If you live in Portland, Oregon you have until September 14th to see Khris Soden’s project for the Time Based Arts Festival. He is giving a tour of the town of Tilburg, Holland as you walk through the streets of Portland. I am giving it high recommendations.

I’ve written more about it below, but first here is the information if you want to go on the tour. The tour starts from inside the Wieden and Kenedy/PICA building at 224 NW 13th. More information here. Here’s a list of the remaining tour times:

Sun . Sept 7 . 6:30-7:30 pm
Mon . Sept 8 . 6:30-7:30 pm
Tues . Sept 9 . 6:30-7:30 pm
Wed . Sept 10 . 6:30-7:30 pm
Thurs . Sept 11 . 6:30-7:30 pm
Fri . Sept 12 . 6:30-7:30 pm
Sat . Sept 13 . 12:30-1:30 pm
Sat . Sept 13 . 2:30-3:30 pm
Sat . Sept 13 . 4:30-5:30 pm
Sun . Sept 14 . 2:30-3:30 pm
Sun . Sept 14 . 4:30-5:30 pm

My wife and I went on the tour yesterday after we received strong recommendations from friends. We were very impressed and had a lot of fun. Khris walked through Portland as if it were actually Tilburg, explaining historical landmarks, pointing out special buildings, and talking about the people. He took us to one of the great Tilburg churches and explained how Protestantism, Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism were all foundations of the social structure of the city however in “reality” we were actually in front of the Hilton. There were many wonderful juxtapositions such as that. It was also funny to see reactions of people who were not on the tour, who were just walking by, as Khris spoke about old buildings and monuments that weren’t really there.

I put quotations around the word “reality” because clearly we are in Portland, Oregon during the tour, however, we begin to mentally get a sense of what this city might be like and we begin to replace our reality with what we think could be the reality of this other place. We also get a sense that Tilburg and  Holland have a couple social structures in place that are admirable, beneficial, and something that we might aspire to implement here in Portland. The tour was prefaced with a short conversation about how Portland and Tilburg are similar in many respects, and in both places people seem to have utopian ideas that they work toward. Utopia is not a perfect place, but one in which the community works together to achieve a better social good. So, there are some things we can learn from Tilburg. This may not have been the point or purpose of the tour, but this is something I was able to take away from it. I won’t spoil the tour for you. I highly recommend it; it was a lot of fun.

Khris was a part of the M.O.S.T., an arts group that I have written about on beerandscifi.com here. This group believed in a parallel reality, called Mostlandia, that operated in friendship and love and promoted fun and community among other things. They were able to inspire a sense of community with the people who attended their functions. Like Khris’ tour, the M.O.S.T. was able to confuse reality with this sense of “I am here” and “I am not here.” Even though the four founding members of Mostlandia have disbanded, Khris is carrying the torch of presenting “non-place-places” to the general public in ways that help us see the world in a new light.