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JOANNA ZIELIŃSKA — INTRODUCTION (6) TIM ETCHELLS (12) — PUPPET STORY MAP (38) LIST OF WORKS (40)
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PROGRAM (66) Biographies (90) calendar (104) MICHAEL PORTNOY — JOKES (118, 128, 138, 148)
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Joanna Zielińska Introduction
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puppet theater resembles the human world, in miniature, with the one difference: its actors are small, animated objects. Puppets often remind us of the way we were as children and, indeed, the word “puppet” comes from “poppet,” an English term of endearment for a child. The little actors are like shells, they belong to anyone who knows how to make a character out of them. They have been known to become our agents in the world of grown-ups. They can be sharp-tongued, making grandiose speeches about politics, and they embody our inner voices and the weaknesses we want to conceal. Since they are in a way immortal, puppets can perform in scenes that are too daredevil for humans. They make us laugh. They often turn into animal
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figures, sometimes they become giants or naturalistic dolls, which look almost exactly like humans. Interacting with them can give us an anxious or uncanny feeling. The Objects Do Things project appeals to the pleasure we get from engaging with the world of the imagination. It is shaped by the changes that have taken place in the visual arts in the past few years: the appearance of very many narrative and fictional threads and the unstoppable need to tell stories. It also uses the distinctive aesthetic that in popular culture brings to mind children’s theater and television programs. By contrast, the tradition of the puppet theater has deep roots in the history of the European avant-garde and the early days of
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performance art, especially Bauhaus, Surrealist, and Dada experiments. This project came about at the point where theater and the visual arts meet, with fictional characters created by artists. Connecting the exhibition’s scenographic quality with live theatrical acts is an important innovation of the project. What happens when the theater in its most traditional form interacts with the art world, and who are the characters of this exhibition? What traits does a character need to possess for the public to want to identify with her?
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Empathy helps a human community survive, but when do emotions develop towards inanimate objects? 10
How far can empathy go in the world of things?
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Tim Etchells Puppet Story
Sometimes the floodwaters rose and the house got cut off from anything and Marion was all day at the top floor of the building feeling glum, dark, surrounded and waterlogged. Long hours (days) she would spend staring down at the water and the tops of the trees, while from time to time people were going by below on rafts and boats and rowboats and improvised boats and clinging to things that were not boats and the whole time Marion was watching things they did and listening what they said and sometimes using her notebook to write down types and kinds of detritus floating there in the muddy water – observing drowned bed sheets, shipwreck furniture, gargoyles of garbage rags and plastic containers. Sometimes when she got
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excited about what she noticed in this method, Marion would call to Tigar, yelling his name repeatedly and saying ‘come come, come on’ and mostly he would reluctantly get up from the mattress where he lay and resided most days to come look out the big window with her, the two of them looking down in the world of muddy water and marvelling in stereo, pointing at items that floated past and him urging her to get down quickly out of sight when the rescue boats came motoring by, with their electric and loudhailer voices and beacons and teams of men shrouded in aquatic allblack combat suits, because after all Marion and Tigar did not want to be rescued, not even a little bit, at least not like that.
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In the nighttime it would get cold. And of course then you could hear new old things out in the night on the night water, for instance the sound of wailing and suchlike, and the cries of horror and terror and surprise and loneliness and sometimes a sad music, impossible to say where from, and you could anyway also see the lone eyes of the searchlights skimming the black water like the strange fish of a old deep sea Nature Channel. In the cold they (Marion and Tigar) would light up a fire on the big stone (paving stone) they had placed right close by the window, building it up all high and furious like the devil may care, so the flames could warm them and meanwhile lick against the brick walls and the window frame, they didn’t care. The big stone for the fire was black and marked and scorched from
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all the fires they made on it over many times, something they had carried up the stairs with a lot of mutual efforts, just after the previous flood or just after the previous previous flood, they could not remember, but at least they could keep warm was what they told themselves and besides they could stare in the flames and watch pictures forming in there. There were no internets in the flood days and no televisions, not even devices or mobile devices or anything would function and so life was officially boring most of the time and it was only the pictures they saw in the fire sometimes and the actual puppet shows that helped them to pass the time.
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For the puppets Marion would gather any kind of broken stuff or waste things she could salvage from the top floor rooms they occupied or stand on the drowned staircase to reach out and scoop up items with a improvised netting, pulling them from the waters of the drowned lounge and then carrying them upstairs to be dried and used right away or else dried and adapted and formed as proper puppets. Marion’s very first time puppets were just a bit of old indistinguishable clothing like a soaked wet rag and purple in colour, a Coke bottle and a solitary shoe. For the first shows she made it was just the two of them up there near the fire and all she enacted was just all that what she had seen from the window on that particular day;
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the drowning of a old woman, for example or the strange unseaworthy craft of some surviving children and how they called out in broken voices in a language that she and Tigar could not understand, or the dance in the water of a creature they thought it was a probable whale or octopus or kraken, they were not sure, with its white belly and its tail, flippers, tentacles, fins, ribs, arms, tendrils and maximal multitude of deep and thoughtful sorrowful eyes. * When the rains and floodwater withdrew from the city, Marion and Tigar walked the pavements that slithered with mud, avoiding any other survivors where possible to do so. As they walked they collected
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things – mostly like not-too-wet firewood, tinned food and not tinned food, but meanwhile in the long ago flood ruin of a supermarket M found more things for the puppet show. It was in the basement of a building near what used to be the centre of St Louis M later started doing bigger shows, inviting kids from the neighbourhood to join her as helpers and puppeteers. There were three shows a night, sometimes five shows on a Saturday and several on a Sunday. Admission was free but if they wanted persons could contribute to the food and so on, in the form of foodstuffs which they used to make and share.
