yesterday is today

Thanks to the Some Cats From Japan show, I for the first time in my life started to nod off in class. 4 hours of sleep + Art History at 8am does not make a good combination. Thankfully the room was so cold that I didn't succeed in dozing off, if it was warm I would have been out.

Yesterday:

Nathan and Rubie's final hang out day with yours truly. I had bought tickets for us for the Cartune Xprez show, hosted by Hooliganship (the duo were wearing really adorable bright red and bright blue long john combinations). We got there right on time and ran into Suki (who was going to the same event) on the streetcar. We had to sit in the front row and then they told us that theatre 2 had opened and it was playing the same thing so we were free to go to it and get better seats. We sat down in the second row. Leia sat next to me (nerd names unite). About 15 minutes after it was supposed to start was when the first video started playing. It had no sound so they stopped and restarted it trying to get it to have sound, but it didn't work. Another 15 minutes went past and they started to play a video from another TBA event in the waiting time, something German with lots of long pauses. I went and grabbed a 7-up and a Violet Crumble to munch on and when I came back they were playing a Hooliganship dvd from last year. Pretty trippy stuff, including a really sad video about a fox and a snow angel. Eventually they came out and said the Cartune Xprez was unplayable (both our version and the other one). They promised a refund and an invitation for us to come see the show at a later date.

I got my refund at PICA and we decided to trek down to Chinatown and see whats what. Stopped in at Floating World Comics but there were no new issues in for me. Love that shop.

Compound Gallery was open and was having a DigMeOut show. Unlike some museums and typical galleries, they cram as much art into the space as possible. It doesn't draw from the art to have it all so close together, it just forces the viewer to look closer. And closer I did. Loved so much of the work going on, just like I did last summer for the DigMeOut 2006 show. There was new work by Cho-Chan up and I was blown away by seeing Kana Ohtsuki's pieces in person. Beautiful work, really inspiring. Chatted with the guy managing the gallery and headed out.

There was a festival of sorts happening on 4th, live music and food stalls. Had some lunch and split ways with Nate and Rubie because I had essays to write and reading to read.

Around sevenish Celia arrived in Portland and Nathan and Rubie returned to Goose Hollow. We all hung out and chatted. I bought some shoes from Rubie for 25 cents (superstition). They are really cute flats with bows and polka dots. She also gave me a fabulous necklace and matching earrings (have to pierce my other ear now).

Rubie and Nathan left to get food for the train ride and to head back to the hotel. Gave Rubie hugs and a punch to Nathan's gut. Celia napped while I finished up my essays.

Lindsay had to work on a horrible painting project so she couldn't make Some Cats From Japan. I changed into stripey socks, Rubie's shoes, skinny jeans, my Guess white square neck shirt and my diagonal zippered Tommy Hilfiger jacket (I got it last summer at a Goodwill in Portland). I looked good, all ready for intense TBA musical performance. Sean came over at 9:20 and at 9:30 Celia, Sean and I left in her Prius for the show. There are construction pockets all over downtown Portland, so I was worried about getting from Goose Hollow to the Broadway Bridge but we got to it pretty easy, and got free parking a block away from the Wonder Ballroom.

The concert was one half intense performance, the other half was more about how it was made than a performance. The first and last guy blew me away, the middle two sort were not really up my alley but made for an interesting experience.

Fuyuki Yamakawa started off the night with a bang, or a loud hum that made me flinch. I don't know how he did it but there was a microphone attached to the side of his nose so his breathing and smacking his head with his palm created thumps and trills. Then he removed his shirt; revealing a stethoscope attached to his chest. The stethoscope was hooked up to a machine on the right and there was some light bulbs hanging in a cluster. He turned on the machine and set the volume and his pulse reverberated through the whole venue. With each heartbeat the light bulbs surged on. He breathed in and out slowly, achieving some control over his heartbeat. It beat faster and faster, the lights creating marks in my vision and he slowed it down, the beats were dangerously far apart (in the pamphlet he is quoted "Sometimes it stops my heart for seconds"). The beat really drew me in. Then he picked up the guitar. He didn't play it so much as turn the sound way up and move it back and forth and tap the side of it, the vibration creating noise from the strings instead of just plucking it. He continued for a long time with the guitar and heartbeat and then he brought in throat singing and the nasal hum. By the end, I was drawn in so much. My eyes, my ears, my whole body became a part of the performance.

