Their quest to claim the 511 Broadway building may still ongoing, but Pacific Northwest College of Art is moving forward, announcing today the launch of Idea Studios as the leadoff program of the College’s recently established Ford Institute for Visual Education. (The acronym is FIVE, and I think they should have a logo with an opened palm, as if slapping hands is a symbol for the exchange of art and knowledge). Idea Studios premieres February 16, 2008 with a talk by James Turrell, a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient whose work is part of the light-and-space art movement of Dan Flavin, Hap Tivey and others that inspired, among other things, the look of Apple computers. Turrell's art installation in an Arizona crater is a transformative experience. There will also be a February 29 lecture by Jacques Rancière, the philosopher, critic and political theorist (he's French, of course - only in France do philosophers still get famous).
Idea Studios will be an ongoing and portable series of conversations, lectures and performances on the inner workings of creative practice featuring practitioners from a range of fields and cultures as part of a broader PNCA + FIVE effort to highlight the importance of creativity in fostering innovation and civic imagination. It's the latest in an ambitious set of moves during prez Tom Manley's reign.
Architects of note from around the world could make ideal candidates as future FIVE guest residents. I hate to use a cheesy term like "cross-pollination", but it's fun imagining (to use some of my own international preferences as example) some rising talent from Japan, Holland, New Zealand or Brazil forming a substantial connection with Portlanders and Portland. I'm not sure if these guests get an apartment, a per diem or what, but one doubts they'd be in a flophouse with bread and water. What if you ran into Ben Van Berkel unexpectedly at Esparza's Tex Mex one night, or saw Masamichi Katayama (pictured at left in a shot by my friend Michael taken last year when we visited) cutting a rug with Darcel? People increasingly talk about our fair city as having the chance to be a design mecca, and these are the kinds of creative investments that set the stage for it to happen.
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