ABOUT

Objects are all around us every day. They can be useful, or beautiful. We often use them in a careless and automatic way. About 1 century ago with the rise of contemporary Design, objects became an expression of social imaginary, material shapes of the Zeitgeist as well as of the views of their designer: a vehicle of culture. Thanks to the intuition of a specific branch of puppetry, which we will call “Object & Figure Theatre”, objects can also be storytellers. They thus transcend their material and utilitarian dimension to earn a soul, a life, a destiny of their own. The Puppets & Design project (P&D) aims to emancipate everyday objects from their utilitarian feature, instead lifting them up to the role of meaning and artistic expression conveyers, communication and intercultural dialogue tools. P&D will interweave the paths of puppet theater artists and of designers. The designers’ competence can help puppetry to renew itself; puppetry and object animation will help designers to rethink objects and give them a soul by giving them specific shapes. P&D will innovate the Puppetry practice and increase its popularity with adults, children, families, schools by cross-fertilization with design practitioners (professional designers, scholars, students) through a set of cultural, educational and promotional EU activities. P&D involves 3 puppet theatres (from IT, CZ, SI) and a higher education school of design (from ES). The project will provide new artistic and professional inputs to both puppetry and design practitioners, and to the audience, whom the project aims to expand and diversify by focusing on objects which could belong to everyone’s daily experience yet can provide self-produced artistic experiences. The project’s dissemination events strategy will foster knowledge of the historical and cultural heritage of the "Object & Figure Theatre", often wrongly confined to the children's world, gaining to it an increasingly widespread and diverse audience.

Centro Regionale Teatro Animazione e Figure

  •   +39 0481 537280
  •  Via dei Coronini, 17, 34170 Gorizia (IT)
  •   info@puppets-design.eu.
5
European Countries
100
Artists & Designers
3
New International Productions
10000
Spectators
There must not be an art detached from life, with beautiful things to look at and ugly to use. It must be made clear that as long as art remains stranger to the problems of life it only affects a few people.
BRUNO MUNARI

BRUNO MUNARI

Italian artist, designer and writer.
The object drinks with the mouth of the animator, sees with his eyes, touches with his hands. It moves and will be moved through him. The animator becomes an accessory to the animated object. If the object wants to skulk it can do it in the pockets of the animator, under his armpits or between his hair.
GIULIO MOLNAR

GIULIO MOLNAR

Hungarian actor, author, director.
The term 'object' itself raises some basic questions. In a real sense, the objects are simply what is opposed to subjects, what resists man and his will. A definition that, clearly distinguishing what is thought (the object) from the thinking subject and from the act in which it is thought, it may perhaps apply to "design objects", but that is not appropriate to the object on stage, animated by a human being, involved in one live relationship.
FERNANDO MARCHIORI

FERNANDO MARCHIORI

Scholar, writer

RESEARCH

 


discover the most interesting studies on the link between the world of figures and that of design

CONTACT

Puppets & Design is a European network for innovation in the field of puppetry and contemporary design. Stay tuned, take part in our activities, send us proposals...