'Signs of Change' at Pacific Northwest College of Art

'Signs of Change' at Pacific Northwest College of Art

http://www.oregonlive.com/art/index.ssf/2010/02/review_signs_of_change_at_paci.html

By D.K. Row
February 08, 2010

Sometimes, more is just more.

That's one takeaway of the massively sprawling show at the Pacific
Northwest College of Art, "Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures
1960s to Now."

Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee of the New York based
curatorial program Exit Art, this new exhibit takes an utterly
fascinating idea and let's it all hang out -- literally. Hundreds of
posters, photographs, video and audio clips, and other ephemera
spanning the past 50 years document dozens of social protest
movements from around the world.

It's an overwhelming sight accompanied by occasional sound that
travels from the college's Feldman Gallery into the vast Swigert
Commons, the cavernous common area inside PNCA's main Pearl District
building. The posters and images range from the pedestrian to the
brilliant, from black and white photos and printed matter to works of
various mediums with frenzied colors.

The show is indeed comprehensive on the subject of social and
political movements that became forces of change, or in many cases,
just forces to be acknowledged, if not reckoned with. In America, the
Civil Rights Movement comes to mind, though that movement
transcended this country.

But "Signs" probes deeper, further, farther than the major movements
we all know about, such as the Czech uprising against the Soviet
Union in 1968, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. It also includes
counter cultural and grass roots movements of all kinds: the
occupation of Alcatraz by Native Americans in 1969, an attempt that
tried to turn the island into a Native American cultural center; the
working class-led Oaxaca Commune of 2006, a revolt against the
Mexican government inspired by the Paris Commune; the hippie-ish
commune of Christiania, begun in 1971, within Denmark's city of
Copenhagen; ACT UP, founded in 1987 in New York, which became one of
the first advocacy groups for people with AIDS; and so on.

The show's a fascinating spin through history that expresses
extraordinary passion for its subject. But that's part of the
problem: Greenwald and MacPhee also need to impose some plain,
reasonable context. What do these varying social and political
movements have in common? What are the characteristics of such
movements? What distinguished success from failure?

Telling us about them isn't enough. Showing us why they happened and
what became of them is more the point. In anti-establishment Portland
and Oregon, where the Merry Pranksters and all manner of cults have
flourished, the show should have particular resonance.

Pruning this show of some content might have helped. The hundreds of
posters, pictures and so on overwhelm and impress the eyes but they
don't galvanize the intellect enough.
--

Pacific Northwest College of Art, 1241 N.W. Johnson
St. www.pnca.edu. Closes. Mar. 19

.