Conversation with the dead object: an engagement with post-traditional puppetry, archive and practice

This five-year, part-time Fellowship examines relationships between the 'live' and the 'non-alive' object or puppet in performance. The title refers to an immanent potential for animation within non-living objects and puppets, while 'intervention' is the interruption that an animator (human or otherwise) makes elicit an illusion of life. Exploring fundamental precepts of object animation, I look at memory, tradition, archiving and the threshold where the lifeless becomes animate in puppetry and object-theatre.

The central questions are: to what extent does

-an object or puppet have immanent characteristics that determine the animation (or 'life' of the object)?
-the animating force determine the animation?
-the context of the spectator determine what is experienced via the animation?

The general questions above will be addressed in the final phases of the Fellowship through three distinct and specific practice enquiries.

Phase 1: The late Joe Beeby and Punch and Judy

An investigation into Punch will form a case study of the relationship between tradition and contemporary practice (in animation) and between the puppet and puppeteer using a set of puppets from a deceased Punch and Judy practitioner named Joe Beeby. I intend to master a number of Punch routines and to uncover Joe Beeby's last year through work with photographer Rosy Martin.

Phase 2: Private Ritual

The goal of this phase is create a series of performative encounters that are 'private' (but observable via film/webcam link and streamed live) in order to analyse the role of audience as collaborator in the illusion of the puppet's 'life'. Drawing on Japanese ritual (which provides a specific model for the systematic manifestation of the private) and working with a colleague, Rachel Cooper, who has learning disabilities and does a great deal of 'private' artistic work, I will compare the public relationship of audience to puppet with the private one between animator and object.

Phase 3: Exhibiting the Dead Object

Supported by the Puppet Centre Trust, this phase looks at the threshold between 'liveness' and 'death' in relation to puppets and objects, when animation is absent. It will negotiate creating momentary fragmented memories of performance within the exhibition of figures and promote a notion of an 'active' archive: viewing the creation of an exhibition as a 'performative' act so that object placement is as important as the choice of objects. As curator I will ask: how do 'lifeless' figures hanging within a museum display honour memory of their past 'liveness'? And how does the implication of the puppet's death or 'deadness' bear upon our sense of its (previous) life?

I draw upon the approach of Bourriaud - particularly his assertion of the 'figures that oppose the 'universe of the root', most strongly, the nomad, the wanderer, the refugee.' Positioning this description alongside the figure of the puppeteer provokes questions of groundedness set alongside those of transience and (literally) animation. Puppetry thus becomes a field on which to negotiate wider concepts of manipulation, transformation, (re)presentation and performance

The project will be disseminated to industry peers and the general public through performances, an exhibition, updates to professional magazines such as Animations Online and the final symposium in 2014.

Presentations of papers to bodies such as UNIMA, the international puppetry organisation, have already been confirmed in 2011. I will also be applying to present at the 21st UNIMA Congress and International Puppetry Festival in May/June 2012 in Chengdu, China. I am applying to present my work on Ephemeral Animation and a related performance piece, 'Conversation with an Umbrella', to the 21st UNIMA Congress and International Puppetry Festival in May/June 2012 in Chengdu, China. In addition I am hoping to run a Masterclass in Ephemeral Animation at Scenofest, the educational event run by OISTAT at the Prague Quadriennial in June 2011, and to participate in the National Puppetry Festival (Atlanta, 2013).

Planning is in progress for the exhibition in 2013 using puppets provided by the Puppet Centre Trust as part of their project partnership for the Fellowship. Venues under consideration include Camden Arts Centre (which normally prefers to curate its own exhibitions) and other gallery spaces in London. Additional external funding will be sought to attempt a larger, more ambitious exhibition that could tour to other cities. Peter Goschluter, deputy director of Museum Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (former head of exhibitions at Tate Liverpool) has suggested that there is a long-term possibility of interest in a major puppet exhibition on the artist and puppet theatre. 'Exhibiting the Dead Object' could serve as a pilot project or forerunner for this.

The symposium in 2014 will be an international event publicised through the Puppet Centre Trust and CROPT (Central), who have extensive databases of contacts for puppetry professionals and academics in related fields. The indicative list of organisations and speakers who will be approached includes: THEMAA (Charleville-Mezieres, France), UNIMA, the Paul Klee Institute, Geoff Felix (Punch and Judy performer and archivist), Dan Watt (Loughborough), Deborah Levy (AHRC Creative Fellow at Royal College of Art), Jill Fell (Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck) and Melisa Trimingham (University of Kent).

As a result of the Fellowship I have forged links with the Henry Moore Foundation and intend to seek extra support via an application for a 6-week research fellowship there. This would be complementary to my part-time Fellowship and enable me to utilize the archive of the Foundation to explore the visual language of puppet theatre within the context of sculpture and performance.