Shadow Puppets and Dirty Ice - Artist talk by Serge Onnen
Visual artist Serge Onnen presents his latest project (in progress): Cloacinae. His shadow puppet film is an exploration of an underground world, the dark eco-network of tubes, channels and caverns called the sewer. The evening opens with a shadow puppet performance accompanied by performer Klara Alexova and live cello and percussion by Harald Austbø and Marcos Baggiani.
For his film Cloacinae Onnen (1965) descends into an unknown, dark, but crucial world which is completely hidden from our view, a man-made structure no civilization can do without but which we don”t like to know about: the sewer. He has created a shadow puppet film set in the effective organisation of this invisible world. Cloacina was the name of the Roman goddess who presided over Rome”s first sewage system, in effect the first sewer known to western civilisation.
Early in 2014 Onnen was working with a group of puppeteers in Taiwan and China. They cut puppets from animal skins following his designs which he then used in his film. In the Chinese tradition, only the shadows of these puppets are visible, without any backdrop. The shadows of the puppeteers are likewise invisible. Back in Amsterdam he created film sets consisting of melting ice together with animator Sverre Fredriksen in which the puppets were manipulated and filmed.
The evening is in English.
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