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In the shows Marion made the puppet Tight Rope Walker who walked an imaginary tightrope very close to the fire which they still used for lighting. She also made the puppet Fountain that spoke up prophecies of all kinds. She made the puppet Suffragettes who did small scenes of rebellion using acid and protest, she enacted Skarbek of the haunted coal mines, she made Talking Heads, whose small speeches made Tigar laugh and cry, she made puppets of Karl Marx and Adam Smith whose repeated tirades and arguments upset him too. She told the story of Pinocchio many times also, the light of the flames lighting everything soft and flickering, and the puppet’s nose growing with his lies.
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Rats took over one part of the city. The waters came and went at irregular intervals. Nothing made much sense. The government collapsed for a second or third time. Tigar was killed by Security Patrols one day and after that Marion was grieving forever, wracked in anger, even more concentrated on the Puppet Shows. He was her love, she said, and he was gone. Things she used as puppets and/ or the materials from which she made them: Rubber Gloves, Bottled Cleaning Products, A Wooden Spoon, Plastic Glasses, Uneatable Potatoes, Animal Bones Paint Brush, Old Hand Grenade, Broken Sex Toy, Plastic Sheeting, Doll Limbs, Petrol Rags, Small Box, A Molotov Cocktail, Burned Ornament, Eifel Tower Ornament, Toy Car, Action
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Figure ‘Soldier,’ Broken Sunglasses, Lipstick, Balloon, Boxed Matches, Plastic Heart, Tinned Fruit, Tennis Ball, Broken Clock, Cotton Wool, Finger Bone, Vacuum Cleaner, Dead Mouse, Toy Aeroplane, Trumpet, Bleach, Custard Powder, Uneatable Cucumber, Outdated Medicine, Fragments of Circuit Board, Telescope, Snow Globe, Pencil, Pepper Spray, Rape Alarm, Rubber Doll, Wooden Door Stops, Several Stones in Variety of Sizes, House Brick, Cinder Blocks, Condom Filled with Mud, Wire Brush, Plastic Swan, Anatomical Drawing, Ball of String, Bottle of Glue, Wire Wool, Broken Mirror (Shard), Lighter, Crushed Beer Can, Pair of Socks, Modelling Clay, Dog Biscuits, Rope, Action Figure (Headless), Action Figure (Torso Only), Box Of Matches,
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Clothes Peg, Three Syringes. Knotted Ribbon, Ventolin Inhaler, Half Bag of Inedible Flour, Playing Cards, Wall Nuts, Golf Balls, Box of Drawing Pins, Pin Cushion, String of Pearls, Electric Razor, Modem Adaptor, Miniature Whisky Bottle (Empty), Miniature Poison Bottle (Full), Foam Remnants, Cardboard Remnants, Polystyrene Packaging, Compass, Spirit Level, Cotton Reel, More Filled Condoms, More Pebbles, Shaving Foam, Skull of a Bird, Pile of Coins (Without Value), Torn Paper, Screwed Newspaper, Ink Bottle, Printer Cartridge (Not Functional), Spare Parts from a Refrigerator, Obsolete Phone Charger, Paint Bottle, Inedible Chocolate Bar, Light Blub, Small light bulb, Plastic Comb, Hair Products, Sticks, Toothbrush, Small Vase and Cracked Cup.
