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
Current News
News about Liminal Presents Gertrude Stein will Appear soon.
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Willamette Week, April 11, 2007
Resurrectory preview
Portland Tribune, May 5, 2005
Death, Drama, Deconstruction
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Cult of the Liminal
Portland Mercury, April 17, 2003
Liminal Fills Its New Space With A Little Show
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Liminal Puts a Modern Spin on Brecht/Weill
The Oregonian, August 23, 2002
The Seven Deadly Sins
Portland Mercury, August 29, 2002
The Seven Deadly Sins
Portland Tribune, August 30, 2002
Artbeat segment on Liminal
OPB, May 2001 [.mov]
Ad for the Artbeat segment on Liminal
OPB, May 2001
Where Text Meets Technology
The Oregonian, April 22, 2001
The New School
Willamette Week, Sept. 15, 1999
Letters to the Editor
Willamette Week, Nov. 11 & 18, 1998
Reviews
The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other
The Oregonian April 13, 2000
Articles by Liminal members
News releases and Galleries
High-resolution photos for The Theory of Love
Liminal Falls in Love, Exercises Left, Right Sides of Brain
February 23, 2007
Liminal stages Caryl Churchill’s play Far Away
December 16, 2005
Liminal’s Resurrectory Re-Commits, Investigates 100-Year-Old Murders
March 28, 2005
High-resolution photos of The Resurrectory
Bikes, Bands and Bacchanalia Oct. 21, 2003
Faust(Faust) August 13, 2003
Krapp’s Last Tape June 28, 2003
Three Plays, Five Lives April 1, 2003
FluXconcert PDX March 17, 2003
Minimal at Liminal February 4, 2003
The Seven Deadly Sins August 7, 2002
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Vancouver, B.C.) Oct. 4, 2001
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Portland) April 4, 2001
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Seattle) Jan. 22, 2001
High-resolution photos of the ensemble
Thomas Leabhart workshop Dec. 3, 1999
Jowl Movements I-IX (3) Oct. 28, 1998
Jowl Movements I-IX (1) Oct. 8, 1998
Handke Salmagundi March 16, 1998
Symposium on the Avant-Garde in Portland March 16, 1998
Suicide in B-flat July 1997
