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Epic Ephemera

Layered video still with a person dancing, plants, and psychedelic colors and shapes
Image from Sea Creatures installation courtesy of Sarah Turner, co-founder of the Mobile Projection Unit.
Feb 5, 2021 - May 29, 2021
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR
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Overview

The Portland Art Museum presents a series of outdoor digital installations guest-curated by Fernanda d’Agostino and Sarah Turner of the Mobile Projection Unit. Working within the precariousness of the current moment, this exhibition embraces the temporal nature of new media work in a series of one-night installations that reimagine space at an epic scale and unravel hidden mythologies. This series ranges from a group screening of experimental media work rooted in ritual, sculpting canvases within the city skyline to reveal the poetics of the natural world, to bringing leading pioneers of audio/video/coding to Portland through a digital portal. Epic Ephemera reinvents public space and shared experience, transcending the limitations of our screens.

A presentation of Sea Creatures, created by Mobile Projection Unit (MPU) in collaboration with artist Crystal Cortez, kicked off the series at the Portland Winter Light (non)Festival in February 2021.  From March through May, MPU will highlight the work of new media artists each month. Myths and Rituals, which takes place on Friday, March 26, dives into the work of maximiliano, Carolina Bazo, Hiba Ali, Laura Camila Medina, and Tabita Rezaire in a group screening, followed by a large-scale video installation of immersive audio-visual renderings by Rick Silva, Nicolas Sasson, and Pulse Emitter on Saturday, April 24, titled SIGNALS. This series concludes with a massive live video & audio experience with pioneers in interactive video, sound, and movement by Pamela Z and keyon gaskin in Breaking Ground on Saturday, May 29.

The exterior courtyard of the Portland Art Museum at night with video being projected on the building and people gathered in the courtyard
Sea Creatures installation, part of the 2021 Portland Winter Light (non)Festival.

Mobile Projection Unit (MPU) is a roving studio that presents new, experimental, site-specific outdoor video projections throughout Portland, Oregon. Their work as an artist team focuses on spatializing video through projection mapping, and live interactive video performance through creative coding. Founded and directed by Fernanda D’Agostino and Sarah Turner in 2018, MPU is a curatorial project and artistic vehicle. Part of MPU’s curatorial ethos is to put the tools of production into the hands of artists. MPU has shown work at guerrilla sites around the Portland region, Portland International Film Festival, Portland Art Museum, Northwest Film Center, Venice VR Expanded, PICA’s Time Based Art Festival, Astoria Visual Arts, and more.

The Epic Ephemera series is supported by the Museum and Film Center’s Re:Imagine Artist Fund, an initiative expanding our commitment to supporting artists in a reimagined cultural sphere.

MPU is funded in part by the Precipice Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Calligram Foundation, and the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Northwest Film Center, and Portland Art Museum. The exhibition is coordinated for the Portland Art Museum by Jaleesa Johnston, Program Lead and Sara Krajewski, Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.