Thursday, May 1, 2008 @ 9:00 PM
@ galleryHOMELAND, 2505 SE 11th Ave
Proving Ground
Presented by PDX Fest and The Northwest Film Center
Artist-in-attendance
Proving Ground
Travis Wilkerson
60 min/multi-media performance
Live music by Los Duggans
Proving Ground is an unabashedly didactic history of US aerial bombing. The end result combines theater, history lecture, punk rock show, political rally, experimental film screening. It represents an attempt not merely to create a work of political art, but rather, politics as art. Above all else, the performance pays tribute to a lost American art form—agitation. Proving Ground first appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, the first performance art ever to be presented in that festival. Recently, it has reappeared in dive bars in Los Angeles, most notably Little Joy Junior.
National Archive V.1
Travis Wilkerson
15 min / Video / 2001
National Archive is Wilkerson’s ongoing series based on materials residing within the "public domain." V. 1 seeks to discover the nexus between pure form and pure politics, and is aimed directly at the viscera.
Featured Artist Travis Wilkerson
A chance meeting in Havana with legendary Cuban film propagandist Santiago Alvarez changed the course of Travis Wilkerson’s life. He now makes films in the tradition of the "third cinema," wedding politics to form in an indivisible manner. Wilkerson’s work includes An Injury to One, an agit-prop essay on the lynching of Wobbly Frank Little, Accelerated Development a documentary on filmmaker Santiago Alvarez, and the feature film Who Killed Cock Robin? He is active in the anti-Imperialist wing of the anti-war movement, led by ANSWER. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Boulder, where he teaches at the University of Colorado.
This event was made possible thanks to a generous grant from The Oregon Council For The Humanities.