Nothing Left to Lose: A Multimedia Summer Festival

5 evenings of performances, & a daytime community offering event
July 7th-15th
Performances begin at 7:30pm
House opens 7:00pm

BOOK TICKETS

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Day 1

A reading of a play by Josie Seid, featuring S. Renee Mitchell, Jasmine Cottrell, Lauren Steele, Gerrin Mitchell, & Jonathan Cullen.

A contemporary retelling of the Greek tragedy Hecuba is told from an African American perspective, integrating modern themes and concepts, A principal, haunted by a school shooting, uncovers a series of unthinkable crimes and conspiracies… and is pushed toward taking a shocking act of revenge.

Day 2

A live video / dance installation by Skye Ritcher, featuring a live movement performance by Skye Ritcher, Sara Parker, & Nick Jurica. 

​Sarno is a multichannel video installation featuring a live dance performance that explores the interplay between projected video and live choreography, highlighting the conversation between the two mediums. The choreography serves as a meditation on the parallel influences exerted by the human brain and digital media on shaping our perception of reality. The dancers engage in a durational practice of continuous movement in which they reach exhaustion repeatedly, before eventually disintegrating into the movement itself. 

Sarno raises the question of which entity, the brain or the screen, offers a more potent distortion of reality. The performance does not have the objective of determining which lens, whether it be the human brain or the screen, possesses a more powerful capacity to distort reality. Instead, it aims to spark contemplation and dialogue about the complex relationship between human cognition and digital media, highlighting how both can shape our understanding of the world in profound and sometimes unexpected ways.

The curiosity in the brain's power over perception and the screen's similar ability to distort it arise from the artist's 10 year bout with chronic pain that brought an end to their professional dance career and their subsequent engagement with lens based media. Recently published research into the field of chronic pain and psychosomatic syndromes have made clear the connection between the neural pathways in the body and the brain's ability to signal pain long after the acute pathology has left the body. The artist invites the audience to suspend their surety of the stimuli that they perceive during the performance and to contemplate the implications of shunning what we think might be real. ​

Day 3

A performance art piece by Marcel Mawulorm Johansen, with live music by Quomni. 

"Growing up in Ghana, rites of passage were commonplace - we’d learn about them in school but i’d rarely encounter them in real life. A good portion of the christian community, including many close to me found many of the old cultural practices and rituals to be idolatry... demonic. Consequently, I believed the same and viewed them with fear: but on the inside, I was drawn to them still. Having lived away from home over 7 years, I find that much of me is still very Ghanaian — many of those parts not seeing the light of day often, if ever. This performance invokes different parts of me in one sitting, with witnesses present.
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Rites of passage across various cultures serve as markers of growth and transition.
I invite you to bear witness to this ritual, a new age culture quilt from a Ghanaian wanderer, American resident, symbolizing transcendence of values, beliefs, and “selves” that no longer serve. I invite you to reflect on your own rites of passage and ponder their role in your growth as a person. To shed old skin, emerging yet another version of yourself, ready to be marked anew by life in different ways.
What would you have people watch you do as a symbol of transition? ... What would be your ritual?"

Day 4

Live music & visuals by VoxOwl: Matthew Gailey, & THEY GAMBLE: Michael Gamble & Devin Febbroriello
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​​VoxOwl is a live looping act, incorporating mixed reality and real instruments, lofi beats and soulful vocals, for a truly unique musical and visual experience. 

The “Gold Rush" by THEY GAMBLE is an  A/V performance featuring audio reactive projections and improvisations by interdisciplinary performance artists THEY GAMBLE.  Gold Rush is an exploration of the symbolic, literal, and figurative nature of Gold. How is it that one precious metal atomic number 79 has held such a firm position of power for so long? What is the point of gold?  Why does it have value at all?  During our performance we will utilize a midi controller to synthesize the electromagnetic forces of a gold nugget into an audio visual display, and interact with sound to create an improvised sonic and visual landscape.  The live  time based audio reactive processing will be presented in tandem with a series of found/original video footage, spoken word, and sound effects collected through our research about Gold.

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Nothing Left To Lose: A Multimedia Summer Festival is generously supported by Portland Events and Film. “Portland Events and Film is proud to support events that celebrate our city, build community, and represent the diversity of Portland’s creative talent, businesses, and communities.”