What does “public domain” mean to you? Is it knowledge that is free to use or is it something more, like shared physical spaces or public services? Who decides what is public versus what is private and who gets access to these resources?
PSU’s Art + Social Practice MFA students will explore all these questions and more at this year’s conference, Assembly 2025: Public Domain. The event will span three days, from June 5-7, 2025 and feature a total of 10 events around downtown Portland. Events include thought-provoking, socially engaged experiential projects, workshops, and performances co-authored by PSU’s 2025 Art + Social Practice MFA program. Supporting the students is their mentor, Lisa Jarrett, Professor of Community and Context Arts at PSU’s Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design and co-founder and director of KSMoCA. The City of Portland Office of Arts & Culture is acting as host for some of the events.
Each year since 2014, students in the Art + Social Practice MFA program have hosted an annual gathering with the aim of assembling communities around participatory art making, focused on a central theme. This year's workshops, talks and interactive art installations – which range in topic from savoring food and the tastes of home, raising voices through song, creating a sense of home and safety, planning a trip to far-flung locales, processing grief through memories, and more – are concerned with questioning and exploring what “public domain” really means.
The three-day conference will kick off with an artist talk and exhibition opening at KsMOCA (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art) with artist and teacher, Xavier Pierce, and his first-grade class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School. Some of the other events taking place during the conference include The PDX Hour: Conversations as Social Practice, where conversation becomes art. Diaspora Kitchen, held at the PSU Farmers Market, where participants are invited to recall a favorite family recipe and share it as part of a collective cookbook. Songs Against Dark Times: PDX Edition where participants are invited to sing the world they wish to see as they walk through Portland’s downtown, pausing at locations where historical protests took place and learning a protest song related to each site. And Permission to Leave, an interactive, fictional travel consultancy where residents apply for a visa not to enter a country, but to leave their own. Visitors will undergo mock interviews and fill out exit visa forms as part of their “application process” to exit the country. Inspired by the bureaucratic labyrinths many migrants face, the project flips the script, asking: what if the right to move freely wasn't a given, even for those used to having it?
Schedule of Events
Thursday, June 5
KSMoCA Artist Talk and Exhibition Opening
10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Artist: Xavier Pierce and his first-grade class
King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA), 4906 NE 6th Ave, Portland, OR 97211
The PDX Hour: Conversations as Social Practice
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Artist: Manfred Parrales
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, 1855 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97201
Friday, June 6
Permission to Leave
1:00 p.m - 2:00 p.m.
Artist: Simeen Anjum
The Portland Building, Second Floor Gallery, 1120 SW 5th Ave, Portland, OR 97204
In Our Ways
2:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Artists: Dom Toliver, Gwen Hoeffgen, Adela Cardona, Watershed Community
Happiest Hour
3:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Artist: Clara Harlow
Art + Social Practice Graduate Lectures
5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Artists: Manfred Parrales, Midori Yamanaka
The Portland Building, 1120 SW 5th Ave, Portland, OR 97204
Saturday, June 7
Songs Against Dark Times: PDX Edition
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Artist: Lou Blumberg, Simeen Anjum
Beginning at Pioneer Courthouse Square and ending at SMSU
Diaspora Kitchen
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Artist: Sarah Luu
South Park Blocks (800 SW Hall St), Portland, OR 97201
Give Me Shelter
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Artist: Dom Toliver, Gwen Hoeffgen
Monument Speed Dating
2:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Artist: Nina Vichayapai