Summer in Portland, a time when a swathe of arts and music festivals swarm over the city. But sometimes it’s tough for a cash-strapped student to pay high-dollar entry fees. Enter Future Arts Festival, a free student-led festival. The festival is the latest experiment by the Time Arts Club, a student organization dedicated to promoting and curating multidisciplinary art events.
Open submissions just ended for the Future Arts Festival, which will feature an array of videos, performances and music from a combination of students and more established artists working in time-based media. The collection of events and happenings will stretch through the weekend of June 20-22, scattered in multiple locations across the Portland State campus. Much of the locational planning is ongoing, but the Time Arts Club pointed to the Shattuck Hall Annex and the Art Building BFA studios as booked sites.
“We’re inspired by the exclusiveness of art institutions and summer arts festivals,” said Manny Reyes, a master of fine arts student and founder of the student-run Time Arts Club. “We want to provide something that’s not only free for all ages and open to the public, but we’ve also saved all of our budget so we can make this our little jam. We’re actually paying all of our artists, many of whom are burgeoning.”
Reyes pointed to the language of the more established Portland art festivals as one factor that inspired his group’s response. He explained that the group hoped to provide a more accessible alternative to a broader range of attendees.
“That’s not the way festivals are supposed to be done,” he said. “We won’t have fancy art jargon. We won’t have confusing brochures. We won’t have a cost of entry. We’re hoping to have something more intimate, and in a way experimental.”
But Reyes also emphasized that he wanted to focus on the positive atmosphere the club seeks to engender. He kept the participating artists under wraps, explaining that the lineup would be made available after the first week of June. He also explained that the festival productions were about student involvement.
“People will know at least two weeks in advance what’s happening,” Reyes said. “I think it’s important to challenge all of those things, but the emphasis should be on the positivity and the collaboration and the environment. Since we’ve teased these things, it’s gotten a lot of interest from students, and that’s what the Time Arts Club is all about. We’ve been wanting to give students a chance to perform and also to curate.”
Annalise Reinhardt, bachelor of fine arts student and assistant director of the Time Arts Club, explained that the festival would consist of a series of Happenings. Happenings, the mainstay event produced by the club each term, are one-night art parties, often featuring music and video, as well as other moving displays. Often, Happenings will also include visual artists producing works over the course of the event. In the case of the club’s productions, Happenings are always free and all-age events.
“We activate a space and we have many things going on at once,” Reinhardt said. “We will schedule a roster, but we’ll also have artworks that will span the timeframe of a Happening, which is generally two to three hours long.”
Much of the work being displayed at a given Happening will be time-based, which generally includes video, performance and live art-making. But Reinhardt also emphasized that all art forms are potentially welcomed by the club.
“Time arts [are] so open,” she said. “Even if you wanted to put together an art exhibit, and have it be a pop-up show, and the idea is having it be very temporary. I feel like time arts are the bulk of arts, but the idea is that the art is in the present.”
The group aims for the festival to expand upon their normal events, in that it stretches across multiple nights and several locations, all on campus. They envision an event made up of multiple Happenings with up-and-coming artists in participation.
“This is a festival where, yes, we want to show artists that have experience and have been making work for awhile, but we also want to showcase artists that have no experience at all,” Reinhardt said. “Students need opportunities to show work and meet like-minded people. We need resources, because we’re also in a period of development. Development is ongoing, of course, but school is a period of time where it’s particularly important.”
Future Arts Festival will hardly be Time Arts Club’s last event. Though Reinhardt will be graduating, she noted that the sense of community created by the club will continue with her beyond graduation. She even considered holding off on leaving because of the club.
“I really love promoting and trying to build community,” she said. “I’m really excited to be offered this opportunity. I thought seriously about extending my education because of the opportunities at school.”
Reyes, who has another year in the graduate program to continue with the club, had similar sentiments, but he also asserted an interest in keeping the club going beyond his time at the university.
“I have this unique opportunity to essentially leave PSU a gift, like my baby,” he said. “But by then it will maybe be a screaming teenager, I’m hoping.”
In the meantime, Reyes and the others are developing ongoing programming for the coming year, which includes collaborations with other arts clubs and programs. It also includes new formats for events, one of which may make its first appearance during the Future Arts Festival.
“We’re also going to debut a new series soon, which are called Situations,” he said. “They are one-performance events. That’s going to be more experimental and even [more] pop-up style. We’re hoping to get more political with it.”
As a performance and video artist that creates work asserting identity and challenging gender, Reyes is no stranger to creating a vibrant atmosphere in his productions. He pointed to an air of excitement surrounding the PSU art community, and expressed hope for the coming year.
“Part of my art and my performance is to be as sincere and vulnerable as possible,” he said. “Part of that, and with my year growth at Time Arts Club, is that I love it and my cohorts. I’m really excited about PSU and all the changes right now. And I feel like we’re a big part of it.”
