Interventionist Art Practices in Portland

What is interventionist art (my working definition): 

Public practices at the intersection of art and "direct action" activism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_intervention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Interventionism

"(urban interventions)...are typically concerned less with representing political issues than with intervening in urban spaces so as to question, refunction and contest prevailing norms and ideologies, and to create new meanings, experiences, understandings, relationships and situations."-Professor David Pinder of the University of London

I'm looking into the Portland context of public intervention practices with the goal of connecting to local individuals and groups who have done this type of work. As a more hands-on form of research, I will also do some exploratory "talking to passersby" about the history of the Multnomah County Central Library, to get more practice being charming & asking strangers for their time. This is an important skill for certain forms of performative public interventions :)

So far I haven't found very many examples of this specific kind of work happening in Portland, so I'm including my explorations around the edges of this topic, including interventionist work in general and Portland-related art with strong connections to grassroots organizing.

General resources and readings on interventionist art practices

Books

Current organizations and training resources:

Center for Artistic Activism (Steve Lambert and Steve Duncombe)

Yes Labs (a project of the Yes Men)

Beautiful Trouble (book and workshops) Andrew Boyd

Center for Story Based Strategy (grassroots organizing/design lens)

Other online writing and practitioners:

Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (John Jordan/Reclaim the Streets/la ZAD)

https://actipedia.org/

http://destructables.org/

There is often overlap/collaboration between interventionist artists and organizations that focus specifically on spectacular direct-action protest, for example:

Ruckus Society

Greenpeace (St. Johns Bridge occupation to stop arctic oil drilling)
Mosquito Fleet—Portland or just Seattle?

Where do interventionist practices intersect with Portland?

People

Igor Vamos (Reed College grad) (Guerrilla Theater of the Absurd/guerrilla street re-naming in PDX, Yes Men, Barbie Liberation Front, RTmark.) Now teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Katherine Ball- (MFA SoPrac alum)—collaborates with Tools for Action in Europe (action inflatables) and DIY living experiments

Zachary Gough (MFA SoPrac alum)--Dentistry at the Museum, contributor to A Soft Spot in a Hard Place, investigating artists' contributions to anticapitalist movements (with Thomas Gokey, Cassie Thornton/Strike Debt and Max Haiven)

Sam Gould--Red76 project in early-2000s Portland--educational talks and gatherings in bars, laundromats, street corners. Currently teaches at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and involved in book store/publishing venue Beyond Repair

Historical-- Portland Cacophony Society?

Not directly interventionist but still good to know about

Other PSU Social Practice MFA expats

Jen Delos Reyes (Open Engagement, PSU SoPrac MFA and co-creator)
Transformazium (MFA SoPrac grads, now outside of Pittsburg PA) social practice neighborhood work

Portland art & artists with connections to grassroots organizing 

Just Seeds printmaking collective—Thea Garh, Icky Dunn, Roger Peet all live in PDX

Robin Corbo, muralist

Julie Perini--Arresting Power film with Jody Darby, also new film about Bo Brown, gentleman butch revolutionary bank robber
Don't Shoot Portland--Teressa Raiford. Article about art projects. Collaboration with Portland Art Museum

Other PDX artists with Social Justice concerns

Vanessa Renwick--experimental film 

Kaia Sand poetry
Pdx puppet show
August Wilson Red Door Project, Hands Up - public theater project about police violence
Joe Sacco - political comics journalist
Gentrification is Weird - Donovan Smith

Oral History Projects

Vanport Mosaic Project
Know Your City walking tours

Street Art

Portland Street Art Alliance (an above-board mural-painting nonprofit)
City Repair (once did guerrilla street projects; now it's institutionalized, so is it now "community arts"?)