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The characters she created: The Doctor, Pygmalion, Jakob and Kuba, Julka and Daria, Voice Child, Nielsen and Robotnik, Masha, Lump, Incredible, Showgirl, Road Stone, Flower, Lizard, Star Child, The Weeper, Nash, Ground Face, Scrooge, Miser, Drowning Man, Rich Man, Lady Riches, Traffic Cop, Jones, The Singer, The Interrogator, Rapist, Breakdown Services, Astronaut, The Drunkard, Shame Face, Poker Face, Bland Face, Burned Face, No Face, Red Face, Black Face, The Shitter, Micro, Myopic, Wall, Knife Man, Ice T, Ventilator, Zoo Daddy, The Hangman, Flava, The Hacker, The Knacker, The Christmas, Searchlight, Tropicana, Miguela, Miss End Scene, The Sleeping Princes, The Warrior, The Minstrel The Window Cleaner, Cleavage, Half-Hand, The Widow,
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Daydreamer, The Mirror, Cupboard, Wooden Face, The Peeping Tom, The Samurai, Vogel, Herzog, The Good Soldier Ĺ vejk, Puppet Bucket, Cringe Face, Face Palm, Pam Anne, The Commandant, Vesuvius, Syncopate, Madam Sin, Venezuela, The Blues, Minotaur, Miami Pete, Camera Mouth, Vortex, Slate, The Crossing Lady, Bones, Bird, Cacophony, Alphabet, Rags, Bell, The Skeleton, Fountain, Ivy, The Suffragettes. Rapid, The Democrat, Demon Head, Zebra Head, Spade Face, Sour Peter, Martin Van Buren, The Devil in Chains, Dog Face Man, The Blood Drinker, Vole, Stephen, Christina the Astonishing, The King of the Beggars, The King of the Gypsies, Hamlet, The Motorbike Courier, Wittgenstein, Keith Richard, Mary Plaster Caster, Jane Fonda,
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The Gargoyle, The Ghost, The Fortune Teller, Sad man, The jerk, Piss Stain Man, The Prophet, BeyoncĂŠ, The Tyrant, The Newspaper Mogul, The French Man, The Joker, The Sex Maniac, The Fat Man, Spider Arms, Ventriloquist, Cocktail Waitress, Department of Homeland Security Man, Lost Lisa, The Dead Girl, Acid Face, Rent A Mouth, Iranian, The Gnomes, The Dancers, Judas Iscariot. George Best, Sepp Blatter, The Mechanic, Cool Hand Luke, Marlene The Beautiful, Hans Solo, Table, Candy Man, The Refugees, Magic Seagull, Unidentified Monster, Swamp Monster, Elevator Monster, Cable Monster, Mud Monster, Sand Monster, Invisible Monster, Old Man, Newspaper Seller, Priest, Telephone Repair Man, Hair Brush, The Oracle,
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The Spies, Journalist, Waiter, Private Investigator, Three Demons, The Ape King, Elizabeth, Starsky & Hutch, Justin Bieber, LL Cool J, Kanye, Germinal, William Shakespeare, Ziggy Stardust, Captain Hadock, Patty Smith, Sarah Palin, The Log Jammer, Stone Wall, The River, The Night, Tree Face, Silver, The Knife and Shiver. Locations her stories used; the garden, outside a castle, in the house, a school room, the stock exchange, a prison cell, a field at night, a sandy beach, a bedroom, the back of a taxi, a rifle rage, the High Court, the town of Kinderhook, a police station, a palace, the bedroom of a palace, a great hall bedecked with flags, in the garden, in a maze, an organic supermarket, a waste ground behind a housing
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estate, in a large factory, in Paris, in the garden of a poor man, by a stream, in a hospital, at the fortune teller’s house, in the circus, Hotel Room, Hotel Lobby, Ice Rink, Emergency Room, pebble beach, car park, roof terrace, subway train, enchanted forest, Telephone Repair Shop, Sneakers Shop, Empire Diner, Motel Lobby, in a woods near Syracuse, a cave, sewer tunnel, bedroom, kitchen, classroom, secret prison, detention centre, banqueting hall, cubicle farm, vegetable garden, the palace kitchen, in the servants quarters, by a river at night, a frosty night, Ski Slope, Race Course, Mandy’s Bedroom, in a garden not far from the Palace, Bakery, Cappuccino Café, Ed’s Bar, Trumpet Mountain, in a basement Casino, train carriage, executive bathroom, in the taxi driver’s canteen,
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at the pet shop, at the rodeo, at the Supermarket, sunken Palace of Atlantis, H.M.S Pinafore, Mount Etna, Mount Everest, The Mountains of the Moon, an encampment of tents on the edge of the battlefield, an encampment of tents in the desert, an oasis, Toddington Motorway Services, Aslan’s Kebab Shop, the Roller Disco, The King’s Head (Public House), The Hospital, The Operating Theatre, a Server Farm, a Freight Elevator, Internet Café, Town Square, The Funeral Parlour, The Houses of Parliament, A Beggars Hovel, A Fisherman’s Cottage, A Prison Cell on Death Row, The Stock Exchange of the City of London. The major scenes she played: Dialogue about Car Crash (1), The Discovery of Egypt, Mercy for
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the Unbelievers, Confusion about Financial Arrangements, Rent Control, Star Ship Enterprise (Blue Planet), The Broken Window, Prostitutes Having A Cup of Tea, The Holiday of Accidents, Real Murder, Life of A Soviet Scientist, The Nutcracker, The Case of the Stolen vehicle, Discovery of Time Travel, End of the World (Fire), End of the World (Ice), Free Love in Birmingham, Atomkraft Nein Danke, Moby Dick, The Fisher King, Razor Blade, The Adventure of the Hadron Collider, Mouse Story, Blue Ruins, The Broke Heart of Petra Van Kant, Hot Water, The Trouble with Tina, The Crash of ’29, The Crash of 2008, Sub Prime Mortgage Seller, A Drug Trip, Broken Heart of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Doctor Asimov I Presume, Rectal Insanity III, Hybrid, House of Horror, Death
