Abstract

I recently had to make new business cards. And I thought, you know, when I tell people I’m a puppeteer, although they are excited about it, I never feel like they know what I do. Oh they think they know what I do, but I ultimately feel misunderstood. So I decided to put something else on my business cards. But what? What do I really do? Here is my solution:

Movement is Consciousness.

That’s what puppetry is, right? The movement of an inanimate doll breathes life into its soul; the translation of objects through space tells a story; a sudden break in a crescendo of objects swaying together makes meaning. So where did that phrase come from? I derived it from Cinema 1: The Movement-Image by Gilles Deleuze (1983[1986]: 21). But Deleuze isn’t talking about puppetry; he is talking about the eye of the camera.