It was a hard act to follow, and Kanta Horio didn't follow it well. He generated a sort of sound from magnetising paperclips and amplifying the audio of them moving about. A nice respit, but certainly far from the intensity of the first performance. After that Aki Onda was also a sort of lul in the program. His work was composed of recorded sounds played together off of cassettes, so it was interesting how he would have had to collect all the sounds but overall it didn't work so well for me. I was still coming down from the first performance I guess. A good number of people had become fed up with the two middle performances (or as it was about to roll over past midnight and they had to get up for work/class the next day like me) and left before the epic finale that was Atsuhiro Ito.

Today:

Atsuhiro Ito came out with his long fluorescent light tube and fiddled with the set up. I wasn't sure if it was him, he seemed rather humble and when the review said that his instrument, the Optron, was a fluorescent tube hooked up with microphones inside I was expecting something a little more grand looking. Actually all of the performers were really subtle in appearance (save for Yamakawa's belly button length hair) and didn't try to dominate the stage, rather leaving their music to overrule us all. All of a sudden the lights went out and he started.

All the illumination came from the pulsing of his Optron, which flared and dimmed as he played it. I wish I knew how he was controlling the lights but he had a great sense for how to use his instrument. The microphones reacted with the speakers set up behind him and simultaneously he was switching on and off little dials with his feet. And this man was 42! I wonder how he managed to maintain himself for well over half an hour standing a foot away from speakers and holding a three foot tube of light. Another all consuming performance, something I doubt will be equalled any time soon. Well equalled in the sense of me seeing anything as awesome any time soon. I also got a picture with him after the show.

There was another band coming on after Some Cats From Japan. We stayed to watch them preform a couple songs but a unanimous decision came about that we were tired so at 1:10am we left to go back to Goose Hollow. Celia slept on an inflatable mattress in my living room and it felt great to sink into bed at about 1:50am. Hated HATED the alarm going off at 6:00am but what are you going to do? It was worth it.

I didn't want to bother with making lunch, figuring Yo's soup would hit whatever spot that needed hitting later on. I was a little wobbly on my bike but I got my energy and balance right as I turned onto 14th from Clay which was when I needed by balance and energy so it all worked out.

Art History was brutal. Our first real lecture class and it was slide after slide of the teacher talking about Paleolithic this and cave painting that. Not that it is boring but it was oh so not what I needed in the morning. Found myself nodding off, trying to fidget and stay focused. The break didn't come soon enough and after a mini nap and a Nutrigrain bar I gained some energy and momentum and didn't nod for the rest of the class (or day).

2D Design was darkroom, which was review for me but also sort of frustrating that a lot of my negatives were over exposed and my first photography teacher never told me that you had to leave prints in the wash for 5+ minutes so there was way more time spent waiting than I'd like. Got a couple good prints, but they aren't dark enough. I wish I had my negatives from my first photography class, I didn't get to print all that I wanted. I'll pick them up next time I come home. At least time in the darkroom goes fast. Before I knew it, it was time for...

Time Arts! Long talk about performance art and then we divided up into groups to work on our pieces. I'm not totally psyched about our piece and a lot of my ideas were shot down but I get the sort-of main role so it isn't so bad. It isn't as involved and choreographed as it could be.

Essentially one by one we look in a box and we each have a different reaction to whats int he box (confusion, sorrow, despair) and then I come out and am over joyed by whats in the box and its a photo of our teacher. Still room for some changes but I think it will stay pretty much the same (it wasn't my main idea but so far no one else had any other thoughts so we went with it).

Then we watched a video about a performance artist whose name I have forgotten but in the end there was a man that was made from a mold that had jello poured into it and the audience was invited to eat the jello-man. It was titled "The Last Immigrant".

Boy was I happy to finally ride home. 8:00am-6:00pm. I hope Monday will never be my long day ever again.

Wonderful seeing Rubie, Nathan and Celia. Hope more people come and visit and hope that you all understand that when you visit I will have to do homework. I'll try to get a jump on it, but you know me. I get it done in the end, it just takes me some time to get to doing it.