Portland Diary Summit

The Portland Diary Summit 2024 offered workshops, discussions, screenings, and community building events around the practices of diary video/film, daily life documenting, journaling, and the use of this personal material in the creation of works of art. The event brought together Portland’s writing, film, and visual art communities, as well as anyone who considers journaling to be therapeutic, sacred, liberatory, a path to the unconscious or otherwise of interest.

The writing, film, and visual art presented at the Portland Diary Summit invived audiences into the private worlds of the artists: domestic spaces, homelands, families, bodies, interior lives, and more. These artists take control of their own representations, often rejecting limited mainstream portrayals of their identities in favor of crafting more nuanced and authentic portraits of who they are and how they experience the world. The Portland Diary Summit came about because I wanted to create community around these practices, to not feel so alone myself in these daily activies that ground me creatively and emotionally. I wondered: What kinds of art could we make from our daily life material if we felt more supported in that endeavor? How can careful sharing of private material connect us more authentically to one another?

Venues: Rose City Book Pub, Hollywood Theater, Dear Sandy cafe& cocktail bar

Artists involved:
Cynthia Nelson: writing workshop instructor
Saint Piñero and Sage Ó Tuama, founders and curators of Film Diary NYC, curated a film screening, Imprecise Words, that included work by Alex Lo, Jard Lerebours, Craig Scheihing, Chanmin Kim, Allen-Golder Carpenter, Saif Alsaegh, Lucy Gaehrign, dani w, and Oluwademilade Omoregie
Julie Perni curated a film screening, Heartfelt: Personal Cinema from Gaza to the Pacific Northwest that included work by Basma Alsharif, Zoë Gamell Brown, Melina Kiyomi Coumas, Chloë D'Hooge, Carl Diehl, Lily King, Jordan Shelby, and Jalen Thompson
Kate Bingaman-Burt & Honna Veerkamp: daily drawing and painting

workshop participant journaling at Rose City Book Pub

workshop participants at Rose City Book Pub

Imprecise Words & Heartfelt screenings at the Hollywood Theater

filmmaker Lily King (left) with friends at Dear Sandy

Kate Bingaman-Burt at pop-up art show at Dear Sandy, with work on the wall by Bingaman-Burt, Julie Perini & Honna Veerkamp

Kate Bingaman-Burt (right) with local artists Kat Richards (center)

support provided by:
2023: Arts3C Grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, Portland, Oregon

Julie Perini is a filmmaker and artist in Portland, Oregon.