Between the Body, the Object and the Image: Dance and the Visual Arts in Puppet Art

Abstract

Abstract The close connection between creation, theory, and institutions is the starting point for the author’s reflection on the kinds of spaces the latter should prepare. He emphasises that of particular interest are those spaces that are established between different approaches (or rather relationships between the body, the object, and the image). In Reprendre son soufflé by Julika Mayer, the puppet and the actor form a relationship that leaves none of the participants untouched but allows their identities to be changed. Similarly, the puppeteer-dancer in Uta Gebert’s Anubis reveals himself in order to uncover the relationship which links him and the puppet: both exist solely in motion, in the zone of exchange. Bodies and objects, assembled into body-objects, seem to meet by chance in Miet Warlop’s Springville, but in the forefront is the Image, which follows a visual logic in placing the body-objects in different configurations. On the other hand, the space occupied by the body in Yngvild Aspeli’s Signaux is undefined: the actor, his puppet-double, and his phantom limb embody a feeling of strangeness and pain. In the project Anémochore, Christophe Le Blay enables the embodiment of the environment (the wind) in the image of a recorded trace, with which a dancer then engages in dance. Space is therefore something unfinished, something open, undefinable and empty, all of which applies equally to bodies, objects, and images.