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of a Dustman, Through The Mirror World, Maze of Increments, Acid on a Golf Course, Lysander and Pericles, Steppenwolf, Carpet Salesman of the Year (2020), The Replicant’s Regret, Ice World, Vibrations, Painting & Decorating, Young Love, The Fortune Teller, The Dance of the Baskervilles, House of the Rising Sun, Victims of Circumstances, Beerkeller Tales, Sons and Daughters, A Guide to Christmas, Teenage Love, Forbidden Love, Lost Love, Black Star, The Bulgarian Construction Workers, The Last Percentage, Love & Rhapsody, The Piano Lesson, Vacuum Days, Pinkertons Detective Agency, The Man from Marmalade House, Freedom of Speech (Paris), Freedom of Speech (Raqqua), Striptease of Joan Of Arc, Mission Impossible, Morality of Benidorm, Dracula,
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The Brothers, Shaved Virgins in a Convent, Orgy of the Footballers, The Investigative Powers of Lord Duncan, King Henry the 9th, Troilus & Cressida, Hot Teens, The Car Wash, Mission Impossible (II), The Price of Meat in the Last Days of the Mechanical Age, The History Lesson, The Geography Lesson, The Alchemist, Murder on the Motorway, Deep Throat, The Anatomy Lesson, Morbid Anatomy, The Long Incarcerations of a Suspected Jihadist, 20,000 Leagues Under A Sea, The Lovers Say Goodbye, The Vote Riggers, The Caseworkers, The Burglars of Mesopotamia, Parliamentary Democracy, The Syphilis of Sisyphus The Devil at the Crossroads, Death of Yuri Gagarin, Death of David Bowie, Death of an Antelope Hunter, The Teddy Bears
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Picnic, Knife Fight, Barbie in Love, Barbie in Paris, Barbie in Pink, Barbie in Coventry, The Sleepwalkers, Rip Van Winkle, The Singer, Lazy Joe & The Lion, The Wild Party, The Road to Revenge, Island of the Lost, Carnival of the Lost, Carnival of the Found, Carnival of the Dead, Top of the World, Last Year at Birmingham, School Days of the River Man, The Story of Lagos, Lesbian Picnic, Murder Under a Bridge, A Tale of Two Elephants, Mission Impossible (III), King John, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Investigation, Anatomy of Melancholy, The True Life Story of the Rolling Stones. Tax Inspection, The Dead Go Shopping, Vibraphone Repair Class, The Dead Class, Dialogue On A Wednesday, The History of Slavery, Into The Vortex, At The Food Court, Mesopotamian
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Delight, Dialogue About Trees, Dialogue About Truth, The Shoe Shop, Homework, Spy Trap, The Hungry Mouse, Debate About Cancer, Drinks Reception at The United Nations, Cold Turkey, The Escape Route, The Disco Competition, Marrakech, The Boating Accident, Phone Call from A Hotel Room, Summer Holiday, Cardiac Ward, The Golf Accident, The Big Party, The Birthday Party, The adventures of young Romeo, History of Egypt (I), Car Rental Story, Suicide by Jumping from a Bridge, Indecision, Night in Bolivia, The Car Journey, Long Night of a Policeman, The Problem of the Judiciary, The Stowaways and the Turtle, Noah’s Lost Ark, Gang Fight (Bloods vs Crips), The History of Confusion, The Driving Lesson, The Life-Drawing Class,
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A Cup of Tea with the Neighbours, The Snowball Fight, The Ghost of Christmas Past, Robin Hood vs Jason & The Argonauts, Sherlock Holmes in Paris, Young Mussolini, The Dog Man and the Princess, The Date Rapist, The Night of the Trumpets, Flower Children in Liverpool, The Vivian Girls, Science Teachers on Holiday, Escape from Jail Island, Drunk Drivers, The Immorality Police, A Trip to the Dentist, Underwater Adventure and Allergic to Wasp-Stings.
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8. Mary Reid Kelley Patrick Kelley 9. Christopher Kline
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Tomasz Kowalski Geoffrey Farmer Paul McCarthy Tony Oursler Marvin Gaye Chetwynd
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Pierre Huyghe Pedro Reyes Antje Majewski Lindsay Seers
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film program
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1. Shelly Nadashi 2. Paulina OĹ‚owska
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1 1. Shelly Nadashi 2. Paulina OĹ‚owska
Room
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Shelly Nadashi, Water Feature, naked clay and a pump, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Christian Andersen Gallery, Copenhagen. 1
Shelly Nadashi, 8 Tiles, naked clay, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Christian Andersen Gallery, Copenhagen.
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Shelly Nadashi, Bowls, naked clay, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Christian Andersen Gallery, Copenhagen.
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Paulina Ołowska, Magazyn Pavilonesque, frame, painted glass, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation. 2
Paulina Ołowska, The Foyer, Rabcio Puppet Theater, Rabka-Zdrój, Poland, fragments of hand-painted acrylic wallpaper, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
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Paulina OĹ‚owska, Little Unknown Theatre, painting on canvas, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation.
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3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Tomasz Kowalski Geoffrey Farmer Paul McCarthy Tony Oursler Marvin Gaye Chetwynd
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Room
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Tomasz Kowalski, Scenografia z przedstawienia godzinki nagrały CD, nabrały non-stop, set design, performance, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.
