Do You Remember Content? The Hotel Room Takeover Art Installation Event Returns

For a span of a few years, between 2009-2015, there was an odd little installation event that popped up annually at the Ace Hotel in Portland's downtown. The single-day exhibition, called Content, played with fashion, design, and art in a constrained but also immersive space: a hotel room. Artists transformed the boutique hotel's chic, modest rooms into other worlds, scenes of horror, or just cozy-ass showcases for their work.

The event's founder, fashion designer Gretchen Jones, won the eighth season of Project Runway in 2015, which was also the last year Content was held. However, we're having quite a week for 20-teen Portland nostalgia, and Content is sneakily, suddenly back, popping into Society Hotel in Old Town Chinatown tomorrow Saturday March 9.

In 2015, fashion writer and then-Mercury managing editor Marjorie Skinner described Content as:

"an installation-based showcase for Portland's design professionals to translate their inspirations and identity in a format that was expressly focused on artistic expression, without the fundamental commercial aspect of, say, a trade show or even a runway event."

The new Content wants to run with the same intentions, but of course Portland's arts scene has changed. Within the rooms of Content 2024 you'll find cross-platform pleasure purveyor Elouise Elliott, aerial poet Nami Hall, cannabis-focused designer Savina Monet, and Danielle Delceppo, a multidisciplinary creative communicator and intuitive who launched a tarot deck titled Perfume for the Eyes in 2023.

A collective we've profiled before Making Earth Cool will be taking on a room; you may remember their collaborative climate crisis-focused installations where they often try include gallery visitors in the artistic practice with fun projects. You'll also find i. max. miller, who was one of the first artists to hold a residency at the conceptual and heartfelt ILY2 Too Gallery in the Lloyd Center Mall. Friends of Noise is working with singer-songwriter Rain Ezra on a room, and textile brand Madre Linen will bunk together with muralist and printmaker Camille Shu.

While the event "isn’t (necessarily) about commerce," we're told there will be a gift shop. Instructions from the organizers are as follows: "Patrons will travel from room to room, each with its own unique feel. Eventually the patrons end up in the lobby bar to party and discuss their favorite rooms." And visit the gift shop.

SUZETTE SMITH