Stranger Suggests: Your Agenda This Week, July 20–July 26

MONDAY 7/20

Vanishing Seattle +  Collide-o-Scope

(FILM) Two beloved institutions team up at Clock-Out Lounge for a celebration of Seattle’s weird and wonderful past. Pop-culture conservators/video wizards Shane Wahlund and Michael Anderson of Collide-O-Scope are back with Vanishing Seattle curator/documentarian Cynthia Brothers for a night of civic memory and warped entertainment promising “an all-new special concoction of vintage video, freaky film, and found-footage fun in celebration of the Seattle you once knew.” It’s our city’s birthright to pine for the pre-tech-boom era, so strap in and get nostalgia-pilled with the best ephemeristas to do it. Apparently there will be prize giveaways, “and even geoduck, too.” Oh, good! (Clock-Out Lounge, 8 pm) EMILY NOKES

TUESDAY 7/21

Snõõper, Happy Death Men, Miscomings

(MUSIC) Every time I go to see Nashville garage-punk band Snõõper live, the next handful of shows I attend are ruined. At the least, they feel incomplete. What do you mean your band doesn’t have props? That stage suddenly looks kinda empty without CRT monitors stacked one on top of the other, flashing strobe lights and playing CCTV footage of the crowd back at themselves. The bar is raised for everyone. Why aren’t your homemade puppets crowd-surfing? If the tempo doesn’t fall within the range of frenetic to blistering, then it won’t compare to a Snõõper show. Happy Death Men and Miscomings open. (Baba Yaga, 7 pm, 21+) DYLAN BUECHE

WEDNESDAY 7/22

Colleen Green, Mini Blinds, Faerie Born

(MUSIC) Colleen Green, looks kinda mean, used to play guitar with a drum machine. This summer she’s performing her album Cool with a full band and all-time lineup, giving the record the party it never got back in 2021. Released by Hardly Art, Cool is the perfect dose of her sharp, lo-fi instrumentals and irreverent songwriting. Come early to see beloved and feared Seattle legends Faerie Born—who describe themselves as Illyrian indie, pop ACOTAR, faewave, and House of Wind house—play songs inspired by the wildly popular romantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses. (Clock-Out Lounge, 8 pm, 21+) DYLAN BUECHE

THURSDAY 7/23

Ocean Vuong with Putsata Reang

(LITERATURE) “The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…” reads the tagline for Ocean Vuong’s second novel, The Emperor of Gladness. On an amazing run for someone who’s only 37 years old, Vuong was born in Ho Chi Minh City, and the family fled Vietnam after a policeman detected his mother’s mixed-race heritage. After some time in the Philippines, the family made their way to Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong didn’t read until age 11, but then won admission to the prestigious Glastonbury High School. Degrees in creative writing and poetry followed, from New York institutions. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, his first novel, depicted a transcontinental raging mess that bore some resemblance to his own background—a family fighting for identity along with survival, and the narrator’s queerness blooming through the turbulence. Show up and learn what twists he puts on his further life in the service industry, elder care, and nursing the muse. (Town Hall, 7:30 pm) ANDREW HAMLIN

FRIDAY 7/24

Ben Zamora: “IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE”

(VISUAL ART) Ben Zamora is a master of large-scale light sculptures, weaving labyrinthine, geometric structures in the air with fluorescent tubes, LEDs, and bulbs. His work has been displayed globally (he’s designed for the Berlin Philharmonic and Kronos Quartet) and also close to home—you may have climbed around or through The Gathering, his large rainbow-ish sculpture at 14th Avenue and Madison on Capitol Hill (one of his non-illuminated pieces). This month, Zamora is reconstructing his childhood home entirely from linear tubes of lights. He’s stitching it together from memory—the halls, rooms, doors. Visitors will be able to walk through, navigating architecture made of light. I suspect this will be one of the best off-site experiences during art fair week. (The Jack) AMANDA MANITACH

Unstreamable – I Shot Andy Warhol (4K Restoration)

(FILM) I am deeply fascinated by director Mary Harron’s filmography, which includes the iconic American Psycho, followed by campy, so-bad-they’re-good biopics like The Notorious Bettie Page, The Anna Nicole Story, Charlie Says (about Charles Manson), and Dalíland (about Salvador Dalí). It all started with Harron’s directorial debut, I Shot Andy Warhol, which she’s described as an “anti-biopic” about radical feminist, satirist, and writer Valerie Solanas, who indeed shot Warhol. I first watched this film from my laptop on a website that probably gave my computer a virus, then later, when I ordered a VHS tape off eBay. For this reason, I am so grateful to the Northwest Film Forum’s Unstreamable Series, bringing forgotten gems to the big screen. (Northwest Film Forum, times vary) AUDREY VANN

SATURDAY 7/25

Kim Gordon

(MUSIC) The punk icon and eternal kool thing, best known for her time in Sonic Youth, will stop by Seattle to support her third solo album, PLAY ME. Taking inspiration from “the demolition of democracy, technocratic end-times fascism, the AI-fueled chill-vibes flattening of culture,” Gordon raps through crunchy beats and hip-hop samples with her signature unbothered affect. It kind of sounds like an album that Beck would have released in the ’90s, but admittedly, a lot cooler. Sigh, I’m still praying that Free Kitten—Gordon’s project with Pussy Galore’s Julia Cafritz—will re-form one of these days. (Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages) AUDREY VANN

SUNDAY 7/26

Assembly Art Fair and Seattle Art Fair

(VISUAL ART) It’s art fair season! Time to lace up your walking shoes and get ready for a lot of running around, especially since Seattle Art Fair—now in its 10th year—is joined by Assembly, a new invitational contemporary art fair spearheaded by Greg Kucera Gallery and Traver Gallery. Bucking the typical convention-center maze of booths, Assembly brings together 16 galleries from Seattle, Portland, Dallas, and Los Angeles, inviting them to fill the expansive rooms of West Canal Yards. Meanwhile, SAF is turning its focus on the Pacific Northwest’s growing textile and fiber scene, a material-driven practice increasingly taking root and gaining visibility. (Look out, glass!) Highlights include a suspended “hand-unwoven” installation by Ko Kirk Yamahira (presented by studio e) and a tapestry series by Lucy + Jorge Orta exploring “speculative cosmologies and planetary change.” The two fairs offer distinctly different energies, but for anyone interested in contemporary art, both are required viewing. (West Canal Yards and Lumen Field Event Center) AMANDA MANITACH

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