Radar: Dismembered Empire: Liverpool’s parallel reality

It’s beyond dispute that Liverpool is a stunning creative playground. Backed by a rich history of rebellion and revolution, it’s a hub of music and culture that continues to influence and inspire.

Dismembered Empire, an insurrectionary multimedia cabaret, pushes this sentiment to the extremes of the steampunk style by posing the tantalising question: What if Liverpool was the centre for world trade and economic power in the modern age?

The interactive mixed arts and technology project will take place in the Williamson Tunnels next month. Descending into the labyrinth of the tunnels, the audience will be immersed into an alternate version of Liverpool inhabited by sinister scientists, revolution, bizarro machines and strange music.

Using the steampunk style, a super playful and expressive aesthetic, Dismembered Empire blurs the line between reality and imagination; the nefarious and the benign.

Using elements of both real and imagined history, the performance plays out as the ripping apart of two parallel worlds, driven by tensions between industrial mavericks Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla during the Industrial Era.

It’s the brainchild of Jennifer Catterall, an evolutionary biologist with a penchant for theatre and music composition.

“DE is all about re-imagining ourselves and thinking, how could we have done something different with our science and technology,” she tells SevenStreets.

“It’s all about seeing things from a different point of view.”

Dismembered Empire
7th – 8th of October, 7pm at the Williamson Tunnels

Miné Salkin