This weekend the forward-thinking expanded-arts space AudioCinema hosts the third annual Children of the Revolution Fest, a two-day gathering of now-ness featuring art- and music-makers and freewheeling Portland intermedia minds.
Festival organizer Solhale Kevin Darouian named the festival after a tune by glamrocker Marc Bolan’s T-Rex, feeling “the song captured a time period where people believed that music, art, crafts, and culture could help change the world for the better. . .through the means of inspiration, unity, and expression.”
Ah yes, remember that time. . .1972? When instead of giving peace a chance Sen. Strom Thurmond demanded that John Lennon be deported; we were carpet-bombing North Vietnam to top-40 choruses of the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” and Chuck Berry’s no. 1 hit “My Ding-a-ling”; Henry Kissinger declared “Peace is at hand” in Vietnam; Nixon defeated McGovern; John and Yoko were redeemed by an appearance on Jerry Lewis’ Telethon (?!); and the unity and harmony of the era were transmuted and immortalized as an Aquarian jingle with “I’d like To Teach the World to Sing” (aka “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke”). I digress.
In praise of this glorious weekend of allatonceness, Darouian’ s to be saluted for tapping into the promise of Art-signalling-Change—a notion that Portland’s energetic and earnest indie-arts spectrum can rightly aspire to—a synergistic impulse that also seems to fuel the best intermedia projects that AudioCinema helps incubate. While the alterna-fourth-estate weeklies have rightfully cooed over the musical portion of the proceedings (folks like Fleshtone, Panther, Ms. LKN, Dragging an Ox Through Water, Tara Jane O’Neil), ULTRA would like to suggest that while you might come for the music, the real payoff will come from the now and wow resonance of the visual artists featured. Curators Cassandra Adams, Kristie Louderbough, and Holly Johnson have assembled a splendid of-the-moment group of emerging, arrived, and on-top-of-their-game folks, including Brad Adkins, Matt McCormick, Sara Robbin, Chris Johanson, Jo Jackson, E*Rock, Liz Haley, Roxanne Jackson, and Midori Hirose. These sights are worth every penny you’ll pay for the sounds.
The Children of the Revolution Fest goes down Saturday and Sunday, January 5 and 6 at Audio Cinema (226 SE Madison) $12 per day ($20 two-day pass), 21+.
–Tim DuRoche
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