RACC Blog

March 2019 Night Lights: The Midnight Variety Hour

Our final Night Lights, RACC’s outdoor public art series, is wrapping up its 2018-19 season with The Midnight Variety Hour (MVH) – Night Lights Edition  March 7, at 6pm.  For RACC’s Night Lights Program, MVH will present a video program with live music, sound and vocals.

MVH deconstructs the world of live television and the essence of the variety hour creating a dream-like memory of tv shows. Through the build up of layers and patterns of imagery and sound, MVH creates a landscape of distorted time and space. Some of the elements used in their live performances have included pre-recorded and live video, foley sounds, tap shoes, microphones, acoustic instruments, drums, synthesizers, and dance. Distinct sections of improvisation emerge through the tension and release of accumulated instrumentation, dance, and video.

All works will take place at the north wall of the Regional Arts & Culture Council office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland OR (on the corner of NW Glisan St and NW Park Ave).

 

Night Lights is a monthly public art event that celebrates the intersection of digital technology, art, and place. Happening outdoors on the First Thursdays of fall and winter months, this multimedia art series presents local artists’ new works, combining large-scale video projection with other art forms such as movement and sound. Works are projected for several hours starting at dusk on the north wall of Regional Arts and Culture Council’s office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland, OR.

Midnight Variety Hour (MVH) is a collaborative project consisting of five multi-disciplinary dancers, performers, musicians, and filmmakers (Maura Campbell-Balkits, Sean Christiansen, Kelly Rauer, Fern Wiley, and Leah Wilmoth).  Learn more about them here midnightvarietyhour.

 

 

 

 

February 2019 Night Lights: Untitled

Night Lights, RACC’s outdoor public art series, continues its 2018-19 season with Megan Mckissack’s Untitled work on February 7 at 5:30pm. Mckissack’s Night Lights work was inspired by the current Presidential Administration’s deletion of climate data.

Mapping and generating visualizations of Oregon LIDAR point cloud data from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, these visualizations are projected as visual loops accompanied by ambient and atmospheric soundscapes McKissack creates an environment that responds directly to the architecture its projected onto.

Only one more Night Lights event remains after February: Midnight Variety Hour in March.

All works will take place at the north wall of the Regional Arts & Culture Council office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland OR (on the corner of NW Glisan St and NW Park Ave). The remaining schedule of events for Night Lights is as follows:

February 7, 5:30pm
Megan McKissack
Untitled

March 7, 6pm
Midnight Variety Hour
Night Lights Edition

Night Lights is a monthly public art event that celebrates the intersection of digital technology, art, and place. Happening outdoors on the First Thursdays of fall and winter months, this multimedia art series presents local artists’ new works, combining large-scale video projection with other art forms such as movement and sound. Works are projected for several hours starting at dusk on the north wall of Regional Arts and Culture Council’s office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland, OR.

Megan Mckissack is a Portland, OR based, new media artist working in the realm of live visuals, video installation, and creative coding. Learn more about her work on her website meganmckissack.com


December 2018 Night Lights: Three Moons/Tres Lunas/3つの月

Our outdoor public art event series, Night Lights, will feature Roland Dahwen and Stephanie Adams-Santos in December! Happening on December 6 at 5pm, Dahwen and Adams-Santos will present Three Moons/Tres Lunas/3つの月, a two-channel video installation and altar, dedicated to, and made alongside, our elders.

In conjunction with the video and text projections, the artists will build several temporary altars. Mixing personal and familial artifacts, religious symbols, and offerings, these altars will enshrine the space as more-than-art: as an actual devotional and spiritually imbued act of honoring our elders.

Only two more Night Lights events remain after December: Megan McKissack in February of 2019 and Midnight Variety Hour in March.

All works will take place at the north wall of the Regional Arts & Culture Council office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland OR (on the corner of NW Glisan St and NW Park Ave). The remaining schedule of events for Night Lights is as follows:

December 6, 5pm
Roland Dahwen and Stephanie Adams-Santos
Three Moons/Tres Lunas/3つの月
Event info

February 7, 5:30pm
Megan McKissack
Untitled

March 7, 6pm
Midnight Variety Hour
Night Lights Edition

Night Lights is a monthly public art event that celebrates the intersection of digital technology, art, and place. Happening outdoors on the First Thursdays of fall and winter months, this multimedia art series presents local artists’ new works, combining large-scale video projection with other art forms such as movement and sound. Works are projected for several hours starting at dusk on the north wall of Regional Arts and Culture Council’s office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland, OR.