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Geoffrey Farmer, You Know Nothing The Owl Knows Everything, object and wall text, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.
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Paul McCarthy, Pinocchio Pipenose Household Dilemma, film, 1994. Courtesy of the artist.
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Tony Oursler, Widmo (Specter), video installation, 1999. Courtesy of the artist. Work from the collection of The Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.
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Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Deeds Not Words, objects, performance, 2009/2016. Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles Gallery, London.
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9 8 8. Mary Reid Kelley Patrick Kelley 9. Christopher Kline
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Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, The Thong of Dionysus, film, 2015. Courtesy of the artists.
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Christopher Kline, O.K. – The Musical (Just Another Day at Mount Lebanon), installation, performance, from 2014. Courtesy of the artist.
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Pierre Huyghe Pedro Reyes Antje Majewski Lindsay Seers
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Pierre Huyghe, This is Not a Time for Dreaming, puppet opera, 2004. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
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Pedro Reyes, Baby Marx, films, 2011–12. Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery, London.
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Antje Majewski, Skarbek, installation, performance, 2008/2016. Courtesy of the artist.
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Lindsay Seers, Candy Cannibals, photographing dummies: fiberglass, electronics, wigs, clothes cameras, stools, 1998/2016. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London. 13
Lindsay Seers, Sailor’s Bill, two-headed photographing dummy: fiberglass, wigs, clothes, cameras, electronics, 2003/2016. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
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Lindsay Seers, Chalky Talkie, mumbling dummy: clay figure, electronics, clothes, wig, 2001/2016. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.
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exhibition film program program of performances 66
puppet slam more offerings from winter to summer 67
THE EXHIBITION
When the word “theater� pops up, what do you see? Theater in miniature and mobile form suggests a small town, childhood, and multi-colored puppets with thick lips, unnaturally large ears, chubby cheeks, and outsize heads.
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Is it possible to transplant the magic of the theater to an exhibition? Can puppets and stage installations immobilized on pedestals as works of art still stimulate the imagination? You would be amazed! In the foyer, behind the auditorium and the small stage stands a clay fountain (Shelly Nadashi) pumping out water. The artist has called it
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the “water feature.” The naked clay resembles human flesh and the water is like blood flowing inside its vessels. Shelly’s words and choreography breathe life into matter. She made her first puppets out of papier-mâché. Recently she has been working in naked clay with a porous texture and an unusual color resembling tanned skin. The fountain makes you think of the legend of the Golem, a clay creature which Rabbi Yehuda Löw ben Bezalel of Prague brings to life. Posters from the famous Rabcio Theater hang on the foyer walls (Paulina Ołowska). This theater was the only place in the spa of Rabka in which the young patients from the nearby sanatorium could be happy. Next to the posters, in a theatrical frame, hangs the Magazyn
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Pavilionesque. You must all remember the tale of Lemuel Gulliver who was imprisoned by the Lilliputians. You will find this and many other stories about puppets in the richly illustrated publication, which is a real work of art. If you would like to read it, go to the bookshop. With a bit of luck you will run into Amanda, a character straight out of the magazine! As you continue on your way, you will enter the performance space where objects doing various things are exhibited. You must be wondering whether all these objects (many of which look like miniature people) have inner lives. Our theater’s rooms have been shrunk somewhat, almost —and let me stress almost—like the rooms in the movie Being John Malkovich. Remember the gifted actor
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from a puppet theater who is hired on the seventh-and-a-half floor of a Manhattan office building, where he stumbles on a door leading into the mind of a famous actor? Do you, too, feel like you’re inside someone else’s head? A little girl wearing a flowery dress is trapped under a table leg (Tony Oursler). She speaks in verse. She complains a little, rhymes a little, repeats herself a little. “Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Over and over again. Over and over again. A mystery story,” says the girl. Her oblong head resembles a rugby ball, and the rest of her body is
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disconcertingly emaciated as if the air had gone out of it. Have you heard about the Japanese engineer Masahiro Mori’s theory of the “uncanny valley”? According to Mori, when people encounter humanlike robots, they become anxious and even fearful.
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On the small stage is a collection of props from a miniature puppet show (Marvin Gaye Chetwynd) about the suffragettes, who a hundred years ago fought for women’s right to vote. The miniature paper costumes and props are very moving, but they also herald dramatic events. A paper gallows is one of them. To learn more of their story, come to the performance. Look around. Can you see a rag owl (Geoffrey Farmer)? It’s a piece of carpet that was found in the boiler room of a girls’ school in Montreal. The school opened in 1900. Who knows how long this unremarkable piece of textile was there before becoming a puppet. You know nothing; the owl knows everything.
