Assembly 2020

Jordan Rosenblum and Kim Sutherland

RECESS! Design Studio is a creative agency, experimental classroom, and artist project housed inside the Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School in Northeast Portland. Working with third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade designers, the studio explores the role design plays in society—looking at the power it holds in shaping our lives, and uses graphic design as a tool to interpret our environment. The RECESS! creative directors and designers will present recent projects from the program.

A series of public encounters choreographed with and for individual residents of Walla Walla, Washington

Tia Kramer and Sabina Rogers

Saturday June 6, 2020 from 2-2:50p

Performance for One Person, a series of public encounters choreographed with and for individual residents of Walla Walla, Washington was initially devised as a mode of interruption. Each performance is researched in relationship with a single audience member and then created with our shared communities. Woven into the routine of the audience member’s life, these performances rearrange elements of daily life — relationships, site and community — blurring the line between everyday and performance.

Join social choreographer Tia Kramer and writer/performer Sabina Rogers for a workshop exploring the methods they use to make these performances. This session will begin with an introduction to the first performance, At Dusk We Walk Home Together, Performance for Guillermo. The group will then engage in a brief exercise that explores the participatory research and processes that generate these intimate performances. They will conclude with an excerpt from an interview with Guillermo where he shares his reflections on the performance.

Nola Hanson with collaborators Hill Donnell and Liv Adler

Emma Duehr

Tour the special exhibitions with Curator Emma Duehr and explore the 769 sq. ft. conservatory and the 6,000 sq. ft. garden. Join for an intimate exchange about the collection followed by a conversation with participating artists.

Zeph Fishlyn with music by Shawn Creeden and ground control by Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr

I want to go for a walk with you, and you, and you, and you. Starting at our doorsteps, we will embark on an exploration of the internal and external landscapes of our own neighborhoods. We’re going to practice our evacuation routes for when cabin fever sets in, or we’re lost in a news loop, or we’re too overwhelmed to respond to everything that’s going on. Can we find safe zones where our bodies meet public space? Can we use technology to create a collective impression of the space and time we’re in? Please RSVP at bit.ly/emergencywalk for details. (Co-hosted by City Repair and the virtual Village Building Convergence.)

Eric John Olson, Salty Xi Jie Ng, and The Green New Real

We are launching The People’s Micro Climate Change Conferences as the first in a series of prompts and participatory projects where we invite people to use their creativity to address the larger contexts of climate change and The Green New Real.

In response to the cancellation of the 2020 United Nations Climate Change Conference as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the failure of our nations’ leaders to follow through with the Paris Agreement, we are calling on people from around the globe to host their own “micro climate change summits” with friends, lovers, family, coworkers, and neighbors. It is our hope that these group climate agreements may serve as accessible roadmaps for people to organize around, and as blueprints for elected officials and private sector decision-makers to find their way towards a less carbon-heavy future for all.

By artist Brianna Ortega

ASSEMBLY EVENT — FRIDAY JUNE 5th at 5-5:45PM – Inspired by both surf localism and locality, Be a Local of My Life explores what it means to be a local person in a community. In this project, community is defined as the people you come in contact with and have relational, verbal, social, or object exchanges with on a recurring basis. How do intimate relationships with a place shape a community? How can our identification as a local be shaped by memory-based knowledge instead of only site-specific factual information about a place? How does power, memory, and time influence a community member’s journey to becoming a local?  

The Assembly event centered on Be a Local of my life will detail the project, open up discussion on what it means to be a local, with artist Brianna Ortega and guest feminist surf and surf localism researcher, Dr. Rebecca Olive, from The University of Queensland.

ASSEMBLY EVENT The Assembly event centered on Be a Local of my life will detail the project, open up discussion on what it means to be a local, with artist Brianna Ortega and guest feminist surf and surf localism researcher, Dr. Rebecca Olive, from The University of Queensland.

Carlos Reynoso

Lo Moran, Marti Clemmons, and Rebecca Copper

A discussion about the Portland State University Art & Social Practice Archive’s digital launch.

Shelbie Loomis, Artist Michael Stevenson Jr, Kirk “Greener” Rea, Co-Executive Director of The City Repair Project

Inspired by Future Farmers and Victory Gardens, The Prosperity Garden Network (PGN) is a socially engaged art project, grassroot organization and national registry of individuals showcasing their cultivation of vegetable, fruit, herb, and flower gardens that are planted in private, public and unorthodox areas during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Artist Shelbie Loomis, Artist Michael Stevenson Jr, & Kirk “Greener” Rea will explore PGN, the “luxury” of art and gardening, and what it means to live in a “new normal”.