November 2018 Night Lights: Windows 11

Night Lights, RACC’s outdoor public art event series continues with local artists Roesing Ape and Beth Whelan. Following a successful kickoff to the series with Laura Median’s Flying in October, the next Night Lights event will take place on November 1st at 6PM. Titled Windows 11, Ape and Whelan’s work involves a minimalist dance piece inside an architectural projection of the building itself. This interactive piece will use both prerecorded and live dance.

For December, Roland Dahwen and Stephanie Adams-Santos will present Three Moons/Tres Lunas/3つの月, a two-channel video installation and altar, dedicated to, and made alongside, our elders. In conjunction with the video and text projections, the artists will build several temporary altars. Mixing personal and familial artifacts, religious symbols, and offerings, these altars will enshrine the space as more-than-art: as an actual devotional and spiritually imbued act of honoring our elders.

All works will take place at the north wall of the Regional Arts & Culture Council office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland OR (on the corner of NW Glisan St and NW Park Ave). The schedule of events for Night Lights is as follows:

November 1, 6pm
Beth Whelan and Roesing Ape
Windows 11

December 6, 5pm
Roland Dahwen and Stephanie Adams-Santos
Three Moons/Tres Lunas/3つの月

February 7, 5:30pm
Megan McKissack
Untitled

March 7, 6pm
Midnight Variety Hour
Night Lights Edition

 

 

Beth Whelan is a movement based artist with training in modern, ballet, improvisation, and choreography. Her work is based upon creating shapes within the body that fluidly disperse and rearrange in synchronicity with the breath. 

 

 

Roesing Ape is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on the deconstruction of cognitive frameworks in sound, language, and sight. This results in a mostly unmarketable catalog of site specific video, improvised soundscapes, and nonlinear performance pieces.


Meet the artists showcasing their work for 2018-19 Night Lights!

Night Lights, RACC’s outdoor public art event series, is back for five months with local artists/collectives projecting their digital media works onto RACC’s building for several hours starting at dusk. Now in its fourth year, Night Lights is a unique event series that celebrates and highlights the intersections of digital technology, art, and place.

Laura Medina, the first artist to kick off Night Lights on October 4th this year, will be presenting work that bodies the exact intersections Night Lights aims to celebrate. Medina’s projected work, titled Flying, will use different animation methods to convey movement and change of setting to discuss migration as a human right. The location of the projection, as Medina notes, is across the street from Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), formerly a US Citizenship and Immigration Services and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. For Medina, we cannot ignore the proximity of the projection to what used to be a distinctly hostile environment, and re-contextualizing this space into an environment that fosters and nourishes acts of solidarity is key.

Following Medina, Roesing Ape and Beth Whelan will show their work on November 1st. Titled Windows 11, their work involves a minimalist dance piece inside an architectural projection of the building itself. This interactive piece will use both prerecorded and live dance.

All works will take place at the north wall of the Regional Arts & Culture Council office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland OR (on the corner of NW Glisan St and NW Park Ave). The schedule of events for Night Lights is as follows:

Still image from Laura Medina's work, Flying.

Still image from Laura Medina’s work, Flying.

October 4, 6:45pm
Laura Medina
Flying

November 1, 6pm
Roesing Ape and Beth Whelan
Windows 11

December 6, 5pm
Roland Dahwen and Stephanie Adams-Santos
Three Moons/Tres Lunas/3つの月

February 7, 5:30pm
Megan McKissack
Untitled

March 7, 6pm
Midnight Variety Hour
Night Lights Edition

—-

Night Lights is a monthly public art event that celebrates the intersection of digital technology, art, and place. Happening outdoors on the First Thursdays of fall and winter months, this multimedia art series presents local artists’ new works, combining large-scale video projection with other art forms such as movement and sound. Works are projected for several hours starting at dusk on the north wall of Regional Arts and Culture Council’s office at 411 NW Park Ave, Portland, OR.

Laura Camila Medina is an interdisciplinary artist born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in Orlando, Florida. She bases her practice around uprooting and migration as a response to personal, cultural, and historical research. Medina is constantly inspired by her memories of home, her mother’s arepas, and her father’s soundtracks. Her work has shown at the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture, PLANETA New York, and through the Nat Turner Project. She earned a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and is currently based in Portland, OR.

Beth Whelan is a movement based artist with training in modern, ballet, improvisation, and choreography. Her work is based upon creating shapes within the body that fluidly disperse and rearrange in synchronicity with the breath. 

Roesing Ape is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on the deconstruction of cognitive frameworks in sound, language, and sight. This results in a mostly unmarketable catalog of site specific video, improvised soundscapes, and nonlinear performance pieces.