- Photo of the geometric puppet built by Buckmeister Füller for Bill Baird in 1958, which disappeared in 1987, thanks to the artist Zaven Paré for sharing to me.
Magic lanterns, physicality of the doll, and capacity,
‘The puppet was born at the first dawn, when the first man saw his own shadow for the first time and discovered that it was him and at the same time that it was not him. This is why the puppet, like his shadow, will live with him and die with him’.
(Javier Villafane)
Shouting out in broad daylight that words are only as good as words are in the face of atrocities, tools perhaps or means always to build passages over abysses; Affirming that puppets are of course only puppets and much more besides; Opening up and understanding that openness is never as open as it is challenged by facts that can, reversibly, project or just stop. Anticipating also means learning to unlearn and to try – mistakes are not just thorny bushes.
In these times of darkness, the play of light is all the more important because it tells stories, trajectories and leaps forward to do more and do it differently. Is it a mistake to throw things in order to make echoes bounce off the surface and make circles? Are these echoes nothing more than stones thrown at the surface? Why not look at the processes and the changes, why not understand that the answers change before the mirrors for realities that can meet and that reality is also an exercise in creativity.
Eccentrics projects are echoes, or perhaps flat, smooth stones that a child throws on the surface to make circles, resonances perhaps that, far from being abstract, make circles to create collaborations with centres and members. The desire to link and (re)connect, to provoke dynamics, thanks to financial and voluntary support, to launch the hospitality of gesture, word and idea. The success of FLUM in Mostar and the meeting with UNIMA International at the SLUK festival in June 2023 (after the Bali Council) will be part of the possible and the impossible, the marvellous that sometimes happens. In the meetings Four centres – Ireland, Ukraine, Croatia and South Korea – have agreed to help the new representation from Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has been dormant for over 15 years, with a festival in a town scarred by a fratricidal war in the 1990s. I would like to thank UNIMA Croatia for inviting me and helping me to develop these thoughts for a UNIMA that many of us want differently, like all the centres present at this meeting at the beginning of June 2023. The UNIMA Collaboratorium project is an experiment by UNIMA Eccentrics between these 4 centres at the request of an open project with Bosnia-Herzegovina and with the director Edin Kmetas of the FLUM festival.
UNIMA International is also about creating projects and centres all over the world, connecting centres and launching projects between centres and members. The Pro-vocation project is one of the miracles that UNIMA can create, so that puppets from all over the world can be brought together for even more promising contacts and projects. This desire is a desire for new ways of collaborating and working with greater visibility and in a dynamic of circularity between members, centres and the vision of UNIMA International. This Eccentrics dynamic is a revolution in mentality, not to highlight one member or one project, but to create this multiple dynamic everywhere and differently, with different possibilities of combination between centres and listening to members’ initiatives. The project pushes the gesture and the desire, the gesture pushes the idea, as the idea pushes the gesture. The idea is disappropriated so that it can be propagated in other ways and elsewhere. The gesture learns to disappropriate the gesture and the idea.
Why not think up creative projects between centres, whether on the subject of cooperation, or creative residencies, or invitations to discuss and share practices, or workshops, or highlighting artists and contemporary and/or traditional practices, exchanges of young puppeteers or setting up exchange projects between festivals in an eco-responsible spirit in the same region. Why not create decentralisation as well as (im)possible projects between different neighbouring and even (trans-)continental regions, to create virtuous circularities.
Why not develop the means to match our ambitions? Why not open up UNIMA International to the creativity of projects coming from centres, and think of UNIMA International as a relay or a spotlight that gives rise to creative gestures and creations between centres and members, to push ever further into games of light? Why not increase the number of cross-cutting projects with the Centres, with or without commissions, and develop international UNUMA International projects with the national Centres and national Centre projects with UNIMA International? Why not increase the representation of UNIMA International in all international organisations in the international socio-cultural field, in every region and on every continent? UNIMA is a network of contacts, exchanges and creativity, as I like to repeat.
As we approach the end of the year and the new year, which will take us into another quarter of a century, and another half of a decade, in this future year of change, and the Chuncheon Congress (from 23 to 30 May 2025) for the 100-year horizon, we invite you all to come and/or participate by your presence, your listening and your questions, physically and/or digitally, by supporting, disseminating and discussing, and by proposing the projects of this horizon. Learning to unlearn, anticipating, and provoking light games and processes, possibilities and also reveries. The reports from the centres must reach us before the end of January 2025 (maximum 3 pages). World Puppetry Day 2025 will raise the question of the puppet’s dream, Artificial Intelligence and robotics. We ask you to register your events before 15 February 2025 and your videos before 28 February. Thank you for your enthusiasm and your participation.
Happy Holidays and lots of dizzying light!
Dimitri Jageneau
General Secretary of UNIMA
Merci Dimitri pour ce beau texte stimulant. Nous allons nous voir à Chuncheon 2025. Tout semble se goupiller pour que notre projet “ÉNAM et l’utilisation de l’art de la marionnette en santé mentale et en éducation se concrétise”. Nous ne tiendrons informé.
