A light Scatter of arts+newspapers+urban matters
So, lots of things bubbling about with Scatter implications, of a Monday evening.
First, a tip from regular TdR, who posts at Portland Spaces’ Burnside Blog — and got to the whole gag reflex to the idea of a Rose Quarter “entertainment district” (mentioned below) WAY before Scatter did. I confess, all I can imagine is the most sanitized experience possible, which is the very antithesis of a good “entertainment district.” Thanks to MTC, we’ve also corrected our link to the Burnside Blog.
We’ve threatened to talk about media, and given the origin myth of Art Scatter, that frequently means “newspaper,” which back in the day transmitted “news” to a populace eager to be told what “news” was. Clearly those days are not these days. The financial pins of the whole newspaper business have been knocked hither and yon by various nefarious forces (as you’ve no doubt heard), and the most recent example of this in action was reported today at The Oregonian, where significant pay cuts and layoffs of part-time staff were announced, among other cost-cutting measures. My rules of engagement forbid me to talk about this in a substantive way, and even if I could, I don’t know exactly what it means except the obvious. The chatter about how to put Humpty Dumpty together again is ongoing on various journalism blogs, and soon we’ll do a little summary for our interested Scatter community.
Over at Portland Arts Watch, we’ve been posting furiously on events we’ve been hitting. Like Imago’s “APIS,” Jerry Mouawad’s fusion of bees and prison. OK, you kinda had to be there, though the “wordless opera,” as Mouawad calls it, reminded me of the connection between Imago’s kid shows (such as “Frogz”) and its adult shows. It also exposed the “tragic” nature of the Imago approach, even its comedies. At least, that’s what I thought I saw.
I also caught the end game of “24/7,” which organizers Bill Crane and Thomas Lauderdale created to mark “7 years of war” with “24 hours of music.” Actually, it’s less than seven years of war in Iraq, but more if you count Afghanistan, which may be the war that never ends. Don’t you hate when Orwell is right? Anyway, the mostly classical program was inspiring, by all accounts, and by the time I got there for Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” Wieden+Kennedy’s atrium was jammed and the musicians were playing free and easy and beautifully.
And my obsession with the PNCA-Museum of Contemporary Craft merger continued in a column in The Oregonian today. Bauhaus came up. Honestly.
Portland has a Major League Soccer team. We just had to type that one more time.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I just read your take on APIS, which I saw Saturday night, it’s last, alas, performance. Because it’s something I would have liked to have seen more than once. As you indicate, it is multi-layered. And I think can be read many ways–those stacks of money/honey made me think of the current financial crisis, or at least those who caused it. I agree that the “night” Imago has provided some of the best theater we’ve seen here, and particularly when Carol Triffle, in whatever role, is on stage. And I too would like to see them do Waiting for Godot. I saw a production starring Irwin–can’t think of first name but you know who I mean–done by the Seattle Rep a number of years ago, and it really does lend itself well to physical theater.
As for the rest of this post, let us sit upon the ground and mourn the deaths of…newspapers. When I was growing up in New York in the forties and fifties there were something like nine daily papers, each with a different crossword puzzle I might add.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I was there Saturday night, too! I didn’t see you, but it WAS crowded. I didn’t get to see Bill Irwin’s “Godot,” but I read a lot about it, and it sounded exactly right. Stacks of money. A billion dollars, I once read, is a stack of hundred dollar bills that reaches from the ground to the top of the Washington Monument. Whenever they say, 100 billion, I think of a 100 Washington Monuments of hundred dollar bills.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
If I’d seen you Barry I’d have said hello. I meant to say earlier that I thought all the choreography for the ensemble of bees (now there’s an image, I suppose I should say swarm) was reminiscent of both Busby (no pun intended) Berkeley AND Balanchine. I hope Imago does APIS again. And I wish Marcia Siegel could have seen it.