Portland Stories, commissioned by Portland Institute of Contemporary Art for Time Based Art festival is performance, photography, audio recording, and a 6 foot tall, bright pink, wooden kiosk. Portland Stories is a project framed by a “high-tech/ low-tech” aesthetic.
For 30 days at varying sites around Portland Oregon, citizens of Portland are invited to enter their thoughts into the pink kiosk, via an external keyboard. The pink kiosk is stamped with large black letters spelling “Portland Stories”, and is moved to a new location daily. Unedited, the entries are downloaded and printed on 3′ wide plotter paper each day, and hung at the retail space OFFICE, located in the NE Alberta district, resulting in a time based installation: the amount of information entered in the kiosk determines the number of sheets hung each day.
Across town, passers-by engage with performing artists living in storefront windows by writing on the glass that separates them. Some of these passers-by are photographed and audio recorded.
The time based installation includes paper length from 5 to 15 feet, which determines the quantity of entries in a continuous 24 hour time period. Still images wrap the installation space, and audio recordings are accessed via hand held recording devices suspended from the walls of the installation space. Surveillance video of the street outside the installation site, is projected through the suspended plotter paper inside. A dense landscape of printed text, still image, audio recordings, and video surveillance, create a cartography of Portland’s psyche, as if each element is a cross section of a shared brain.
Artists:Laura Curry – director, conceptual artist / Lori Dillon Ricky Mason, Joe VonAppen – installation and performance/ Installation Site: OFFICE, owners Kelly Coller and Tony Secolo.
Portland Stories was commissioned by Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), for the Time Based Art (TBA) Festival.
Laura Curry 