pacific, from the Sydney Opera House to an abandoned theater in post-Communist Tajikistan. He’s been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, the Late Show with David Letterman, a longtime host and storyteller for The Moth, as well as a commentator and contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, The Daily Beast, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. In a brief, meteoric career with This American Life, his two shows are the most listened to and downloaded episodes of that program’s eighteen year history. He is currently at work on a second book, an anthology of his monologues, and he stars in the Lawrence Krauser feature Horrible Child. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, five Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation’s Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship.
Learn moreMyles de Bastion, Artistic Director, Musician, and Creative-altruist who develops technology and art installations that enables sound to be experienced as light and vibration. His work has appeared in the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland Art Museum and on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! Show. He has built large scale installations for music festivals and Grammy-award winning jazz artist Esperanza Spalding.
A dual citizen of the UK and the United States, Myles grew up in England where he obtained a BA from the University of Teesside (UK), focusing on computer science & animation, and was the chairman of the Musician's Society for two years. He has taught at Austine School for the Deaf (VT) and at the world's first Deaf Music Camp (MI), where he developed the curriculum and was responsible for the music and sound program. In 2012 Myles moved to Portland OR and founded CymaSpace, a non-profit that facilitates arts & cultural events that are inclusive of the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing, where Myles further develops his technological artistic works that translate sound into visual mediums. In 2015 Myles took his concepts into the commercial sector and founded Audiolux Devices, a technology company that now produces professional products featuring the synergy of light and sound. Myles continues to live in Portland with his partner Kimberly and CODA daughters Zebra & Juniper.
Learn moreMyles de Bastion develops technology and art installations that enable sound to be experienced as light and vibration. His work has appeared in the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland Art Museum, and on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! Show. He has built large format installations for music festivals and Grammy-award winning jazz artist Esperanza Spalding.
Myles is the founder of CymaSpace, a non-profit that facilitates cultural events inclusive of the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing; and Audiolux Devices, which produces products featuring light and sound synergy. 2018 Director of the first Northwest Deaf Arts Festival. Myles mentors Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing youth, has developed curriculum, and taught workshops in music and sound for Deaf schools, camps, and communities.
A current project, The Ikigai Machine, is a multimedia visual narrative with interactive installations and live performances that he is developing into a feature-length, touring production for disability hubs and art institutions. Myles has received support from Regional Arts & Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Cultural Trust, Oregon Cultural Foundation and Randall Charitable Trust.
Learn moreOffsite Dance Project was started in 2008 to pioneer alternative approaches to arts presentation through site-specific performance in locations such as trains, parks, and museums. Offsite also produces an annual community forum, We dance, to stimulate Japan’s contemporary dance scene by bringing artists from various genres together in unusual circumstances that generate new ways of approaching their art.
Learn morePablo de Ocampo lives in Vancouver where he is Exhibitions Curator at Western Front. He has curated screenings, exhibitions, and performances at galleries, cinemas, and festivals internationally. From 2006 to 2014, de Ocampo was Artistic Director of the Images Festival in Toronto, and in 2013, served as the programmer of the 59th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, History is What's Happening. He was a founding member of the collective screening series Cinema Project in Portland, OR.
Learn morePhoebe Davies (London) is a Welsh artist and researcher based at Somerset House Studios. Working across video, sound, performance, and print, her practice investigates how people perceive their social framework, often working with—and in response to—individuals, and communities, generating work through collaboration, collective action, and DIT (Do It Together) strategies. She currently co-facilitates two research groups, Synaptic Island, a London-based, womxn and non-binary sound collective, and Art is Action, a UK-based social practice research group. Phoebe Davies Website
Learn moreRian Dundon (b. 1980) is a photographer in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of the books Protest City (2023), Fan (2015), and Changsha (2012), and the recipient of a 2020 Magnum Foundation fellowship. Dundon is a contributing photographer at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. He teaches photography at Clark College in Vancouver, WA.
Website: https://riandundon.com/
Learn moreRobin Deacon (born 1973 Eastbourne, England) is a British artist, writer and filmmaker currently based in the USA. Active from the 1990’s, his work explores questions of memory, absence and fiction in performance, through a constant reconfiguration of his role as an artist - as journalist and biographer, operator and technician, imposter and stooge. His recent research projects have explored histories of video documentation and outmoded media formats, and the practice and ethics of performance re-enactment. His live and screen based work has been commissioned and programmed throughout Europe, the US, and Asia. A MacDowell Fellow, he has been a recipient of a variety of awards and fellowships from organizations such as the Delfina Foundation, British Arts Council, Live Art Development Agency and Franklin Furnace Inc.
Learn moreRoland Dahwen Wu is a filmmaker whose work explores migration, race and memory. His films and installations have been shown at CalArts, Portland Art Museum, Time Based Art Festival, Northwest Film Center, and numerous galleries. His films span nonfiction, experimental, and narrative genres, and are commonly marked by poetry: from his first documentary about the whistling language of the Canary Islands (There are no birds in the nests of yesterday) to his recent short film about 20th century Asian migration (Haft-Seen).
Learn moreSarah Dougher is a musician, composer, and university professor. She has performed for over twenty years, including at PICA’s TBA festival and has received commissions from the Classical Greek Theater of Oregon, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Multnomah County Library, and the Cooley Gallery at Reed College.
Learn moreStephanie DeGooyer (TBA:16 Guest Scholar) is Assistant Professor of English at Willamette University. Her work focuses on the intersections of law, politics and aesthetics. She is co-author of The Right to Have Rights (forthcoming from Verso Books) and is completing a manuscript titled The Aesthetics of Democracy. Beyond the academy, DeGooyer writes for the art magazine frieze. She is also co-organizer of Moonlighter Presents, a lecture series that invites scholars to speak on topics outside their field of expertise.
Learn moreTim DuRoche is a jazz and sound artist living in Portland whose work ranges from live performance to installation, including projects with Tere Mathern Dance, Linda K Johnson, and Cydney Wilkes.
Learn moreTyler Wallace is a Portland-based artist working in video, installation, and performance to investigate concepts of identity and personal history. Nicole Dill is a Portland-based artist whose work interrogates the function of celebrity culture in contemporary society through photography, performance, audio, sculpture, and installation. Both Wallace and Dill recently defended their theses at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and received their BFAs in May 2009.
"Between Us," Leah Bobal, PNCA UNTITLED.
Learn moreZvonimir Dobrovic is the founder and artistic director of Domino, one of the major independent art NGOs in Croatia. In that capacity he is responsible for curating several festivals in Croatia and internationally – most notably Perforations – week of live art and Queer Zagreb. Through different platforms he curates over 100 performances annually, staged all over the world, many of them commissions and produced specifically for these and other festivals. He has served on numerous panels and boards, juries and committees in the field of performing arts and film. Zvonimir has also edited dozens of books, magazines and written articles on performance. He regularly holds lectures and workshops on curating and art management.
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