Liminal Presents The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other

For immediate release
Contact: Bryan Markovitz
503 890 2993

From March 16 to April 15, 2000, Liminal Performance will present Austrian writer Peter Handke’s latest play, Die Stunde da wir nights voneinander wußten, or The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other.

Handke’s new work features the comings and goings of more than 400 characters who pass by one another without speaking a single word. What is he doing? Is she on her way, or is she coming back? Are they strangers or are they carrying out a prearranged meeting?

In the silence of the square, Handke returns the magic of storytelling to the spectator, while quietly revealing that our rapid culture may no longer seeks language to bring a community together. Indeed, as the play advances further into the hinterland of the surreal, the question arises—is community still possible?

Peter Handke's widely acclaimed plays have been translated into every major language and performed around the world. Handke shook the theatrical world with early works like Offending the Audience and Kaspar. Handke is also the author of screenplays (Wings of Desire) and prose works (most recently, His Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling).

Continuing Liminal’s multi-disciplinary approach to performance, this in-progress project will also feature the work of visual, sound and culinary artists who have produced an edible pre-performance gallery installation, digital sound design, original photography and slide media.

AT THE METROPOLITAN ART STUDIO
Standard Dairy #13, 2808 NE MLK, Jr. Blvd. [at Graham]
March 16 - April 15, 2000
Thursdays - Saturdays, 8:00 p.m.
$10 includes drinks/hors d'oeuvres
Reservations recommended, seating is limited.
web: www.metroartstudio.org

Is Portland still intimidated by the avant-garde? Examining the role of marginal art in Oregon’s growing urban community.

On Wednesday, April 8, 1998, Reed College’s Division of Arts and Division of Language and Literature will present a panel-led public discussion examining the significance of contemporary, avant-garde and marginal art mediums in Portland and the surrounding region. Led by Jon Raymond, artist/editor for Plazm and visual art critic for both The Oregonian and Willamette Week, the panel will include: Kristy Edmunds, curator/executive director, PICA; Mike Brophy, visual artist; Marcus Verhagen, assistant professor of art history, Reed College; and Miranda July, visual/performance artist and founder, Big Miss Moviola Productions.

Does the quintessential avant-garde artist exist at the end of the twentieth century? Perhaps not as he or she did one hundred years ago when the avant-garde fought to revolutionize bourgeois society. Much has been written about the “death of the avant-garde” in a postmodern culture that is saturated with information from the internet and MTV. We live in a culture where little of anything is shocking. Many critics and theorists have suggested that the avant-garde desire to be ever new and startling is no longer possible. 

Why then, are there still artists working on the margins of art who resist mainstream cultural aesthetics? What drives them to create work that is challenging to observers and not always easy to comprehend? Like much in our region, Portland’s art scene is growing. There are new voices being heard that are leading audiences away from the hegemony of traditional downtown arts institutions in search of something new. 

Portland has a long way to go before it becomes the cultural center of contemporary art, but this doesn’t seem to bother those who charge ahead. What makes Portland’s cultural community so lively is its will to discover new territory in art that is as unique as the territory in which we live.

Join us at Reed College for what will certainly be an eventful discussion of art and culture by some of Portland’s most compelling and thoughtful voices in the contemporary arts community.

The April 8 Symposium is free and open to the public. The discussion will be held at Reed College, Vollum Center Lecture Hall from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Doors will open at 6:30p.m.

For further information or directions please contact Bryan Markovitz at 228-7231.

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Handke Salmagundi to Show on Reed Campus

For Immediate Release

Beginning Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26, the performance group Liminal will present the performance installation, Handke Salmagundi,at Reed College. This event is sponsored by Reed’s Division of Arts and Division of Language and Literature.

Handke Salmagundi is a site-responsive performance art installation where Peter Handke’s playwriting is taken out of common modes of theatrical context and is reorganized into a synchronic place and time. The installation will surround the spectator with visual, aural and corporeal sensations that move in and out of space. 

Half theatre, half performance art, the production attempts to remove divisions between performer and spectator, while using selected words and actions of Peter Handke’s various early, middle, and late plays to frame the “drama” of the event. The result is a blend of techniques between two different periods in this century’s post avant-garde movement: first, the highly ritualized, self-reflexive, communal practices of performance from the late 60’s and 70’s; second, the hybridization of artistic mediums and resistant semiotic techniques characteristic of postmodern performance.

Much of the text and action for Handke Salmagundi was selected from the following Peter Handke Plays: Offending the Audience; Self Accusation; Calling For Help; My Foot, My Tutor, The Ride Across Lake Constance; and Voyage to the Sonorous Land. 

Handke Salmagundi is free and open to the public. Performances will be held on Friday, April 24; Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26. The installation will open each night at 8:00 p.m. and will close at 11:00 p.m. Spectators are encouraged to come and go as they desire.

For further information or directions please contact Bryan Markovitz at 228-7231.

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