In the late 1990s I moved into a 5000 square foot warehouse in the industrial section of NE Portland. It was called the Lab, which was an ongoing kind of experiment meets art project created by Steve MacDougall and Chris Rhodes.
We built rooms, all with second floors, a kitchen, and a massive five foot high stage. The space played host to concerts, festivals, a punk rock science fair, parties and art events. It was really, really fun.
When the inevitable eviction eventually came a few years later the Lab moved to a comparable sized former coffin factory in NW Portland and became a series of art studios and semi-public spaces.
It wasn’t quite a collective, but it was absolutely a community. By day films were shot, animated and edited, visual art was created, and artists like Miranda July used it as a rehearsal space.
By night The Lab was host to events, including a Spaghetti Western film night with all you can eat Spaghetti, work in progress performances, and the The Lab Lecture Series.
The Lecture series had a committee who would program an evening of three lectures and a happening. And I was often asked to play a central role in the happening.
We built rooms, all with second floors, a kitchen, and a massive five foot high stage. The space played host to concerts, festivals, a punk rock science fair, parties and art events. It was really, really fun.
When the inevitable eviction eventually came a few years later the Lab moved to a comparable sized former coffin factory in NW Portland and became a series of art studios and semi-public spaces.
It wasn’t quite a collective, but it was absolutely a community. By day films were shot, animated and edited, visual art was created, and artists like Miranda July used it as a rehearsal space.
By night The Lab was host to events, including a Spaghetti Western film night with all you can eat Spaghetti, work in progress performances, and the The Lab Lecture Series.
The Lecture series had a committee who would program an evening of three lectures and a happening. And I was often asked to play a central role in the happening.
A great example is a night where the late film editor Jim Lyons gave a lecture about the film Mulholland Drive after a professional hypnotist tried to hypnotize audience members.
On the other side of the warehouse the committee had constructed a three room dream analyst “office” out of 4 by 8 panels. There was a waiting room where a receptionist checked people in and then an office where I played Dr. Eliza Spatial, dream analyst.
As each patient told me about a recent or recurring dream there was a third room where people with dream dictionaries looked up words from each person’s dream and told what they meant through a microphone and earpiece.
I saw a few dozen patients over the evening, and two of them shared a dream they had been having all their lives and made some kind of discovery or breakthrough based on our work together. It was pretty awesome.
There were many more nights like that, including an evening where we staged a mock kidnapping of the audience at Reed College.
I now realize this was really the start of my performance art work. I just didn’t know what to call it at the time.
On the other side of the warehouse the committee had constructed a three room dream analyst “office” out of 4 by 8 panels. There was a waiting room where a receptionist checked people in and then an office where I played Dr. Eliza Spatial, dream analyst.
As each patient told me about a recent or recurring dream there was a third room where people with dream dictionaries looked up words from each person’s dream and told what they meant through a microphone and earpiece.
I saw a few dozen patients over the evening, and two of them shared a dream they had been having all their lives and made some kind of discovery or breakthrough based on our work together. It was pretty awesome.
There were many more nights like that, including an evening where we staged a mock kidnapping of the audience at Reed College.
I now realize this was really the start of my performance art work. I just didn’t know what to call it at the time.