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As you can see, a theater, especially a puppet theater, makes use of all sorts of materials. Wicker can be one of them. This spatial, anthropomorphically-shaped sculpture is both an ethereal stage set and a costume (Tomasz Kowalski). Its body parts are the story’s characters. To learn more of their story, come to the performance. “Once upon a time there was a piece of wood,” begins the amazing fable of Pinocchio (“pine nut” in Italian), a marionette carved by Geppetto the carpenter who dreams of making the wooden boy come alive (Paul McCarthy). The boy’s most remarkable feature is his nose, which grows every time he tells a lie. We like Pinocchio some of the time, but mostly we don’t. I introduce you
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to Pinocchio the way he looked in the Disney film, but his behavior is far from perfect. Do you know that Pinocchio was hungry, but that he could not eat? In the next room a soap opera from antiquity is on. It stars Dionysus, Ariadne, and Priapus (Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley). The visually stylish Part Three of the trilogy is being recited with “hiphop panache.” We meet Priapus, the Minotaur, and Theseus, who were earlier rescued from certain death in the Labyrinth by Ariadne (Ariadne’s Thread). Part Three is a classical love story featuring Ariadne and Dionysus. A musical about Kinderhook, New York, Christopher’s (Christopher Kline) hometown is also playing
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here. Shakers who had arrived from England during the Age of the Enlightenment settled this small town. They believed in spiritualism and religious communism. They invented their own music and a style of furniture! To learn about their story come to watch the performance. The musical is trendy. This libretto was inspired mostly by Harvard University’s hall designed by the famous architect Le Corbusier, and the actors are marionettes (Pierre Huyghe). The cast: Mr. Harvard (dean), Le Corbusier (architect), Josep Lluís Sert (dean of the Graduate School of Design), Eduard F. Sekler (first director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts), Pierre (artist), Scott and Linda (the project’s curators), and a bird. Le Corbusier is
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designing the controversial building. Years later, Pierre visits several times to conduct an investigation. The story tells of the architect’s death at sea and a red bird that, following the architect’s vision, plants the blackberry vines on the roof of the Carpenter Center. The exhibition continues as a political comedy in several acts. Its characters are Karl Marx and Adam Smith, the fathers of communism and capitalism (Pedro Reyes). They meet in New York at the Wall Street protests and discuss “surplus value,” appraising a painting by Andy Warhol, food, and the museum’s gadgets. They talk about other important questions that also absorb contemporary philosophers and engaged artists.
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Skarbek, the mine ghost who usually accompanies miners, appears in this part of the exhibition (Antje Majewski). According to Pierre Péju, “in the world of fairy tales, there are many stories of human bodies being partially or totally petrified, of caves which someone ventures into and of mountains that have been carved out in which children are held captive by a spell or by the actions of, for instance, gnomes digging inside the earth in search of precious stones.” Skarbek is respected in Poland’s black gold regions, and other cultures have similar figures. To learn about their story come to watch the performance. When you enter the castle tower, remember that someone will be observing you (Lindsay Seers). The characters’ names are Candy
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Cannibals, Sailor’s Bill and Chalky Talky. Their way of remembering comes from the childhood of Lindsay, who could not speak. To express her emotions, she decided to take pictures by saving images on light-sensitive material she held in her mouth.
Puppets are not what they seem!
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FILM PROGRAM
Special evening events take place in the foyer. During the day the foyer is a cinema. Here you will learn more about Lindsay Seers, the Crusades as told by the artist Wael Shawky and Tony Oursler’s early cult films. You will travel into space to the Hat Shop in the company of characters created by Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. Forced Entertainment will stage Shakespeare, the theater of objects on a table! And many other events. There is a new show every week!
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PROGRAM OF PERFORMANCES
Did you know that objects do different things? To learn about some of them watch the performance. Taking part are Antje Majewski, Iza Tarasewicz, Christopher Kline, and many others.
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PUPPET SLAM
In May we will host a cabaret whose actors will include puppets. We will put on sketches conceived by visual artists and expert puppeteers. Stand-up comedy improvisations, karaoke, jokes, and many other attractions will take place on a specially constructed stage set in the hall of the Centre for Contemporary Art Laboratory. Participants include the Tomasz Kowalski–Andrzej Szpindler duo, Styrmir Örn Guðmundsson, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, and Teatr Pinokio from Łódź.
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MORE OFFERINGS FROM WINTER TO SUMMER
To keep up with the educational program keep an eye on the Kino Lab schedule. We can also recommend the play Elementarz [Reading Primer] directed by Michał Zadara from Teatr Nowy and a workshop on Oddychającu papier [Breathing Paper] led by actors from Teatr Pinokio from Łódź. Andrzej Załęski of the Strefa program has also prepared a special event for you. To see the full program, visit www.csw.art.pl and social media.
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Objects do things!
