Liminal Presents The Evening with the Photograph

For immediate release
contact:  Bryan Markovitz
phone: 228-7231

Liminal, Portland’s boldest theatre company returns this summer to present a new, original performance work, the evening with the photograph. Having fast gained a reputation for resisting the hegemony of theatre and performance practice, Liminal continues their dialectic with this new production. 

Continuing Liminal’s exploration of synthetic theatre, the evening with the photograph is an intriguing and ever-changing mystery that explores five characters trapped in various parallel worlds made by Dr. Saxe, a scientist living on the border between genius and insanity. When his experiments go awry, we are led along a course of events that cause us to question the nature of gesture and performance and the point at which the virtual, or the performed, becomes real. The random nature of sequencing within the show (or metaphorically, the dance along the artery) means that each night is a truly unique experience, with an outcome that is never fully predictable.

The Evening with the Photograph brings together Liminal’s usual stable of talent. Bryan Markovitz writes, directs, and adapts, Amanda Boekelheide directs movement, John Berendzen designs sound, Trent Moore designs set and lights, Julie Burtis designs costumes, and Liminal’s regular company members make up the cast.

Everything is ready for Liminal’s irreverent blend of dream, desire and chaos. This summer, the evening with the photograph promises to be a must-see event. See it before it disappears.

the evening with the photograph
June 10 through July 16 (excluding July 4 weekend), 
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, 9:00 p.m. (doors open at 8:30). 
Tickets are $6-15 on a sliding scale, cash or checks. 
For reservations, call 229-3979.

At the Rose City Ballroom, 700 NE Dekum Street, Portland

Protests Will Not Halt Performances

For Immediate Release
Contact: Bryan Markovitz
Phone: 228-7231

Portland, Ore. - Despite rumors that Liminal’s production of Jowl Movements I-IX would be canceled because of angry protests and vandalism by a small but vocal reactionary extremist group at last weekend’s performances, the company fully intends to continue its performance run as scheduled. 

Liminal’s resolve is clear: the company will not bow down to those who hold differing opinions, nor will one single performance be canceled or delayed because of the intolerance of a few radical factions wishing to squelch free expression in a manner reminiscent of colonial Salem witch hunts.

In fact, it is just such societal unraveling that fuels Liminal’s desire to produce a new and fearful genre of performance for a new and fearful time. As the artifice of the modern era crumbles around us, Liminal will continue its current theatrical exploration of the myth, mysticism, sorcery, and phantasmagoria of what will someday be known as the Neo-Gothic Age. 

“We are prepared to call upon the aid of Hell itself,” said company member Nigel Robeson, “in our battle for free expression and our preparation for a new dawn. We will persevere undaunted by those who remain ignorant to our crumbling millennium.”

Liminal would like to thank Cascadia Holdings Corporation, Inc. for its continuing support of this endeavor.

Saturday and Sunday nights, Continuing through November 22, 8:00 p.m. Tickets are $6-15 on a sliding scale, cash or checks. For reservations, call 229-3851. 

The Portland Building, 1120 SW Fifth Avenue, Main Entrance

Liminal
PO Box 86215
Portland, OR 97286
Phone: 228-7231, Fax: 228-8840, E-mail: liminal@valise.com

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Jowl Movements I-IX

For Immediate Release
Contact: Bryan Markovitz
Phone: 228-7231

Portland, Ore. - Since they first burst onto the scene, Portland’s performance group Liminal has become a phenomenon. Now, after spending a politically controversial year in Nigeria studying the maverick techniques of famed choreographer, Inu Bisiriyu, Liminal returns to the Portland scene with the premier showing of an original new work commissioned by the Institute for Performance Research at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. 

Drawn both from the shamanistic traditions of Nigeria’s Yoruba cults, and from the meticulously notated physical mysticism of fifteenth-century Iberian scholar Abraham Abulafia, Jowl Movements I-IX tackles diverse human topics ranging from the sacred ritual of the daily meal, to the popular modern traditions of erotic dance. Set in a post-industrial landscape of juxtaposition and intertextual pastiche, Jowl Movements I-IX extends the limits of the senses with a dazzling multimedia array of technical wizardry that, as with much of Liminal’s art, refuses definition. 

Jowl Movements I-IX is, above all, a very human convergence of cultural planes, addressing such issues as race, gender, age, religion, and socioeconomic displacement with an all-engulfing fin de sicle anxiety.

Liminal’s Portland performance of Jowl Movements I-IX is made possible by the generous support of Cascadia Holdings Corporation, Inc.

The Portland Building, 1120 SW Fifth Avenue, Main Entrance
Saturday and Sunday nights, October 24-November 22, 8:00 p.m. Tickets are $6-15 on a sliding scale, cash or checks. For reservations, call 229-3851. 

Liminal
PO Box 86215
Portland, OR 97286
phone: 228-7231, fax: 228-8840, e-mail: liminal@valise.com

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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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