IN THE LIFE

[September 21st, 2005] I have a confession to make: I rarely see any of the prime-time shows in the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's annual Time-Based Art Festival. But I always drag my partner, Juan, to all the late-night stuff. This year was no different: I bypassed all the avant-avant performances and headed straight to the Works, the former industrial warehouse that acted as ground zero for all of TBA's late-night cabarets and most of its parties, too. It was also Northwest PDX's newest gay bar. At least that's what this semi-enclosed shelter looked like to me.

At no time was that more evident than at last week's Works performance of I've Got a Bulletproof Heart. This queerish night featured a nice, New York-based, Jewish gay boy channeling the queen of Studio 54 in Kenny Mellman Is Grace Jones. Mellman was kooky, spewing the unintentionally hilarious bons mots of a coked-out ice queen while sporting a hood, a pair of sunglasses and-during a rousing rendition of the BDSM-ish "Warm Leatherette"-what looked like a mirrorball baseball cap.

Now, it seemed like shows like that were created just for me and my gay brothers and sisters. In fact, all of TBA, specifically the Works, felt really gay (then again, I didn't see any of the big shows). Perhaps that's because nearly every patron I saw during my TBA experience was gay. Or it could be that the Dada Ball (see review, page 51) has always been one of the gayest parties ever. Forget the nearly nude entrance of choreographer Tahni Holt as Lady Godada. She was upstaged by Sissyboy Fannie Mae, who gave good full-on frontal at our Dada dinner table (and engaged in a food fight with me). But all this gayness makes me wonder if PICA has lost its way. For mainstream culture, gayness is just another trend, like fondue and Survivor. Why hang your whole festival on it?

Others may disagree. My friend Carl, a two-year TBA voyeur, saw the fest as an all-inclusive celebration of the arts-queer and otherwise. "Every performance-art festival is queer," says Carl. "After all, this isn't a convention of home builders."

TBA is such a huge event (more than 50 events over 10 days), geared to such a targeted audience (how many of your friends are performance-art lovers?), that one can't help but ask, after the poetry is said and weird-ass acts are done, is PICA, like Mary Tyler Moore, "gonna make it after all"? We're talking about an organization that has already used up more lives than a cat stuck in a tree during Hurricane Katrina.

When Kristy Edmunds founded PICA in 1995, it was supposed to be a new way to present contemporary art to our local community. Five years later, it had blossomed into a nationally known arts clearinghouse in the Pearl District's Wieden & Kennedy building. TBA's introduction in 2003 was a new way for PICA not only to re-engage its audiences, but also to reorganize and broaden its programming. Or not.

If you ask PICA's powers-that-be about all the gayness, they give you the same song-and-dance about how we have to stop looking at the sexuality-or race and gender-of such a unique animal as TBA. Trouble is, we do-we're human. Can TBA transcend TBGAY? At least for the Works, that's still To Be Answered.