Rami George: and one day will tell you so many stories

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This content was published: September 14, 2020. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.

Rami George: and one day will tell you so many stories

Cascade Paragon Arts Gallery

A video still of Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993) shows a weathered newspaper clipping of a figure dressed in a white shirt with red tie standing before microphones. Arms reach out from the left side of the shot with tape recorders and additional microphones preparing to record the speaker’s voice.

Rami George, Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993), 2015. HD video, color, sound, 5 min. Courtesy of the artist.

September 25 – extended into Spring 2021, new closing date May 3, 2021, window exhibition (video essays linked below)

Video Essays
Billboard and Window Exhibition
Screening and Q&A
About the artist

and one day will tell you so many stories is the first solo presentation of Rami George on the West Coast and particularly Portland, Oregon—a place the artist once knew as home. Two older video essays, Untitled (Samaritan Foundation), 2014 and Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993), 2015 are presented alongside a newly-created billboard structure, Untitled (mapping), 2020 in the windows of the Paragon Arts Gallery. These works are part of an ongoing project exploring the artist’s interactions with the New Age religious community, or cult, The Samaritan Foundation. The video essays address the community’s headquarters—a converted jail in Guthrie, Oklahoma—as well as a newspaper article detailing a custody battle over the artist and their sister in relation to the teachings of the group. (Un)tracing the George family’s movements across the United States, the billboard attempts to map encounters with The Samaritan Foundation and other intentional communities. Together, the works demonstrate the interwoven elements of an expanding and contracting series of networks that continue to proliferate through George’s artistic research.

and one day will tell you so many stories is a satellite solo presentation within the exhibition Networks of (Be)longing, October 16–December 6, 2020, at the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture of the Pacific Northwest College of Art (CCAC at PNCA) that unfolds across physical and virtual sites, creating a network all its own. The group exhibition at CCAC features a new commission by PNCA Artist-in-Residence, Rami George. Networks of (Be)longing at CCAC is on view, Saturday–Sunday, 12–4pm by appointment only. Please email ccac@pnca.edu to schedule. Remote viewing access to the works at CCAC, accessible written and audio captions, labels, the programs series, and an accompanying curatorial essay are available via the PNCA Online Galleries.

Networks of (Be)longing is presented by the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture, PNCA, in collaboration with the Paragon Arts Gallery, Portland Community College, Cascade Campus and supported by Converge 45. The exhibition is organized by Laurel V. McLaughlin, independent curator, with support from Elizabeth Bilyeu, Director of the Paragon Arts Gallery, and Mack McFarland, Assistant Professor at PNCA and Director of Converge 45.

Video Essays

This short video essay features a voiceover narrator telling the history of the territorial prison, or the “Black Jail,” of Guthrie, Oklahoma while the video pans through Google Street View. The narrator describes the repurposing of the jail into the headquarters of the cult, The Samaritan Foundation, its current ghostly occupants, and recites the artist’s first-hand account of childhood memories in the jail.

Rami George, Untitled (Samaritan Foundation), 2014. HD video, color, sound, 5:46 min. Courtesy of the artist.

This short video essay features a voiceover narrator reciting a newspaper article covering a custody battle over the artist and their sister, as related to their family’s involvement in The Samaritan Foundation. A slideshow of images from elsewhere in the paper simultaneously plays.

Rami George, Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993), 2015. HD video, color, sound, 5 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Billboard

Rami George, Untitled (mapping), 2020, inkjet print, wood, 84 x 96 x 28 in. Photograph by Mario Gallucci.

Window Exhibition

Window view of Rami George, Untitled (mapping), 2020, inkjet print, wood, 84 x 96 x 28 in. Photograph by Mario Gallucci.

Window view with detail of Rami George, Untitled (Samaritan Foundation), 2014. HD video, color, sound, 5:46 min. Photograph by Mario Gallucci.

Window view with details of Rami George, Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993), 2015. HD video, color, sound, 5 min., and Untitled (Samaritan Foundation), 2014. HD video, color, sound, 5:46 min.

Window view with details (left to right) of Rami George, Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993), 2015. HD video, color, sound, 5 min., and Untitled (Samaritan Foundation), 2014. HD video, color, sound, 5:46 min. Photograph by Mario Gallucci.

Window view with details of Rami George, Untitled (Samaritan Foundation), 2014. HD video, color, sound, 5:46 min., and Untitled (mapping), 2020, inkjet print, wood, 84 x 96 x 28 in.

Window view with details (left to right) of Rami George, Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993), 2015. HD video, color, sound, 5 min.; Untitled (Samaritan Foundation), 2014. HD video, color, sound, 5:46 min.; and Untitled (mapping), 2020, inkjet print, wood, 84 x 96 x 28 in. Photograph by Mario Gallucci.

Screening and Q&A

A composite video still shows four views. The upper left is a photograph of a child’s feet in light blue pajamas sitting on a little girl’s lap who sits on her father’s lap father’s hands and mother’s hands from outside the photograph reaching in towards the child’s feet. The upper right photograph is a picture of a brown judge’s desk with two flags, two portraits, a mural, and a clock behind it. The lower right video still is a portrait of filmmaker Allen Ross who wears a white Oxford, brown jacket, headphones around his neck, and brown glasses in front of a lawn and walkway with a car in the background. The lower left is a screenshot from Google Street View of The Samaritan Foundation, a tan building flanked by two green trees surrounded by dead grass, a road, and a red stoned path to the blue door entrance.

Rami George, Video Playlist (composite video still), 2020. HD Video, color, sound, 41:30 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Rami George “Video Playlist” Screening and Q&A
Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 6pm PST
Zoom link on CCAC website

Free and open to the public

Join the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture (CCAC) at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and the PNCA Graduate Lecture Series for a “video playlist” screening from multidisciplinary artist, Rami George. The playlist relates to their ongoing exploration into the intentional community, or cult, The Samaritan Foundation. The program includes a selection of George’s video essays alongside excerpts from public media about the community, and a short film by late Chicago-based experimental filmmaker Allen Ross. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the artist and Laurel V. McLaughlin, guest curator of Networks of (Be)longing at CCAC. This program will be recorded.

George is currently a PNCA Artist-in-Residence, and their newly commissioned work Untitled (the ashram), 2020 is featured in the group exhibition at CCAC, on view October 16 – December 6, 2020. For more information concerning programming, remote viewing options, and accessible written and audio captions, labels, and a curatorial essay see the PNCA Online Gallery after October 23.

About the artist

Rami George is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Philadelphia. Their work has been presented in exhibitions and screenings at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Grand Union, Birmingham; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; LUX, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and others. George received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. They continue to be influenced and motivated by political struggles and fractured narratives.