TBA:19 institute
Renowned dance, performance, and visual artist Eiko Otake discusses her expansive TBA performance and exhibition projects with esteemed Portland-based artist and choreographer, Linda K. Johnson and PICA’s Artistic Director & Curator of Visual Art, Kristan Kennedy.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. After working for more than forty years as Eiko & Koma, she began performing her own solo project A Body in Places in 2014. In 2017 she launched a multi-year Duet Project that she directs and performs with a diverse range of artists.
Linda K. Johnson has been a professional dance artist based in Portland, Oregon for over 25 years. Over this quarter-century of creative practice, she has taught, performed, created, curated, and produced extensively throughout the West Coast, influencing and forwarding the development of infrastructure (studios and dance programs), funding (support), and conceptual networks (information and training) for colleagues and students. An Oregon native, her concerns as an artist are social and environmental, and address our collective relationship to site, place, and community. Since creating her first site-based, large-scale interdisciplinary performance in 1992, Johnson has gone on to author over 15 major works which have utilized Portland’s forests, urban intersections, waterways, derelict lots, neighborhoods, green spaces, parks, as well as formal spaces, as staging grounds for presentation. A recipient of the Oregon Arts Commission Individual Fellowship for Dance in 1999, Johnson’s work has been generously funded and commissioned by public, private, and individual sources, and has received critical review in many venues, including Dance Magazine, Landscape Architecture, NPR/Living on Earth, and Metropolis Magazine. She has been awarded residencies at the Rauschenberg Artist Residency, Yaddo, Caldera, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology to further the development of her creative work.
Johnson’s making and teaching are informed by her interest in improvisation, somatic practices, architecture, visual art, sustainability, and beauty. A sought-after teacher by both professional movement artists and serious hobbyists, she has taught for extended periods as faculty or as a guest at Mills College (2009-2011), University of Oregon, Reed College, Lewis and Clark College, Portland State University, Jefferson High School, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Conduit and the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics. She is honored to be a custodian in perpetuity of Yvonne Rainer’s seminal postmodern work, Trio A, and has performed extensively as a soloist in works of her own, as well as works by Bebe Miller (Rain), Kristy Edmunds, and Stephanie Skura, among others. In 1995, she co-founded Conduit with Mary Oslund, and was the Director of Education for Oregon Ballet Theatre from 2000-05.
In 2008, she was the author, director, and curator of the South Waterfront Artist-in-Residence Program, as well as the groundbreaking project, The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin, which was presented as part of PICA’s TBA:08. In 2011, she was honored to be one four featured artists in Dance: before, after, during, a first-of-its kind exhibition curated by Terri Hopkins at the Marylhurst Art Gym, which took as its subject the visual materials dance artists create/use while in the process of composing their work. She is currently an adjunct faculty member in Dance at Portland State University, and just completed setting the first-ever mixed-ability translation of Trio A on the AXIS Dance Company in Oakland, CA. She is thrilled to be one of 12 featured female artists in the soon-to-be published monograph by Kris Timken – New Explorers, which features an introduction by art historian and writer, Lucy Lippard, and addresses landscape, feminism, and hybrid performance practice.
Johnson is the mother of a thriving 11-year old daughter, and a teacher of Contemporary Alexander Technique.
Kristan Kennedy is a curator, artist, and educator and has been involved with PICA since 1995, starting as a volunteer before being presented in the program as an artist in 2001. Kennedy served on the Board of Directors beginning in 2001 and joined the staff in 2003. Working with Frey and Boberg-Doughton, she helped to lead the organization through its founding leadership transition and major programmatic shift to PICA’s inaugural Time-Based Art Festival. Kennedy has been curating programming, artist residencies, publishing, lecturing, and teaching since 2005 when she started programming visual art, multidisciplinary, performance, and music for the TBA Festival and returned PICA to full program of year round exhibitions and public programming in 2012. Kennedy is the chief architect for the Precipice Fund, PICA’s re-granting program funded by the Warhol Foundation. Kennedy lectures about curatorial practice and artist-centric ethics at institutions nationally including most recently at Bard CCS, Washington State University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Oregon State University, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Cornish College of Arts, Flagler College, Hampshire College, Atlanta Contemporary, Henry Art Gallery, Portland Art Museum, University of Washington and at UC Berkeley as part of Shannon Jackson’s Symposium, Curating People Symposium for the Artist Research Center.
Kennedy teaches Contemporary Art History at Portland State University for the BFA and MFA Studio Practice program and Social Practice MFA Program. From 2009 to 2014, Kennedy curated the PSU MFA Visiting Artist Program, founded the programs journal Studio. Kennedy is a Mentor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art since the founding of their MFA in Visual Studies program in 2006 and was recently a visiting scholar, curator for the MFA Performance Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Impact Festival.
Kennedy has been a juror, panelist, and adviser for several national foundations and institutions including Creative Capital, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Museum of Art and Design, The New Foundation, The Brink Award, On the Boards, Headlands Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure / Alternative Exposure and On the Boards, Nohl Fellowship, Rauschenberg Foundation, LACE Exhibitions, Artist Pension Trust, Cannonball Arts, United States Artists, Museum of Art and Design Van Lier Fellowships, The Artists Trust, Art Innovator Awards and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. In 2012, Kennedy was invited by the Centre Pompidou and Gaite Lyrique to curate a program of experimental music and video from the Pacific Northwest which brought over 30 artists from Portland to perform and present at a regional festival which spanned from Paris to Metz and across three major Contemporary Art Centers.
ABOUT TBA:19 INSTITUTE
TBA Conversations are an opportunity to hear directly from festival artists about their practices, processes, and the ideas behind their work through presentations, panel discussions, and dialogues with guest artists, curators, and scholars.
All TBA Conversations are FREE of charge and take place on the PICA Patio unless otherwise noted. TBA:FOOD service will be available, including grab-and-go lunch, snacks, and drinks.
Please note that some conversations will be ASL interpreted.
The PICA Patio is ADA accessible. For any other access needs or requests, please contact the TBA Box Office at boxoffice@pica.org or 503-224-PICA.