Archives for posts with tag: thoughts
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

A lonely path

July 14, 2012 //
2

This is another one of my favorite images, even though not many people I showed it to share my excitement. Actually nobody I showed it to liked it, but then I think only a handful of people have seen it so far.

I admire the old lady, holding tightly on to her handbag, striding out with great determination. Her crooked body still exudes purpose. There is no waiver in her gait. Straight down the middle, protected by spring-green chestnut trees. These trees have been around for centuries and have seen many old ladies passing by. (Yes, I do understand why other people might not get excited :)

Yesterday I had some time to do more research on the Internet regarding the puppet world. I found some amazing stuff overseas, but New Zealand looks pretty grim. There is a “Puppeteers in New Zealand” organisation. But their website (Pinz.org.nz) has a very neglected feel. There is a forum with 13 members but it is locked and the last entry was 2010.

There are of course puppeteers for children around and there seems to have been a New Zealand Puppet Theatre founded by Annie Forbes in 1984, which was going for some years. Annie Forbes, a third generation puppeteer, has moved to Australia.

The funniest thing I found was on Wikipedia (puppetry subhead oceania). There are a couple of good paragraphs about Australia and then – New Zealanders hold onto your seats!– one sentence: “In New Zealand, a similar history has taken place.” That’s it! Thinking about it now, that might be because all the good puppeteers have moved across the Tasman (see above).

I am going to finish Push-Push today.

Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Life, Photography, Relationships

In the flow

July 13, 2012 //
0

I love this image of the submerged leaf with the fairy dust specular highlights, and the water softly flowing past. It’s very peaceful and calming. It’s almost as if the leaf is being caressed by the water.  I love to hike up the mountains here. Rivers bathed in sunlight look like melted gold. (Yes, …there is gold up in them mountains.) And you return home so much richer.

Tags , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Life, Photography

Will-o’-wisps

July 12, 2012 //
0

What was clear and crisp yesterday, is out-of-focus today.

I will have a bit of a rant today. It’s a pacman day: that means I have hit the wall and need to get unstuck before the ghosts get me. Pretty sure you all know the game.

I have noticed that my book is listed in an online shop of a large New Zealand bookstore chain. (Of course it is, as it is in the Nielsen database and I assume they just republish this database). However this online store shows the book as currently unavailable, which irks me, as it is not unavailable at all. To the general punter it sounds as if it were out of print. So we wrote a nice  letter to the chain with a fact sheet about the book, asking whether they would consider stocking the title as they have it in their database anyway. We even offered them to send an evaluation copy.  It didn’t take them much more than an hour to respond and say it is too specialised. Mmmhm I wonder how they came to that conclusion without engaging.  Furthermore they told us they will take it off the database. (Which is difficult, since I believe they just re- publish the Nielson database). Later on that day we got another email saying they won’t take it off the database, but just order a book from us if someone asks for it. Surprise! But nothing achieved.

This got me thinking about the whole publishing world again. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. My book could be viewed as a vanity book or self-published as I am a partner in the publishing house that published it. What is a ‘real publisher’? After all I studied publishing for 3 years and set up a publishing house before, which I successfully sold. I adapted my career path when I came to New Zealand as I wasn’t confident enough with the language. I moved into writing computer books for the German market. I have been sole or co-author of around 30 books. So I wouldn’t really call myself a novice. But gee I am happy that books are not cream cakes and we don’t have to sell them by the weekend. Thankfully, they won’t perish.

Of course not much has changed in the publishing world since Gutenberg… until the Internet came along. We all know that. Generally I am very much in favour of the institution of “the publisher” to ensure quality through the editing process and vouching for well researched and well written stories. But it reminds me so much of the time when computers started to move into offices. I met a lot of 40-year-olds then who said they don’t have to learn computers, it won’t affect their work at all. Ten years later they were too young to retire, but unable to find a job without computer skills.

Enough of the ranting!

