Plug In PDX /  by Christa McIntyre

PLUG IN PDX is a guide for folks wishing to: 1. fight against bigotry of the alt right, fascists, and that buried in each and everyone of us. 2.  to win new found liberation.

Our focus is on local democratic, direct action groups. We also list some bigger national groups that may offer useful tools.

We believe that building a social movement is not only the best way to protect each other, but also to build a path to a truly liberated world.

We’ve started from resource lists that 100’s of people, activists from Portland, around the country and The New Inquiry shared. We hope to keep building off of that. Thank you everyone for sharing your resources and Kathryn Kendall for citizen photojournalism.

Help Spread the word. Here’s a Quarter sheet of flyers and Full Sheet flyer.

Share, share, share PLUG IN PDX

photograph courtesy of Kathryn Kendall

The PDX Collective Resource Guide /  by Christa McIntyre

In the last days I’ve seen many people assemble lists on social media to help one another in this time and the coming struggles ahead. This is a collective resource of those. I hope to keep adding to it, as more information becomes available. Thank you to everyone who spent time gathering and sharing this information. This is a living collective resource guide. It is by no means complete or definitive. It’s for people coming from different backgrounds. Get it HERE and share, share, share! (Email me if I missed a resource, organization or article. I'll take a look-see.)

Love's Labour's Lost: on the uncertain future of Post5 Theatre /  by Christa McIntyre

With the recent presidential election of a demagogue who threatens to uproot American Democracy and put many citizens in harm's way, the story of Post5 Theater may seem unimportant. Many of us are trying to find our balance after this dramatic culture shift and the media ecosystem is no exception. Democracy starts at the ground floor and theater plays a role in the discourse. For many years the National Endowment for the Arts and public broadcasting have been under threat with budget cuts by the Republican party. On the campaign trail Donald Trump spoke of cutting of funding and there will be a direct impact on our local arts. Trump said of a Chris Ofili work at The Brooklyn Museum: “It’s not art. It’s absolutely gross, degenerate stuff.” Note the word “degenerate” and recall the 1937 German exhibit for Degenerate Art.
Post5's exit from their Sellwood home creates a vacuum in Portland's arts community. Here's my investigative report.

My Review of Coyote on a Fence /  by Christa McIntyre

The rich history of prison literature was brought to my attention at the end of an essay written in the 1960's by Kenneth Rexroth. By great timing, I had just toured Alcatraz with an Idaho sheriff who gave me the inside dirt on the rock's history and how jail works for the keepers. Rexroth, in his elegiac complaint noted that a great many books came from prisoners and were written about prison, but there wasn't a prison lit anthology. Rexroth thought it should be treated and taught as a genre. In the 60's alone, we have Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and Soledad Brother by George Jackson. Most of the axis that Malcolm X's Autobiography hinges upon is his stint in jail. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thoreau wrote from behind bars. The Marquis de Sade hid his 120 Days of Sodom in the brass bed frame of his Bastille confinement. Anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote about slave labor conditions, corporate interest and profit from prison, burned bits of food being substituted for coffee grounds and the inhumane practice of solitary confinement in his late 19th century memoirs. Rexroth would be glad to know that today there are many anthologies from which dear readers can get their fill. The play Coyote on a Fence is part of that long tradition. Here's my review of Post5's production.

Fabulous photograph taken by Life's photographer Nat Farbman. Kenneth Rexroth performs work from New Directions issue 15 at a poetry and jazz event in S.F., 1957. [Courtesy: the "Ordinary Finds" blog.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the love of John Berger at 90 /  by Christa McIntyre

John Berger 1972

In 1969 Kenneth Clark's Civilisation hit the BBC airwaves in color. Clark, art historian to the Queen, made an ambitious and popular survey of Western civ. He took Britain and then America on a visual tour of European art monuments. In the comfort of their living rooms, people who couldn't or didn't travel the world had front row seats.

Clark infused a warm humanism with his personal view of history. Inspiring at times, his Civilisation was bound to the class system he was part of. His part being the top. Clark's idealism was planted in the A to B, simple to complex, peasant to king, man to God social Darwinism. The cream was always separating to the top. Cross cultural or intersectional conversations about the meaning within the images took a backseat as the victors made art history.

Kenneth Clark on the set of Civilisation

Younger upstart John Berger replied with pocket knife in hand taking art out of the holy edifice of the museum and putting it in the public's lap. Berger's 1972 Ways of Seeing put contemporary politics and Marxism on the table. He circumvented the authority from tradition and academia and bargained the power on the side of the viewer. The same decade saw the rise of women who would push the status quo of a male dominated arts and shove in your face gender and biology in the tradition of Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Berger was a champion of seeing and hearing. He updated the street and art gallery conversations with a 20th century philosophy and egalitarian sensibility. He put the darling of art history and criticism, Walter Benjamin, on the television screen.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing

In his 90th year, he is still approaching art, politics and life with a dedicated, sophisticated, skilled, radical lens. Berger is a poet of everyday people and a brilliant example of how to cultivate an elegance of intellect.

John Berger at 90

My review of Taylor Mac's Hir at defunkt theatre /  by Christa McIntyre

After reading interviews and watching clips of Taylor Mac, I fell in love with Mac. (Mac uses the pronoun judy, as in Garland.) The evening I saw defunkt's production of judy's play Hir, judy was performing A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. Judy devotes one hour to each decade of popular American music beginning in 1776. The $400 ticket price got you a live band, dinner, lounging accommodations, gorgeous inventive costume changes, Taylor Mac all out for 24 hours with judy's critical, but fun look into ourselves. NY Times critic Wesley Morris described it as one of the greatest experiences of his life. I wish I was there to witness Mac's radical faerie realness ritual, as much as I regret not seeing Sinatra or James Brown in concert. An audience member at defunkt was blown away that the play made reference to the radical faeries and Wolf Creek. He was confiding in me, leaning on my shoulder with a look of "someone speaks my language?" I felt the same way about defunkt's Hir and my introduction to Taylor Mac. I need to develop my own radical faerie realness rituals. You can read my review hir.

My favorite image of Taylor Mac. Photo: Ian Douglas/2015