I’m giving a brief talk this weekend at PDX Contemporary – details below….

Please join us this Saturday at 11 am for The Art of the Regift, a short talk by Helen Reed. This is the third lecture happening in conjunction with Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen’s exhibition The Classroom, which is on view this month at PDX Contemporary Art.

In The Classroom, Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen present a new body of work that deals with the politics and aesthetics of education. Through the exploration of a variety of pedagogical tools and methods they have created a selection of objects and prints. From modular Mondrian building blocks to color analyses of literary classics there is something for every kind of student. With the current inflation of people pursuing higher education, despite its mounting cost, increased privatization and decreased rigor, it seems particularly appropriate to portray the classroom transparently as a place of commerce. Knowledge is valuable, but it is more valuable still to acquire the ability to transmit that knowledge. What we learn is less important than how we learn.

Helen Reed is an artist based in Portland, Oregon. Over the past 5 years Helen’s art practice has involved working with specific invested communities. During this time she has landed the first senior citizen on the moon, contacted Marshall McLuhan by Ouija Board, and coordinated a lesbian-separatist rave in the farmlands of Ontario. Her most recent project is Twin Twin Peaks, a 3rd Season of Twin Peaks, written and acted by the show’s fans. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at The Kitchen in New York City, Power Plant Contemporary Art in Toronto, The Portland Art Museum, The Seattle Art Museum and La Centrale in Montreal. Helen Reed holds a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver, BC and an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State
University.

This is one of four lectures happening in conjunction with Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen’s exhibition The Classroom on view at PDX Contemporary during the month of July. Each Saturday a local educator will use the objects of The Classroom to present on a variety of topics including, but not limited to, fan culture, pedagogy, language and literacy.

Saturday, July 24th: Helen Reed
Saturday, July 31st: Barry Sanders

All lectures will be at 11 am at PDX Contemporary Art.

925 NW Flanders, Portland, OR

We hope to see you there!

I am writing a paper on documentary reenactments right now, and of course, had to include Jill Godmilow’s What Farocki Taught, since it is one of my favorite pieces of reenactment cinema of all time, in it’s dry yet incredibly potent form and it’s oblique challenge to channels of distribution.

Here’s Jill: