The book was published in March The manipulable godwritten by Sergio Artero and edited by Indie BooksI would say that unique in the panorama of the puppeteer and philosophical thought of the countrywhose title is already a declaration of principles and a putting the body of what is going to be discussed on the dissection table.
The author – poet, actor and theater director – is the creator of the company Saltatium (located in San Ildefonso, Segovia), with which he has premiered numerous of his own works and adaptations of others, although he has also written, directed and collaborated for many other companies in the country. You should know that Sergio Artero, born in 1980, has a degree in Dramatic Art in Gestural Interpretation and Direction from RESAD, and a diploma in Philosophy from UNED. Important data to understand the how and why of a book that delves into the complex symbolic framework of this concept that is today so broad and rich in meaning that is the Marionette, with a deep knowledge of the cause capable of combining experience, modesty, and a long look. and subtle, erudition and a wisdom that opens doors and paths where so few have traveled.
Sergio Artero, at the Musée Gadagne, Lyon, France. Author’s photo
I had the honor of being asked by Sergio to write the prologue of the book, which the reader can read below, and in which I talk about the impression that reading it made on me and the importance of it being read, dissected and enjoyed by those who are interested. for these things. For puppeteers and performers of what is today called the hybrid puppet practice, The manipulable god It is an opportunity to conceptually expand what is done in the workshops and on stages.
Do not miss it. They will be pleasantly surprised and trapped by the networks of knowledge that, removing the veils that cover what is known, seeks to go beyond everyday life.
Prologue to The manipulable god:
When the puppeteer pulls the strings of the word
It rarely happens to see a puppeteer manipulate the invisible strings of words, letting them exercise this role of medium that puppets generally play. Why do we unfold ourselves into dolls if not to listen to what they have to tell us about ourselves, about the world and about the future? Of course, not all people are willing to listen, but good puppeteers understand that everything they know, they have mostly learned from the creatures themselves that they created with their hands, or that they bought at a grocery store in any city. It is the law of the mirror and reflection, which constitutes the basis of this theatrical modality that we call the Puppet.
These words serve to express the astonishment and admiration that has caused me to discover someone capable of pulling the strings in both directions: those who move puppets and dolls, and those who manage words. This is the case of Sergio Artero, director of the Saltatium company, fascinated by the world of figure theater and himself a creator of unfoldings and double realities on stage.
Image of ‘Mudejarillo’, by Saltatium Teatro. Company photo
It seems easy to manage the strings of words, but in reality it is a job as arduous and complicated as that of puppets. This occupation has a name: it is called philosophizing and those who practice it are philosophers. Well, it is possible that someone will jump and exclaim: but what has this puppeteer thought, comparing his arts of minstrelsy with the noble endeavor of philosophizing? Does He take us for fools or what? Well, let the outraged calm down. In reality, this impertinent question is pure rhetoric, because true philosophers would never ask it. On the contrary, they would bow with humility before a knowledge that says so many things without almost using the word. Silence and ellipsis, those languages of the inert doll, are the tools of the puppeteer who questions himself, while the philosopher questions himself with the speech of words. Both are looking for answers, to clarify the enigmas. And create other voices that tell the truths that we do not know.
Returning to Artero’s book, what impresses me is that we are dealing with someone who knows the silences of words very well, which is to say that he handles the languages of philosophy with ease. His exercise is the following: I have realized that doing theater, with and without dolls, is a form of unfolding that allows us to see realities from different, sometimes opposite, perspectives. But my desire to know and to express on stage the little I know, asks me to go further, and for the world of words to guide me and tell me what I am doing when it appears that I am doing nothing, well everything puppets, mannequins, or actors do it…
It is the double compulsion of the philosopher puppeteer or of the philosopher who likes to be a puppeteer. For us, those of us who belong to the guild of dolls and their ellipses, it is a luxury to know that someone has made this double effort. Having a text like the one at hand is as if we had won the lottery: suddenly, at our fingertips, an unusual wealth, a mirror in which to reflect ourselves, a path that did not exist before, a tilled field with free access. where anyone can reap its fruits.
Writing for Artero is dollify words. The author says: But writing is also a mask that reveals what is hidden, the construction of an alter ego, a poetic self, a model persona that represents the best of me or, at least, my cared for, cared for self, what I want to tell. It’s true, writing is pressing the button that brings out the double, the double, the other, the Mystery. More than a mimesis, or a tautology of the usual self, true writing is a reply, a going against oneself, a going outside of oneself. Which brings us back to authors like Fernando Pessoa, often cited by Artero, who said that he was nothing from which other and different selves emerged. That is why I have always considered him as a puppeteer poet: he kept his unfoldings in a trunk from which new characters still appear today, moved by the invisible threads of his imagination, which he continues to manage from the strictest and most inert nothingness. of the. Artero talks about all this in his pages.
Sergio Artero in ‘Mudejarillo’. Company photo
This entire book is full of quotes, authors, names that we should know, thoughts that explain to us what is hidden behind puppets and dolls, the secret of strings and what moves without strings, or of the invisible threads that are not there.
A book that is brave, that of daring to cross a forest as thick as philosophy is today. How to clarify oneself in this jargon of the words that think, of the concepts that try to move worlds, change them or think of them as possible futures? And how to clarify oneself in the face of the impressive explosion of multidisciplinarity that governs the new forms of puppet, visual and object theater?
Duality reigns in the world today. Images multiply ad infinitum, and reality copies itself as many times as it wants. Theater, opera, cinema, advertising…, the doll, what they call in English puppetry, is everywhere, physically and metaphorically. But also in war, in simulations and artificial intelligence. Robots, drones, satellites…
The manipulable god It deals with all these aspects of reality, and it does so from the perspective of someone who has one foot on each side: in the practice of the thread that manages puppets and actors, and in the practice of the thread that manages the word. Both practices look at each other and reflect each other, and from this intersection, Nothing emerges, this Nothing people which is Everything, capable of containing all the dreams of the world, as the author points out at the conclusion of his text, borrowing words from Álvaro de Campos.
‘The autopsy’, painting by Enrique Simonet (1890), Museum of Malaga. Photo taken from Wikipedia
It would be necessary to comment on the title: The manipulable god. A paradox. A relative absolute. In some way, it sums up the entire book, and defines the Puppet without defining it. This oxymoron establishes the playing field in which Artero’s thought and all the metaphysics that exists today around puppets move: beings that are and are not, that are alive and dead, that are absolute and relative, Myth that we touch with our hands. That is why in ancient times puppets were sacred, as Artero explains well. Myth. We could also call her, returning to Pessoa and finally, ‘The dead body of God, alive and naked‘ (from the poem Ulysses, in Mensagem).
Toni Rumbau
Barcelona, August 17, 2023