On a more positive note: I met up with a friend yesterday to discuss the puppeteer workshops and it is all looking good here. I’ve nutted out a session plan which I will fine-tune after the discussion we had. Then we will take it to the next stage and test it with a group of people. This is volunteer work and I am really curious how it will all pan out.

The biggest hurdle I face is that there is the common misconception, particularly in this country, that puppets are only for children. I have been warned! In Europe, on the other hand, there are some amazing permanent troupes with elaborate stage shows. My puppets are different, as they are not professional performers. With my workshops I want them to become confidants for the participants. I would so love to unleash their creative juices.

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art

Where to?

July 11, 2012 //
3

This image is a close-up of a spider web with dew. It is an allegory of what’s going on in my head at the moment. I have all these great and sparkling ideas but the path there…

I want to share a couple more surprising tidbits from my reading lately.

So, the reigning powers tried to marginalize popular theatre  (I am not just talking about puppet theatre, but all forms of entertainment for the masses). In the article The golden age of the boulevard Marvin Carlson describes the rise of popular theatre from  fair ground attraction to permanent stages around the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, where all the entertaining stages conglomerated. The Boulevard got the nick-name Boulevard of Crime in the 1820s, not because it was dangerous to go there, but because what was on show. The Almanach of Spectacles  1823  published the numbers of crimes performed on the stages (for twenty years):

… Tautin has been stabbed 16,302 times, Marty has been poisoned in various ways 11,000 times, Fresnoy has been murdered 27,000 times, Mlle Adele Dupuis has been the innocent victim of 75,000 seductions, abductions, or drownings, 6,500 capital charges have tested Mlle Levesque’s virtues and Mlle Oliver, whose career is scarcely launched, has already tasted the cup of crime and vengeance 16,000 times.

Sounds like a normal year on TV to me.

John Houchin recounts in his article The origins of the cabaret artistique how the cabaret moved from a place where artists performed their own material for their peers to a public establishment to make money.

By 1900 the cabaret had become a competitive, commercial undertaking. Owners and producers had to devise a point of difference to stand out and attract audiences. The Cabaret de l’Ane Rouge (Cabaret of the Red Ass) had a large fresco depicting the crucifixion of a large red ass. Singers presented café-concert fare and the announcer was a huckster who encouraged the audience to drink. In the Cabaret du Néant (Cabaret of Death) visitors were served at coffins and lighting was provided by corpse lamps. The Cabaret du Ciel (Cabaret of Heaven) featured harp music, a master of ceremonies dressed as priest and a man costumed as an angel sprinkled the audience with holy water. The Cabaret l’Enfer (Cabaret of Infernal Regions) offered the alternative to celestial bliss, a glimpse of hell: The decorations that hung from the ceiling were sculptures of bodies writhing in pain.

All I can say: Move to the side Goths. We have seen it all before :).

Both articles were in Schlechter, J. (ed), Popular Theatre, Routledge 2003.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Life

Little history

July 10, 2012 //
0

This painting The conspirators I have done a few years back, when I’ve just started painting in acrylic. This was well before the puppets, but looking at it now I think it is very foreboding, they were already in there.

I am reading this book about Popular Theatre at the moment (Schlechter, J. (ed), Popular Theatre, Routledge 2003). The subtitle is A source book and gee it really is. As a visual artist I never looked at the history of theatre and certainly not at popular theatre. I never really thought about, how important and wide-spread puppetry was in history. Puppets were always part of the common entertainment but their stories were passed on orally. Our (European) cultural inheritance is based on written works by playwrights who had to please their financiers, the small, aristocratic elite. I read somewhere that even Goethe, the great German writer was originally inspired by a puppet show to write his most famous work “Faust”.

Popular Theatre  had to earn their living by attracting the masses. Authorities were unable to control or manipulate it for their own ends and therefore it was often censored or dismissed by governments and academia.  But of course this didn’t work too well, quite to the contrary. As the performers weren’t financially dependent on one particular source, they didn’t need to conform to externally imposed standards. They basically could say what they wanted. Often the more they made fun of the establishment, the bigger audiences they attracted.

