Portland-based filmmaker Karl Lind is the best kind of maker, the kind we are so lucky to have many of in Portland, who in addition to doing his own projects, makes interesting work in collaboration with non-filmmakers, AND makes time to see that local filmmakers’ work gets seen. Since 2006, he’s been programming the Odds and Ends Screening series and is Gallery Homeland‘s “head of film and video reprogramming.” His beautiful short films like the 2004 “Eulogy for Memory” , (often, like Eulogy, incorporating found Super 8 footage) engage sound (music) and image equally, making implied narrative that is abstract enough to foreground images compelling in and of themselves. His work has screened at venues such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Experimenta, Les Contres Images and The Other Cinema. Currently working on, among other things, a karaoke music video for Devo’s Gates of Steel for the PDX Film Festival, Lind took a moment to answer the questions of the ultra Q wherein we ask Portland’s movers and makers a number of pressing questions.
Qualities you most admire in design and film: Directness, tangibility, relevance and perhaps a hint of emotion.
Qualities you most despise in design and film: needless obscurity and or pretentiousness
Reading: recently finished The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Listening to: Devo, Lhasa De Sala, Aesop Rock, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Flaming Lips, and Talkdemonic.
Dream project: Working on a project related to investigating and better understanding dreams.
Favorite virtue: Helping others, listening.
Favorite vice: Talking a lot, substances.
Tragic flaw: Over indulgence.
Secret superhero power: An overly active and unstoppable imagination.
That which keeps your afterburners firing: Hope.
What you’d like to be when you grow up: Stable.
Portland’s best kept secret: Well, snitches get stitches. I can’t comment on this one.
Portland heroes (sung or un-): Linda Austin, Gretchen Hogue, Vanessa Renwick, The Mickey Mouse hat trumpet man, Marc Moscato, Ron Gassaway, Holly Andres, Dan Pred, Grace Carter, Nate Goodman, Dan Ackerman, this list could go on for quite awhile longer…
Interesting on the horizon (PDX): How many more condos can a city of this size possibly take?
POSTED: February 21st, 2008 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: ultra Q | TAGS: film, filmmaker, portland, ultra Q | 1 Comment »
Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner is a Portland-based contemporary dance collective that will knock your socks off and back on again. Fresh and smart with a combination of choreographed and structured improvisation, with humor, manic elements, and Tammy Faye eyes, Woolly Mammoth Comes To Dinner—Katie Arrants, Rikki Rothenberg, Kathleen Keogh, and David Rafn (who brings much of the music and is a fashion student at AI)—make movement performance that might happen just about anywhere. What’s in a name? They, “use this moniker as an excuse to indulge themselves in non-sense, and then attempt to make something coherent out of it.”
The spirit of collab extends beyond the four, as they work with designer Diana Lang of )open((clothed) who costumes them (often in garments that invite their own kind of movement) and makeup artist Lauren Hobson. Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner threw down with many players in the larger contemporary dance community in Linda Austin’s Circus Me Around.
Here they take a minute to answer the questions of the ultra Q wherein we ask a few of Portland’s more interesting movers and makers a few pressing questions:
Photos of the Woolly ladies courtesy Chris Mulliken.
Qualities you most admire in design: (or performance)
Katie: Generosity. Also: risky athleticism, emotional rigor, antics. And frequently, absurdity and glamour.
David: I admire honesty and letting the freak-flag fly. It’s the 90s, you can do whatever you want!
Rikki: potential risk, real physicality, pedestrian-ism, humor, real emotion, people doing tasks, curiosity and transparency
Kathleen: imperfect beauty, accidental synchronicity, nonsense, the extraordinary everyday. Also, fake beards.
Qualities you most despise in design: (or performance)
Katie: Exclusivity. Pain.
David: Fear and trepidation. Pledging allegiance to the Satan of appearances, instead of submissively licking the hot Bodhisattva of ergonomics.
Rikki: fakeness, false/dramatized emotion, lazy movement as an excuse, fake beards.
