TO THE RIVER

To The River was a 2022 summer-long sculpture, sound art and music residency at Portland’s Zidell Yards. The project site ran for 300 yards from the base of the Oregon Health Sciences University tram to the Willamette River. Audiences journeyed to the river through a a matrix of waveforms constructed from long mill-salvaged wood ribs banded together with cast-off bicycle innertubes. The immersive walk was accompanied by wind activated sound production and culminated in a sculptural sound theater on a promontory overlooking the river. That elliptical seating area, constructed from salvaged wood, was activated electronically to become a speaker membrane that produced 16 channels of designed sound. The sculptural setting played host to musical performance works throughout the residency’s six week public run.

Musical performances and collaborations included artists:

Machado Mijiga and Dario LaPoma | August 20
Robin Bacior Band | August 25
Freddy Vilches Ensemble | September 1
Nancy Ives and the Portland Cello Project | September 9
Jose Medeles and Nathan Trueb | September 17
Christopher Whyte and 30 percussionists performed Inuksuit| September 24

The residency focused on the way that the Willamette River and rivers in general connect us across geographies, time and ideas about difference through shared networks of sustenance. The work was inspired by the many devotional ways that people go to the river to meet, to cleanse their souls or to start anew. It sits in the acknowledgment that the site was once an aquatic part of the river itself, before decades of industrial uses, including ship dismantling and barge construction, and remediation by the Zidell Family as part of the Oregon DEQ Voluntary Cleanup program.

AUXART is a program of the Charitable Partnership Fund, an Oregon public charity. EIN 931267966