Peter Schumann, the great contemporary puppeteer and founder of the Bread and Puppet Theatre said: [puppet theatre is] by definition of its most persuasive characteristics, an anarchic art, subversive and untameable by nature, an art which is easier researched in police records than in theatre chronicles, an art which by fate and spirit does not aspire to represent governments or civilisations, but prefers its own secret and demeaning stature in society, representing, more or less, the demons of that society and definitely not its institutions. [p41]

Tags , , , ,
Categories Art, Hand Puppets

Next

July 8, 2012 //
0

This image was taken on an island in the Baltic Sea, called Rügen. I think every German knows the scenery, it has been made famous by the romantic painter Kaspar David Friedrich. Even though the scenery is engraved in the common German memory, I don’t think that quite as many people have actually seen the white cliffs in nature. The island belonged to Eastern Germany when the country was still divided. It was military territory and therefore out of reach.

It is a mystic place, I could not describe it any differently.  We went there in winter (summer might be a different story), and we had the place all to ourselves. The image I had in my post Friends!? was taken at the same place, but at the bottom of the cliffs.

When I look at this image I can hear the silence of the place and feel the protection of the trees all around me. I can feel the springy layer of humus under my feet and smell the damp moss. It is a huge problem I personally have as an image maker in that only I have all this additional information that went into the image and everything comes back instantly when I look at it. My images are always personal memories and this is the reason why I am hesitant to share them. They might evoke emotions in other people, but what the viewer feels will always differ from what I felt.

Of course we all know that advertising imagery is build on the common memory. It is never-fail generic  imagery that evokes feel-good moods. But what is going to happen when we sit in front of the computer day in, day out and never learn what damp moss smells like. Will these images still work?

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Photography

Friends?!

July 4, 2012 //
6

Friends! Yes, tell me what constitutes a friend? Now this is a curly and very personal question. I don’t believe it can be answered comprehensively, not even by the most studied people. Last night, the question was brought up in conversation, and this here is another one of my unscientific and personal observations.

In German we have this word “Freund” which looks and sounds very much like the English word “friend”. These two words even have similar meanings and they could be mistaken as being the same. They are not.

In Germany you would only call a very clear and manageable amount of people “Freund.” Everybody else you’ve personally met is an acquaintance or a “friend of a friend”. I think when I left Germany I was down to two friends :).

Of course the Germans still use the two-tier of “you”. They have two terms: The close “Du” and the distant “Sie.” When you address somebody with “Du”, you are usually on a first name basis as well: you are friends. While “Sie” is usually used in combination with the surname. Oh it is all very complicated. To cut a long story short, the term used indicates the closeness of the people involved. The whole thing is a bit looser nowadays than it was when I lived there, but it is still there.

In New Zealand, (I don’t know how it is in other countries, as I have only lived in New Zealand long enough to have formed an opinion), virtually everybody you’ve met twice is your friend. Now this sounds very superficial, doesn’t it? It isn’t really.

For starters there is only one term to address the person opposite: “you.” This little fact tears down a lot of barriers.

Since I moved here the number of people I call friend has grown exponentially. But they all have one thing in common: I know them face-to-face. This fact keeps the number naturally manageable. My friends can drop in on me any time and have a conversation. What constitutes a conversation? (Don’t let me go there, not now… )

The word acquaintance is very rarely used here. I am not quite sure, but it seems if you use the word acquaintance, you have met the person, but don’t really have anything to do with them. I wrecked my brain, but I personally couldn’t come up with anybody I would refer to as an acquaintance here, though in German I would happily use the word for a number of people. I might refer to somebody as a “colleague from xyz” or “an artist guy I know”, or the “plumber who did my bathroom”. But acquaintance, no, I don’t have them in New Zealand.

