Towards a Critical Puppetry: Racialisation and Material Performance in the Twenty-First Century

木偶，一个物体被人性化的过程，能教会我们什么关于种族主义，一个人被对象化的过程？作为一种具体化的实践，木偶打破了客体和主体、无生命和有生命、非人类和人类之间的二元区分。因此，它提供了一种可能性，可以有效地破坏支撑征服种族主义实体的主导本体论和生物政治结构的稳定。相反，由于木偶的审美词汇植根于夸张，因为它使用物体来代表人类，木偶同时为种族刻板印象和霸权种族意识形态的再现和再定义提供了独特的可能性。我认为，木偶戏为艺术家提供了一个独特的强大而危险的场所，可以从这个位置谈论身份，而且早就应该对这些可能性和危险进行批判性评估。这个项目通过对当代木偶和材料表演的探索，以及我自己作为木偶师和戏剧制作人的专业实践，将这些关注集中在一起。为此，我提出了一个批判性木偶的框架，其中木偶的形式和机制被用来批评和抵制政治构建的身份和价值等级，促进了与围绕物质本体论、主体性和生命力的更广泛问题的具体化接触。

What can puppetry, a process by which objects are humanised, teach us about racialisation, a process by which humans are objectified?As an embodied practice, puppetry disrupts binary distinctions between object and subject, inanimate and animate, and nonhuman and human. As a result, it offers the possibility to productively destabilise the dominant ontologies and biopolitical constructions which underpin the subjugation of racialised bodies. Conversely, because its aesthetic vocabularies are rooted in exaggeration, and because it uses objects to represent humans, puppetry simultaneously offers unique possibilities for the reproduction and reinscription of racial stereotypes and hegemonic racial ideologies. I suggest that puppetry offers artists a uniquely powerful and dangerous location from which to speak about identity, and that a critical appraisal of these possibilities and dangers is long overdue. This project brings together these concerns through exploration of contemporary puppetry and material performance and my own professional practice as a puppeteer and theatre-maker. In doing so, I propose a framework for Critical Puppetry, wherein the form and mechanics of puppetry are used to critique and resist politically constructed identities and hierarchies of value, facilitating an embodied engagement with broader questions around material ontologies, subjecthood and animacy.