Trick ’n’ treat
Diego Delas, Matthieu Haberard, Martín Llavaneras
13 May - 30 May, 2017
Yaby
Calle Ancora 9 (entrada por Calle Rafael de Riego)
28045 Madrid
Diego Delas
Matthieu Haberard
Matthieu Haberard
Martín Llavaneras
In Ligotti, puppets and puppetry frequently symbolise this
tangling of ontological hierarchy: what should be at the ‘inferior’ level of the manipulated manikin
suddenly achieves agency, and, even more horrifyingly, what is at the
supposedly ‘superior’ level of the puppet master suddenly
finds itself drawn in to the marionette theatre.
—Mark Fisher
Sensoriums after Modernity may craft
themselves some things premodern in order to extend the potency of experience
beyond the merely given. Like holding a puppet before one’s
eyes and puppeteering just for oneself, animating what’s
decidedly inanimate in order to animate ourselves and compromise how we think.
Festive or sinister, it’s undoubtedly an illusion, a magic
trick, and yet it works convincingly, luringly, if only for a brief moment. An
ancient, long deciphered syntax, the visual code of a world that was surpassed,
appears mysterious again, the source of unheard-of expressions. The masks worn
by the doctors of the plague, their long beaks once filled with hay and
perfumes to neutralise and block out the rotten air, now pull their wooden
mouths wide open to breathe out a forgotten infection. Ordinary, rusty
artifacts that verge on the obsolete become fresh puppets —they
stick their chests out and want to move around, and they’re
only sculpted shape, only re-crafted material. The raised pantomime dusts off
its usual shapes and plays new gimmicks, once again shaking the heavy
equilibrium between the intelligible and the sensible, giving the inert its
lost thrust back —giving it the chance to shine again—,
and taking thought for a walk down an unexplored path. Like enchantments after
the disenchantment.
Of course its soft and carefully sewn mouth was not moving,
none of their mouths move unless I make them. Nonetheless I can still
understand them when they have something to say […] To a certain degree, then, they are dependent on me. Patiently
I attend to histories and anecdotes of existences beyond the comprehension of
most […] Do I ever speak to them of my own
life? No; that is, not since a certain incident that occurred some time ago […] Absent-mindedly I began confessing some trivial worry. I’ve completely forgotten what it was. And at that moment all
their voices suddenly stopped, every one of them […] But I shall never forget that interim of terrible
silence, just as I shall never forget the expression of infinite evil on their
faces which rendered me speechless thereafter.
—Thomas Ligotti