Coming to Life

Michele Beck, 2004

When I was young, I had a monkey named Zippy that I took with me everywhere.  He was my best friend and confidant and he was always there no matter what.  For me, Zippy was real and it never occurred to me to think otherwise.  As adults though, we understand the use of make believe in a child’s development and also know that we need to make a differentiation between stuffed animals having lives and reality. In general, it is our cultural consensus that objects or beings which are not human like plants, animals, dolls, rocks etc don’t have souls or spirits.  This isn’t a worldwide view though and there is a long history of religions and indigenous people who subscribe to animism or the belief that non-human entities are spiritual being or at least embody some kind of life-principle.  This is usually for a religious purpose, but I think it is an idea that can be further expanded.

Although it is not part of my upbringing, it makes sense to me to have a porous boundary between spirits/ energy, objects and people. This isn’t because I am spiritual or religious in the regular sense of the word.   I have been reading about dolls and ritual in other cultures and I am starting to relate this to my own figurative sculptures.  My little paper figures are born out of my inner life and in that sense I am transferring my self and my energy into the object.  Sometimes I make life size objects, which are still dolls and then I also make costumes, which I perform in and bring the doll to life.  In this case, my energy goes into the doll when I make it and then the energy of the object is transferred on back to me when I put on the costume and become the figure.

Paper figures, 5 inches, 2010

blue figure, life size, 2010

Blue Moon, performance, 2010

I like this play between objects and performance, miniature and life size and transfer of energy.  This can also be found in religious ritual and education for many cultures.  For instance, the Hopi and Zuni American Indian kachina rituals.

Drawings of kachina dolls, from an 1894 anthropology book.

 The kachinas are supernatural beings who personify nature the clouds, sky, storm, trees, etc. and take two forms in the material world.  Most well known to us are the kachina dolls, which represent the many different forms of the spirits.  These dolls are made by men to give to their daughters to educate the children about the kachina and their meaning. The other manifestation of the kachina are the men themselves who dress in kachina costumes for the many yearly ceremonies to ask for rain, grow crops or other issues important to the daily function of the community. So, there is the kachina, which is the spirit, the performance, which gives body to the spirit and the doll, which represents the kachina miniature form for the purpose of education.

The transformation from spirit to object to performance reminded me of my own interest in working with animate and inanimate figures.  In one particular performance called Orange Echolon I sat on stage wearing an orange costume so that I resembled the life-size doll, which was sitting next to me.  For 45 minutes, as the audience entered the theater, the doll and I sat perfectly still.  Since the furry orange costume covered me from head to toe, I could not see and it was difficult for me to breath.   It was very claustrophobic at first, but I was able to manage this experience by breathing deeply and practicing everything I had learned over the years in meditation class.    I could hear what was going on around me, but I remained separate from it in my own internal space and once I was able to reach a meditative state, it was strangely soothing. After 45 minutes the sound element of the performance started and I did a short sequence of movements that completed the performance. After the performance was over people commented to me about their confusion as to what was real and what was not.  Some people assumed that the figures were 2 people in the costumes and they said they thought they saw both of the costumes breathing. 

Orange Echolon, 2009

I really enjoyed the instability in perception that the performance created.  My work is not about supernatural powers like the kachina dolls and performance are although it is curious to think about my work in terms of the transfer of energy from objects to human beings and then back again to objects.  The confusion between what is real and what is not engages the viewer to question their perceptions and I think this opens the space for there to be a possibility that inanimate objects can have spirit and energy.  In the end, who is to say what real.  Like the story of the Velveteen Rabbit,  if, as a child, I loved Zippy with my all my heart, perhaps that was enough to make him real.  And if the energy of this love is still part of the fibers of his being, perhaps he still is real.  

Zippy with Dr. Ramirez, 2011