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Jakarta Post

Collaborators, manipulators and imaginers

There’s something slightly unnerving about these contemporary art forms

Duncan Graham (The Jakarta Post)
Yogyakarta
Fri, December 5, 2014

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Collaborators, manipulators and imaginers

T

here'€™s something slightly unnerving about these contemporary art forms. They wave no flags of jingoistic nationalism, so labels don'€™t stick. They'€™re burdened by neither the dogma of religion, nor the baggage of ideology.

Though dumb, they can speak to every one of the 7 billion on this planet in a universal tongue of shared concerns and experiences. Though blind, they can see what we wilfully ignore. Yet paradoxically they lack what we have: life.

In the hands of talented artists, contemporary puppets can reduce us to tears, or raise us to nobility, and this month, Indonesian audiences will get the chance to see some of the world'€™s best.

'€œPuppets are a blank canvas,'€ said Dean Petersen from Melbourne'€™s Cake Industries ('€˜Media Artists, Future Makers'€™) while tinkering with micro switches in a Yogyakarta workshop. '€œWe can project our feelings onto them. We can bring the inanimate to life.'€

Together with Jesse Stevens, the two Australians '€” heavily influenced by 1950s science fiction dystopia '€” will be using robotics to animate figures and objects at Yogyakarta'€™s International Biennial Puppet Festival, which runs from Dec. 5-7 in Yogyakarta and the nearby village of Kepek.

This is the hometown of Beni Sanjaya '€” one of the creative workers at Yogyakarta'€™s Papermoon Puppet Theatre. Recently, he helped stage a carnival in Kepek using giants, showing that the traditional wayang kulit shadow puppet performances aren'€™t the only way to entertain.

Papermoon is a group of out-of-the-box artists glued together after the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake. Their original quest was to help citizens reassemble shattered lives through brief escapes into fantasy and shared compassion.

In the puppet festival, Papermoon will be supported by performers from Australia, Mexico, Thailand, Spain, the Philippines, Hungary, Japan and Iceland.

Like migrating birds, modern puppeteers ignore political boundaries and fly to where they are most loved.

What they have in common is passion, the desire to swap concepts, expand imagination, entertain and inspire.

Thai puppeteer Jae Sirikarn Bunjongtad was inspired by the work of puppeteers from Scandinavia. Some of her wayang kulit creations look Indonesian enough to alert the culture cops, but Jae said similar styles are found in Thailand and Malaysia. She'€™s stitched costumes and spun stories in Kazakhstan, Cambodia and South Korea.

Chaos in the Neighborhood is one of many stories in the repertoire that the puppeteer, whose stage name is Kankak Naga Tan, will perform at the puppet festival.

In Papermoon'€™s workshop she drew sketches, made models, plotted moves, sewed backdrops, edited scripts and adjusted the halogen light filaments she'€™s using to illuminate her sets.

'€œI have to do everything myself,'€ she said. '€œWhen I studied theater arts at university in Bangkok there was only one unit on puppetry, so I'€™ve had to develop my own skills. That includes management.'€

The backpacks of mannequin movers like Petersen and Stevens are never short of an AA battery or a LED light. They should be called The Adaptors, using old car window wipers to sway, rams to lift and toggles to twist, employing anything discarded that can serve a higher purpose. If the raw materials are from natural products then their contentment is sustainable.

Contemporary puppeteers tend to share, not lock ideas into cages of copyright. Some offer their work through Creative Commons, licensing that only requires attribution. While film makers like Hobbit director Sir Peter Jackson offload millions on special equipment to quicken the dead and hire security guards to keep sets secret, puppeteers welcome the curious behind the scenes.

'€œPeople used to say puppets were just for kids, and we had the same thinking,'€ said artist Iwan Effendi, waggling one of Papermoon'€™s early glove creations. He started the troupe with his wife Maria Tri Sulistyani.

'€œThen we noticed how many adults were interested. We'€™d seen the same thing in the US where we met the family that runs the company of the late Jim Henson,'€ he added, referring to the man who created the Muppets that revolutionized early childhood education through the TV series Sesame Street.

'€œSo Papermoon began developing new stories and characters, and then staged a R18 show. That was a success.'€

Later the company produced and toured the US with Mwathirika '€œabout the loss of history and the history of loss'€, proving that political comment is not exclusive to theater. The non-verbal play explored the killings that followed the 1965 coup d'€™Ã©tat, still a taboo topic in many families and communities.

'€œPapermoon ['€¦] has transformed puppets the way graphic novels changed comics. [Its work] is intellectually challenging, emotionally chilling and visually bold,'€ wrote one overseas reviewer.

Papermoon has no studio, just a decrepit rented house that serves as a maternity room for the dolls born through a marriage of nimble minds and fingers to match.

After the applause, some just hang around in corners, or take it easy in cupboards, smiling wistfully at the world through glass doors, their fixed expressions waiting to be liberated by a human hand.

In the dusty yard outside is a giant face built by Octo Cornelius who, like his colleague Beni, learned the hows and how nots through the University of Trial and Error. '€œI started making puppets from vegetables,'€ he said. '€œNow I'€™ve graduated to rattan and bamboo.'€

'€” For performance venues see papermoonpuppet.com

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