In keeping with its perma-tentative title, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)’s annual experimental performance fete has regularly seen major shifts with each year’s iteration. But one thing we can always count on is the Time Based Art (TBA) festival’s massive lineup of cutting edge work. Which makes planning your TBA itinerary an art form in itself. 

This year’s festival covers three weekends, with most programming concentrated on the weekends in order to give audiences and artists time to recharge in between. There’s a dizzying number and variety of things to see, hear, and do—almost too many events for any one person to catch everything—but part of the enigmatic charm of TBA is the thrilling feeling of being a small part of a larger phenomenon that activates people and places across Portland. 

Here’s another thing you can count on: the Mercury’s TBA Picks, a collection of the not-to-be-missed highlights of this year’s festival. Start with a few of our selections and see where your curiosity takes you, or explore the full program at pica.org/tba.

Videotones: Outside Inside World

As we noted in our August preview of the fest, TBA 2024 kicks off with an interactive audiovisual happening, orchestrated by the Videotones collective. A project of community art studio Elbow Room, Videotones are a group of neurodiverse artists who use “homegrown, collaborative editing practices” and accessible tech to create short films and experimental music. Across the festival they’ll be turning Pacific Northwest College of Art’s 511 gallery into Outside Inside World, a temporary film set / improv theater / exhibition space that will change daily, as the artists go about their creative work. On opening night—conveniently coinciding with the Pearl District’s First Thursday Art Walk—Videotones invited the public to bring musical instruments and join a free-spirited jam session. (511 Gallery at PNCA, 511 NW Broadway, Thurs Sept 5, 5 pm, free)

Club Alive

Are you ready to feel ALIVE? That is the question multifaceted performance artist Kye Alive wants you to ponder when you join their late-night art party/variety show dubbed Club Alive. [Full disclosure, Kye is also a Mercury contributor -eds.] Taking cues both from the New York rave scene where they got their start and the warm and fuzzy world of West Coast socially-engaged art, Kye Alive has been nurturing a unique community of good-natured and wildly talented artists of all stripes over the past year through this semi-regular gathering. Past shows have featured trippy audiovisual experiences, delightful contemporary tap-dance, and edgy homegrown hyperpop. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sat Sept 7, 9 pm, sliding scale $10, $20, $50)

Morgan Bassichis: Can I Be Frank?

Not to be missed is Morgan Bassichis’ Can I Be Frank?, a comedic homage to the legacy of pioneering queer performer Frank Maya—who, like Bassichis, was equally fluent in the traditions of avant garde theater, conceptual monologue, and stand up comedy. As the first openly gay comedian to perform on network television, Maya helped to make space for subsequent generations of queer performers. Sadly he did not live to see the true impact of his work, dying at age 45 due to complications related to the AIDS virus. In Can I Be Frank? Bassichis brings a contemporary lens to Maya’s trailblazing material, reprising some of his best bits in an attempt to resolve “the bottomless queer search for laughter in times of crisis.” (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Fri Sept 6 & Sat Sept 7, 8 pm, Sun Sept 8, 6 pm, sliding scale $20, $35, $50)

Marikiscrycrycry: Goner

If you’re a fan of the horror genre, you’ll want to snag a ticket for Goner, a “fearsome choreographic journey” from London-based movement artist Malik Nashad Sharpe, AKA Marikiscrycrycry. Goner draws upon pop culture references to build a new aesthetic tradition of Black horror. Think fake blood, terrifying chases, and desperate attempts to escape, pared down to enhance their physical qualities and combined into an unsettling abstract pastiche that touches on serious issues of migration, trauma, and addiction. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Thurs Sept 12 & Fri Sept 13, 7 pm, sliding scale $20, $35, $50, 16 & up)

Timothy Yanick Hunter:
Granular Synthesis

Aficionados of avant garde audio won’t want to miss Toronto-based artist Timothy Yanick Hunter’s one-night-only performance of Granular Synthesis. The title refers to an electronic music form, originally pioneered by New Age artists like Iannis Xenakis, that breaks sounds up into teeny tiny pieces and puts them back together to create glitchy, jittery, and stretchy new sounds. How tiny is a musical “grain?” Less than 50 milliseconds, that’s how tiny! Hunter uses these itty bits in collage-like compositions that act as metaphors for the fragmented nature of memory, life, and death. As a bonus, an exhibition of Hunter’s work titled Noise / Grain will open at Pearl District gallery ILY2 on September 13, in case you just can’t get enough of that granular aesthetic! (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sat Sept 14, 6 pm, sliding scale $10, $20, $50)

Jess Perlitz: Reductions of
Mountains; Sarah Gilbert and
Pato Hebert: Tender

Only at TBA can you get curator-guided walkthroughs, artist talks, and a delightful picnic for not one, but two (perhaps 2.5) exhibitions hosted by three different venues, all in one event—whatta deal! Jess Perlitz’s geologically-informed artwork in Reductions of Mountains, installed amid the scholarly stacks at Reed College’s Eric V. Hauser memorial Library, complements the collaborative work of Sarah Gilbert and Pato Hebert, whose show Tender explores nature’s role in the healing process.Tender is on view first at Reed’s Cooley Gallery and also at Springfield, Oregon’s Ditch Projects, in October. Spend a Sunday afternoon lounging on the idyllic lawn of Reed’s Sellwood campus for the combined opening reception, where you’ll enjoy music, refreshments, and a conversation with the artists and curators. (The lawn at Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock, Sun Sept 15, noon, free)

Sarah Farahat and Alexandria Saleem: Teta’s Tea

Teta’s Tea is both a tribute to Portland’s SWANA (that’s Southwest Asia and North African) diaspora and a community gathering designed to support connection and nourishment in times of collective grieving. Artists Sarah Farahat and Alexandria Saleem have put together a huge bill, including live Moroccan music from Portland band Seffarine, a traditional Gazan kite-building workshop, Middle Eastern food and crafts from local vendors, and a curated SWANA film series. Plus, a portion of proceeds from the event will go toward local group Flowers for Palestine, which raises money to help families in Gaza. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sun Sept 15, 6 pm, sliding scale $10, $20, $50)

Elbow Room: Good Dang Weekend

If you found yourself having a blast with Videotones on opening night and wonder: How can I support this awesome project? Then look no further than Good Dang Weekend, a fundraiser for community art studio Elbow Room, a local nonprofit that assists artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities in maintaining their practices. The delightful Kye Alive (of Club Alive) hosts the event, as Good Dang Weekend closes out TBA ‘24 with a bingo tournament, “fantastic prizes,” and an inclusive dance party at PICA’s warehouse-esque venue. (PICA, 15 NE Hancock, Sun Sept 22, 4 pm, $20)