TICKETS $15

Doors 6:30 p.m.; Event 7 p.m.
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THE EXPERIENCE

San Francisco-based artist Tommy Becker comes to Portland to perform his two latest musically driven stop motion based films from his ongoing mixtape titled Tape Number One. Each playful and vibrantly colored work will be presented as expanded cinema with live vocals and sound elements performed by Tommy in sync to the projected video. Elective: Art is a goodbye letter to his years in the classroom as a high school art teacher. Melodic tunes championing the creative process intersect with a class clown’s journey to retrieve a freewheeling color wheel. Along with Terence McKenna’s insights, his latest work, The Shape of Things to Come, incorporates AI prompts and robotic costuming as it delves into the complications of our tech-driven future.

ON SCREEN:Mix Tape One – An Expanded Cinema Performance by Tommy Becker

Elective: Art

2023. Directed by Tommy Becker. 30 min. 

Elective: Art is an art rock film that reflects on my twenty-year journey as a high school art teacher. Original song writing and spoken word combine with performance art, archival footage, and direct 16mm film elements to celebrate the freedom of imagination, autonomy in creativity, and necessity of creative practices in our schools. The film depicts an art wizard unlocking a student’s imagination sending them into a surreal world where a color wheel escapes the classroom. Aided by primary colors, a hero’s journey ensues as the class clown is tasked with retrieving the wheel and freeing other students from the tedium of their school day.

The Shape of Things to Come

2025. Directed by Tommy Becker. 20 min. 

The Shape of Things to Come is a six-chapter art rock film that delves into themes of nostalgia for the future, uncertainties of technological progress, and the quest for authentic human connection. Through original songwriting, poetry, performance art, and the insights of Terence McKenna, the film offers a creative exploration of our innovative nature and challenges us to consider how the very technology we create might ultimately pose risks to our well-being. Video, Music & Text: written, recorded, edited and performed by Tommy Becker / Additional text by Terence McKenna

ON STAGE: Tommy Becker

A self-described “poet trapped in a camcorder,” Becker’s art rock films take a collagist approach to thematic investigation by combining original songwriting, spoken word, performance, costuming, animation, 16mm direct, glitch and in-computer design. Educational preludes, historical footage, and thematic lyrics lend a documentary component to his work that balances meaning with personal, often humorous, poetic expression.

His films have been shared nationally and internationally including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, SFCinematheque Crossroads, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Currents New Media , Perth International Film Festival, The Black Maria Film Festival, Sydney Underground Film Festival, Zebra Poetry Film Festival (Berlin), Kassel Documentary Film Festival, Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque), Swedenborg Film Festival (London), Alchemy Film Festival (Hawick), Boston Underground Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival and Athens International Film and Video Festival (Ohio). Selected works distributed by Canyon Cinema.