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Biographies
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd lives in Glasgow. She has realized a number of exhibitions and performances throughout Europe over the past ten years with her traveling band of amateur actors. Utilizing handmade costumes and sets, her work draws on a wide range of influences from film and television, literature, art history, and philosophy. Chetwynd uses a variety of historical theatrical forms, from Brechtian drama to puppet shows, often within the same performance. The carnivalesque world she creates is one in which figures like the Emperor Nero, Mae West, Karl Marx, and Jabba the Hutt can comfortably—if not peacefully—coexist. Tim Etchells is a theater director, a performer, an artist, and a writer based in the UK. He is currently Professor of Performance & Writing at Lancaster University. He is a leader of Forced Entertainment, an internationally acclaimed performance group founded in 1984. His work shifts between performance, video, photography, text projects, installation, and fiction. Etchells regularly collaborates with many visual artists, choreographers, and
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photographers. He is particularly interested in the concept of liveness and presence, the course of events in time and place, though his practice also revolves around ideas like the relation to fiction and the media or rules and systems in language and in culture. Geoffrey Farmer was born in Vancouver, where he lives and works. In his practice he incorporates elements of sculpture, video, sound, drawing, and text, arranging them into narrative and performative installations, which research temporality, fiction, history, and art, as well as popular culture. He has created numerous projects, often in a site-specific manner, that involve mash-ups of found images and objects, which he transforms into puppetlike figures. The combination of transformed objects and arranged elements of sound and light construct small theatrical shows that blur factuality and fiction. Pierre Huyghe was born in Paris, and works across a variety of practices— including film, installations, sculptures, and public events—to create projects which
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explore themes of pleasure, adventure, and celebration. They consist of multiple developed narratives, often situated within pre-existing cultural events. Huyghe creates artworks that blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Although the final work often takes the form of a projected image, Huyghe’s primary interest lies in the production of situations, from small-town parades to puppet shows to an expedition to Antarctica. Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley live in New York State. They make videos and drawings filled with punning wordplay. Reid Kelley presents her take on the clash between utopian ideologies and the realities of women’s lives in the struggle for liberation through political strife, wars, and other historical events. Performing scripted narratives in rhyming verse, the artist—together with her husband Patrick Kelley and various family members— explores historical periods through fictitious characters such us nurses, soldiers, prostitutes, and saltimbanques. Adopting a stark blackand-white palette while synthesizing arthistorical styles such us Cubism and German
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Expressionism, they playfully jumble historical periods such us World War I and France’s Second Empire to trace the ways in which present concerns are rooted in the past. Christopher Kline is an American artist who lives and works in Berlin, where together with Sol Calero runs the project space Kinderhook & Caracas. He incorporates in his work visual art, performance, and music. His projects have also included working with handcrafted textiles, costumes, robes and masks, installations with drawings and paintings. The music takes an important place in Kline’s practice. It can be described as experimental and it often mixes different styles. However, one of his multiple alter egos is Hush Hush, a pop music project and “self-styled hit machine.” Kline was born in Kinderhook, NY. The history of the town is a main reference for his project O.K., the musical he develops in many stages.
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Tomasz Kowalski was born in Szczebrzeszyn, Poland, and lives in Warsaw. Kowalski is an artist, who in his artistic practice primarily uses painting, but also drawings, installations, or collages. He takes his inspiration from sources in German Expressionism, Surrealism, and literature. He is interested in psychedelic art and pop culture. His images are usually complex and detailed in their narrative. Theatrical themes, like the theater stage, the curtain, and puppet-like actors, can often be found in Kowalski’s works. He is also involved in various experimental music projects. Antje Majewski lives and works in Berlin. She is a German artist who is best known for her photorealistic paintings, in which she tackles themes concerning the relationship between the psychology of individuals and society, history, and social norms, exploring topics like friendship, love, masquerade, and death. For Majewski, the image is a kind of intermediary between subject and narration. In her practice she use different media, like painting, photography, video, film, installation, dance, and theater.
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Paul McCarthy lives in Los Angeles. He is one of the most recognized contemporary artists working today, and has worked collaboratively with Mike Kelley, among others. McCarthy’s work includes performance, installation, film, objects, and paintings. His is interested in pop culture, American iconography, such as Disneyland, B-movies, soap operas, and stand-up comedy. He is a critical analyst of the mass media and consumer-driven American society and its hypocrisy, double standards, and repression. In his art he refers to the European avantgarde art that has had the most influence on his artistic language, such us Joseph Beuys, Samuel Beckett, Viennese Actionism, and also the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. Shelly Nadashi is an Israeli born, Brussels-based artist. In her artistic practice she expresses her interest on issues about the value of things and people, symbolic value, and market value, as well as problems concerning the position of the artist in society. Using a variety of media—for instance object making, film, performance, the art of
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puppetry, and text—she creates works in which viewer’s attention constantly swings from one element to another. That creates a distinctive language and humor intended to confuse definitions such as “performer,” “apparatus,” and “audience.” And show that the power of speech and that language can generate both choreography and tempo, at the same time leaving space for interpretation. Noviki lives and works in Warsaw. Operating with various media, the studio implements projects in the wide array of visual communication, based on the idea of design as a way to identify and describe curious phenomena occurring in culture and art. Paulina Ołowska lives in Raba Wyżna and Kraków. In her projects the artist criticizes modernist narratives: she examines the gaps in the history of avant-garde movements and the links between art and politics, between fashion and design. Ołowska employs ceramics, sewing, pattern making, and handicrafts—all skills that traditionally served as a “cover” for female creativity. The artist frequently takes
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up the theme of the female artist in her studio, demonstrating her private enchantment with such artists as Zofia Stryjeńska, Pauline Boty, or Alina Szapocznikow. Although she has gained international experience, her work is strongly rooted in the Polish tradition that provides Ołowska with inspiration. Tony Oursler lives and works in New York. In his work he uses video, sculpture, installation, performance, and painting. He is considered a pioneer in the field of new media art since the mid-1970s. Oursler’s works often feature mixed-media sets, animated non-living, theatrical, and puppet-like objects, which transmit bizarre narrations. He researches the effects that technology has on the human mind, the relationship with virtual reality on which we rely so much these days, and points out emotional dysfunctions, like obsession, escapism, isolationism, sexual fetishism, which are the source/the cause of our dependency on technology.