Now bring on face book… I guess you can figure out my opinion. I’ll go and make a puppet in the meantime.

PS: You have certainly gathered my conversation was with a German :)

 

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Life, Relationships, Social Network

Point of view

July 3, 2012 //
2

I have mentioned before on my blog that I am obsessed with eyes. Tree eyes fascinate me, even though I find them sometimes tricky to photograph. I have to think about the camera settings a little bit longer. But with so many other things, the dede puppets pretty much stopped my eye collection in its tracks.

When researching puppets you very quickly come across the name Peter Schumann. He founded the Bread and Puppet Theater in 1963 in New York and in the 70s moved to a farm in Vermont. There they still hold puppet events and workshops today (bread and puppets). A really interesting story.

I was amazed by Peter Schumann’s article “The Radicality of the Puppet Theatre” (reprinted in Schlechter, J (ed). Popular Theatre, Routledge 2003).  Amongst other enlightening aspects, he points out the clear difference between actors and puppets. An actor tries to fake a character. He tries to become somebody he is not. Ergo an actor’s success is based on his capability to deceive the viewer. A puppet on the other hand is the character. It is what it is and the stories emerge from within the puppet.

It makes all perfect sense to me.

Tags , , , ,
Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life

One dislike

July 2, 2012 //
2

I have created twenty-six characters to date and so far have only one character I really dislike. This is Twoface.  She looks straight at you and smiles. Superficially she looks like a pleasant enough person, very non-committal though. Her response to what you say is usually: “Ah, yes” or “Really” or “Indeed.” But you know exactly she doesn’t give a toss about anything. Even worse, when you turn her around, she has a second face rolling her eyes and it is very clear she believes everybody (except for herself) is a tosser.

I haven’t incorporated her in any stories yet, but I think she will become the boss. I will only use her if absolutely necessary.

two_face roling eyesNow that I look at her second face and know that she is the boss, I feel slightly sorry for her. She must be in middle management and feels a bit of pressure from higher up. While she rolls her eyes, she does look a bit scared. But still I thoroughly dislike her behavior and I will stay clear of her as much as possible.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Social Network

Tears of a clown

July 1, 2012 //
3

A friend of mine gave me a book of short stories by Paul Gallico to read. The one she wanted me to read in particular was Love of seven dolls. I wonder why?

No, seriously… I would not have understood the story entirely, had I not started making puppets myself.

The story was written in the early 1950’s and is set in France. It is about a puppeteer, called Captaine Coq, who saves a young girl from throwing herself into the Seine by letting the puppets talk to her. The girl and the puppets become good friends, but Captaine Coq himself is a real bastard. As the girl has nowhere to go, the puppets invite her to join the show. She interacts with the puppets naturally, and endures the treatment of the Captain. After the show becomes a success, the girl finds an admirer who wants to marry her. She is set to leave and the puppets are terribly sad, but Captaine Coq couldn’t give a toss. Only at the last minute is he able to express his own love for the girl.

In the reviews the girl is always the heroine, who saved the nasty puppeteer through her love for the puppets. If I hadn’t started puppet making, I would have seen it in exactly this way. But now that I know the spell hand puppets cast on their puppeteer, I know the puppets were the real heroes and ultimately Captain Coq saved himself by creating these puppets. The girl could have been replaced by another girl or another incident. But without the puppets, he would have lost touch with the real world entirely. He could not have escaped the shell he was in, a shell that was forced upon him by war.

The story tells us he had started making the puppets in a POW camp out of boredom and he started to entertain his fellow prisoners. Through his experiences in the war he had obviously lost his believe in the good in people. The war crippled him emotionally. A sarcastic bastard in real life, he could act out his caring and benevolent side through the puppets. In this way he could maintain a little flame of warmth.

Believe me, I have thought a lot about the crippling emotional effect of war. After all I am German… Emotional coldness is a black neck swan!

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories Art, Hand Puppets, Life, Relationships
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »