Portland Mercury

by Justin Wescoat Sanders, June 2, 2005

Imagine what would happen if immaculate filmmaker Wes Anderson made a performance art installation about a 19th-century murder spree and subsequent black market cadaver sale in Scotland, and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like to walk through Liminal’s The Resurrectory. A perfectly balanced array of live performance (both musical and theatrical), visual art, and video work from Jim Blashfield divides the story into its component parts. There’s the Inquest, where actors reconstruct the murder scenes through a series of eerie, fluid movement sequences; the Operating Theater, where the fresh cadavers are dissected and lectured about by poet David Abel as a ghostly orchestra provides background music on what appear to be electronic saxophones; and the Collections, where records keeper Alex Reagan documents the crimes via tape recorder and keeps archives of photographic evidence. You can sit in any of these areas indefinitely and constantly find fresh things to observe. What makes The Resurrectory fun is, like Anderson’s films, its attention to detail. The Collections is stocked with penlights you can cast on the wall, where a city map charts each new murder. The Inquest contains a metal operating table, where sexy/scary attendant Madeleine Sanford preps the corpses under a harsh light. Even the show’s program is layered, packed with historical information and Gabriel Liston’s amazing, scratchy sketches, which pop up all over the installation and provide a great stylistic through line. Come to The Resurrectory, and then come again. And again.

Portland Art Center, 2045 SE Belmont, 239-5481, Thurs-Sat 8-10 pm, through June 18, $6-10 pay-what-you-can

Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death?

The Resurrectory is a performance facility that investigates the nature of death and decomposition, and that conducts research about the illegal trafficking and sale of cadavers in Portland, Oregon, and Edinburgh, Scotland. When in operation, Resurrectory staff re-commit murders on a regular basis in order to learn more about the victims, their assailants and the medical schools that purchase the cadavers. During each performance, research about the crimes and their historic locations is presented by physical actors, recorded by research staff, interpreted for visitors by the Resurrectory docent and entered into public record. Simultaneously, a Resurrectory anatomist and four musicians present a musical lecture on the process of death and decomposition for students and visitors in the operating theater.

Visitors have described the Resurrectory as clinical yet grotesque, minimal yet gaudy, grave yet roguish. Is the Resurrectory a court? a hospital? a museum? No two visitors see it in quite the same light.

The Resurrectory was most recently available for viewing at the Portland Art Center from May 4–June 18, 2005.

For more information, contact us via e-mail or phone at 503 890 2993.

©2008 Liminal Performance Group / P.O. Box 40353, Portland, Oregon 97240-0353 / Founded in 1997 / info [at] liminalgroup [dot] org / Join our mailing list.