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Michael Portnoy is a multimedia artist, choreographer, musician, actor, and curator living in New York. Before he went on to make his own performance the center of his work he founded a number of experimental theatrical groups in New York. His early productions Gymnastics and Schizophrenia and 5teen3sy: Kicking Games of Lip were based on intense linguistic games, singing, and sudden transformations of the protagonists. Towards the end of 1990s Portnoy developed his methods, combining choreography, video, installation, sculpture, and painting. Portnoy has also been developing a project that touches on cognitive linguistics and the subject of poetic jokes and carrot jokes. Lindsay Seers lives and works in London. She creates highly personal narratives, which interweave concepts of philosophy, science, and photographic theory into work that chart an ongoing investigation into how cinematic and photographic technologies shape us. These narratives are punctuated by incredible plot devices that mimic the rupture at the heart of image production, creating a dramatization
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of selfhood in all its melancholy and failure. By re-casting photography and film as an act that actually creates experiences rather than records them, the boundaries of photography in her work are truly extended.
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Michael Portnoy Two puppets, Jakub and Kuba, were walking down the street. Jakub had his hand up Kuba’s ass and was trying to figure out how to shut Kuba’s mouth, which was always loose and clacking with each step. Kuba protested, “Ouch! My ass is not meant for this!” Jakub replied, “Sorry, my mistake, I didn’t realize you were talking out of your ass.”
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Michael Portnoy Julka, a puppet crudely constructed by a little boy with only two fully formed fingers, was crouched in the corner of a living room crying. Her friend, Daria, a piece of cardboard with two holes for eyes, slid over to Julka to ask what was wrong. “They say I am just an object. An object … which does things,” said Julka. Daria bent one of her frayed cardboard edges around Julka’s shoulder and said, “Well, that’s much better than being an object that things are done to, no? It means you have power, power to change the world around you!”
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“I suppose you’re right,” said Julka, wiping her tears with her popsicle-stick arm. “If only the world hadn’t been made by a little boy with just one fully formed finger.”
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Michael Portnoy Dagmara had created an acclaimed puppet play about object-oriented suicide, which blended drama and cynicism, the mundane and the spiritual, and exposed the way in which the history of objects has been manipulated. Her less market-friendly friend, Teofila, had created a puppet play about soup, with puppets playing different types of soup. But not in bowls. Just floating in space. In a space station. But the puppets all looked like dogs, so the play relies on viewers accepting the idea that dogs can portray soups, and that soups can conduct research in space.
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If you are a viewer that can accept this idea, please do not commit suicide, we would like to meet you.
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Michael Portnoy This puppet joke is profoundly hilarious in English. However, it relies upon untranslatable word play, so if you’re hearing it in Polish, we’re quite sorry. Two corrupt puppet buckets were trudging, in exile, to the summit of Trumpet Mountain. Puppet Bucket #1 said to Puppet Bucket #2, “It’s a puzzle.” Puppet Bucket 2 asked, “What’s a puzzle?” Puppet Bucket 1 said, “Well, it’s not a puzzle that buckets get corrupt, corrupt to the stomach, and all of a sudden, like someone took a musket to our moral compass.”
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Puppet Bucket 2, confused, asked, “So if that’s not a puzzle, what is a puzzle? Puppet Bucket 1 answered, “Oh! It’s a puzzle that Bertrand Russell smuggled truffles or puddles in his knuckles using funnels, shovels or fennel.” “Yes,” laughed Puppet Bucket 2, “the word ‘OR’ creates delightful puzzles, since the ambiguities are never resolved!”
Puppet Bucket 1 then proceeded to suck it or succinct, it was not clear.
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Michael Portnoy A Chinese shadow puppet had a meeting with a MoMA curator who informed him that he was not contemporary enough. The puppet proceeded to glue five shadow pussies onto his forehead and asked, “Am I contemporary enough now?” “Hm,” the curator wondered, “Almost. But could you say you’re from Ramallah instead?”
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Objects Do Things Exhibition, Performance, Cinema, Puppet Slam 26.02 – 31.07.2016 Artists: Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Geoffrey Farmer, Pierre Huyghe, Christopher Kline, Tomasz Kowalski, Antje Majewski, Paul McCarthy, Shelly Nadashi, Paulina Ołowska, Tony Oursler, Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, Pedro Reyes, Lindsay Seers, and many others. Curator: Joanna Zielińska Coordination: Katarzyna Tomczak-Wysocka Dramaturgy: Tim Etchells Jokes: Michael Portnoy Text: Joanna Zielińska Collaboration: Sara Szostak Translation: Maya Latynski Copy-editing: Aarton Bogart Design: Noviki
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