On Bunraku
Dis-Embodiment and Representation of the “Body” in Fragments
[Grad Studio] Individual project
-2023 Spring
-Advisor: Diana Agrest
-2023 Spring
-Advisor: Diana Agrest
Bunraku is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, founded in Osaka in the beginning of the 17th century. Oversized puppets, standing about three to four feet high, are deftly manipulated by three puppeteers dressed in black, one with his face bared (the Master), the other two veiled. An explication of “body in pieces” and its wholeness and reconstructibility is presented through an assemblage of delicate and discontinuous movements. The three puppeteers become a collective body.
The traditional Bunraku puppetry shows incredible similarities with the advanced motion-capture technology. The actor becomes the marionette and the puppeteer at the same time in the process of impersonation. Combined with mo-cap technology, a new Bunraku is created. The fragments of puppets lose their intimacy with the puppeteers and create a 4th collective body.In this way, we can rethink about the visibility of the invisible and fragmented bodies in cultural representation, and represent the body’s tangible abstraction by rejecting the antinomy of puppet/puppeteer, animate/ inanimate, inside/outside; and banishes the concept hidden behind all animation. Bodily ‘wholeness’ always involves an immaterial supplement, an absent presence, which both completes and leaves open the 4th body-as-conception.
The traditional Bunraku puppetry shows incredible similarities with the advanced motion-capture technology. The actor becomes the marionette and the puppeteer at the same time in the process of impersonation. Combined with mo-cap technology, a new Bunraku is created. The fragments of puppets lose their intimacy with the puppeteers and create a 4th collective body.In this way, we can rethink about the visibility of the invisible and fragmented bodies in cultural representation, and represent the body’s tangible abstraction by rejecting the antinomy of puppet/puppeteer, animate/ inanimate, inside/outside; and banishes the concept hidden behind all animation. Bodily ‘wholeness’ always involves an immaterial supplement, an absent presence, which both completes and leaves open the 4th body-as-conception.
