Karl Ómarsson will lead the discussion on the evening of Thursday,  January 19th at 20:30 at the Living Art Museum, Marshall House. Kalli Ómarsson has chosen  the prologue and chapter two of Puppet: an Essay on Uncanny Life written by Kenneth Gross to promote discussion around the uncanny within performance.

About the Text

A book about re-seeing what we know, or what we think we know, Puppet evokes the startling power of puppets as mirrors of the uncanny in life and art. The puppet creates delight and fear. It may evoke the innocent play of childhood, or become a tool of ritual magic, able to negotiate with ghosts and gods. Puppets can be creepy things, secretive, inanimate while also full of spirit, alive with gesture and voice. In this eloquent book, Kenneth Gross contemplates the fascination of these unsettling objects—objects that are also actors and images of life. The poetry of the puppet is central here, whether in its blunt grotesquery or symbolic simplicity, and always in its talent for metamorphosis.

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