Kathleen: blandness, perfection, lifelessness.
Read the rest of this entry »
POSTED: January 14th, 2008 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: dance, ultra Q | TAGS: contemporary dance, dance, performance, ultra Q | 7 Comments »
Jenene Nagy is that rare hybrid who is a force to be reckoned with on all fronts, smart and unerring. She’s an artist whose installations have been among the best Portland has seen at PDX Contemporary Art Window Project, the Portland Modern Window Project, and as part of The Hook Up show at NAAU (among others). She’s owner with Josh Smith of Tilt Gallery and Project Space (625 NW Everett Suite 106), a terribly important space for installation work in the Everett Lofts; she’s business manager of PORT; and is a faculty member at Clark College in Vancouver. She recently took a minute to answer the questions of the ultra Q.
Qualities you most admire in art: rigor and attention to detail
Qualities you most despise in art: bad craft
Reading: Leviathan by Paul Auster
Listening to: internet radio (3WK)
Jenene Nagy. “Meadow” (detail), 2007, housepaint, drywall, wood, shelf-paper.
Dream project: convert a small warehouse into an artist residency/live work space with a gallery.
Favorite virtue: putting aside my personal aesthetic to bring work into Tilt that is exciting, engaging, and worthy
Favorite vice: Makers Mark with ginger ale
Jenene Nagy. “Saturated Pasture” (detail), 2006, house paint, nails, foam, duralar, paper mache, wire. From installation at the Portland Building
Tragic flaw: never content to stand still. always projects, projects and more projects
Secret superhero power: helping other artists find opportunities
That which keeps your afterburners firing: my better half and my cat
What you’d like to be when you grow up: an artist
Jenene Nagy. “Avalanche”, 2006, foam, house paint, map pins.
Portland’s best kept secret: the clothing optional beach at Sauvie Island
Portland heroes (sung or un-): Terri Hopkins
Interesting on the horizon (PDX): The Affair at the Jupiter Hotel in September
POSTED: July 16th, 2007 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: ultra Q | TAGS: art, ultra Q | 2 Comments »
You’ve seen identities makelike has designed for Masu, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Entermodal, and now STRUT, but did you know that this Portland-based design studio has also done work for Missoni/Valentino, BabyPhat, Iceberg, and W Hotels? Mary Kysar and Topher Sinkinson (see also: Swallow Press (x2) art collaborative) founded makelike at the turn of the century having met at Johnson Wolverton. The first makelike project was major—art direction, design and production for Richard Christiansen’s flagship magazine, MILK, completed in four weeks. They went on to design both Suede and Radar.
Their work has been featured in iDn, Surface, British iD, Communication Arts 2005 Design Annual and a new DGV book, Tres Logos. Having just moved the studio into the Skylab Building at 12th + Alder, makelike recently took a minute to answer the questions of the ultra Q.
Suede magazine cover. design: makelike
Qualities you most admire in design:
ML: complex-simplicity
Qualities you most despise in design:
ML: under-produced over-production Read the rest of this entry »
POSTED: May 7th, 2007 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: ultra Q | TAGS: ultra Q | 1 Comment »
2006 was a good year for Kristan Kennedy. Her work was again in the Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum as well as in the Fresh show at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery. And Leach, who represents Kennedy, also took her work to Aqua Art in Miami. Meanwhile, as Visual Art Program Director for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Kennedy brought the visual arts roaring back into the center of PICA’s programming with the visual arts component of the TBA Festival that she curated (“I live in a magical world….”). Kennedy’s been active as an artist (she co-founded the artist collective Swallow Press (x2) years back) and with PICA for a number of years now. As PICA prepares for its gala TADA and the announcement of the lineup for the 2007 Time-Based Art Festival, Kennedy took a moment to answer the questions of the ultra Q.
Qualities you most admire in design: Problem solving
Qualities you most despise in design: Computery feeling Read the rest of this entry »
POSTED: April 13th, 2007 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: ultra Q | TAGS: art, ultra Q | No Comments »