Bien à toi Dimitri et à toute votre équipe.
PS: Notre site n’est pas à jour puisque nous amorçons un grand virage en 2025-2026.
I have read this text with great joy, in which FLUM is an example of the virtuous circle that is the result of collaboration and the decision of the Mostar Puppet Theatre to be part of the world. In my second homeland, Peru, UNIMA Peru is also doing beautiful things and we are strengthening our projects. My dream is to have UNIMA BiH and UNIMA Peru develop a joint project and be part of it.
Soy muy “estupefacto” que, al menos, UNIMA Perú no ha destacado que el nombre de Javier Villafañe (famoso artista, titiritero argentino conocido en toda América Latina) no está correctamente escrito en la última Letra de informaciones del Secretario General de la UNIMA.
Lo siento, pero si no hago error el nombre de él toma un “tilde”encima del último “n” > “ñ” (?)
Fabrice Guilliot
Antiguo webmaster de la Hoja del Titiritero de la CAL
Asistente del Secretario General de la UNIMA de 2011 a 2017
No votando en Congreso, OK. Pero muy atentivo a esta forma de error.
I have read it very well. It is a very interesting thing. Whatever good programs were held in 2024, people were entertained. People understood and people are very happy and I hope that this New Year and Christmas is good for people and we hope that in 2025 we will continue to show programs like this and we will keep meeting a lot of people. Thanks so much unima puppet company thanks 🙏
I know how the UNIMA’s General Secretary stays “angry” with the dates (as we use to say in French: “être faché avec les dates” when we are speaking about somebody who has difficulties to correctly quote them).
I just took an simple example: Each UNIMA’s member (what may be his “size”) well knows that the memorial bronze plaque in Prag was unveiled by S. Obraztsov (Pre) and Jan Malík (GS) for the 50th Anniversary of our organisation (in 1979). Concerning the sculptor of this famous plaque (Bohumir Koubek / 1931-2018) except if it was one of his primer works (joke !); it was impossible, for him, to do this the same year he was born, LOL.
But, before my email asking for corrections, the UNIMA’s General Secretary (!) was given wrong information in his initial Post of his personnal Facebook page……
I am sorry, but I must say that my reflex stays: “dates given by the GS > Be careful, check them before to use !”.
And once again, the dates, at the beginning (the bottom) of his last official UNIMA’s General Secretary Newsletter (even, before to start his message), are always wrong !
In fact, Richard Buckminster Fuller (American architect) passed in 1983 and not during 1967 as written.
In case where the year of death was concerning Bil Baird (?), this information remains wrong because this famous american puppeteer deaded in 1987…
So, the citations; at the beginning didn’t correspond at nothing.
So, before to start the reading of the letter of the GS, yet, I am founding two errors.
I think that this is, always, the same problem that we faced for 4 years.
The Institutional one (updated datas, addresses, updated lists, etc, etc…..) neglected to the pure information (also, important, I agree, but not alone!)
Concerning the spelling of the names, the GS shows again his lack of attention to correctly write them.
Richard Buckminster Fuller don’t call him Buckmeister Füller !
About Javier Villafañe (very famous argentin artist; puppeteer, known on the South-American continent (but in many other places !) his name always is written with a “tilde” on the last “n” > “ñ”.
Every basic member of our organization knows that. So, of course, an UNIMA’s General Secretary…….
I am sorry, if some wrong things could be accepted from “ordinary” people, coming from people managing/diriging our organization are harder to understand, to not highligth. 4 years ago, I remind you that you voted for the excellence…..
Fabrice Guilliot
(Insignifiant member and Not voting people ! OK. But; however very attentive to this kind of things, in order to not offend anyone).
There are so many error into the two citations (at the beginning) that, for the moment; I don’t start the reading of the rest of the text !
Sorry, I just realized, this morning, that, also, a name of a famous puppeteer (our reason to live !) as Bil Baird is not correctly written.
Every people, every one interested a little bit by puppetry well knows that the name of artist of this people is Bil (with only one “l” !) Baird.
Sorry, but, I am (frankly) asking the question: “where was the UNIMA’s General Secretary during the drafting of this text ? – How many time he spent, he readed it to hunt this kind of (inexcusable) error ?”.
Somebody could comment that this is not importante and it is just wrong spelling.
But, here, we are not speaking concerning a vague unknown, but about a puppeteer who write several books, somebody who built the long history of the marionette and, as other ones, deserves respect, at least, well spelling his name in “official” website as the one of UNIMA (that, normally, must remain the reference, when we start to speak about puppetry).
I think that the UNIMA’s General Secretary (normally, a VIP of the puppetry world !) has spend all his coins of error and I am “officially” asking him a updating of his letter of information of December 2024 (sorry, but 4 errors into 6 lines is really too much coming somebody that; normally; is managing our organization).
Because this is not the first time I am asking him the correction of something, I well know the really repultion he has to admit he did mistakes. But, however I ask corrections.