Through its operation,
“Mobile of Perpetual Execution”
showed me the possible expression,
the principle of revealing the message
– the playing method of the machine.
Thereby, the art of acting
is inextricably linked to
the aspect of transformation,
of showing a different face,
becoming someone else,
and it is this ability
that was “possessed” by my objects
that were concentrated in “Last Fugue.”
I have already come across it
in “The Empire of Shadow”
– this is “Confessional – Guillotine of Hypocrisy.”
However, this object was subject to
a metamorphosis in stages,
as a result of the overt action of the actors.
Now it had to happen
as if from within,
spontaneously,
mechanically.
The object,
which at first
appears to be something else,
through a simple change
reveals its
surprisingly different appearance.
It is this transformation
shown through
two different states of being,
that creates dissonance,
becoming a
message,
symbol,
sign,
and builds a
message,
metaphor,
narrative,
This is clearly manifested
even by the very two-part names
of some of the machines:
“Cross – Salvo Signal,”
“Funeral Procession – Firing Squad.”
“Target – A Diagram of Killing.”
But transformation is also inscribed in:
“Anatomical Instrument”
and “Living Target.”
In my theater, devoid of an actor,
there was a temptation to demonstrate
at least an afterimage of one.
Here in succor came a
photographic experience
of Eadweard Muybridge
with time-lapse motion.
But how to encapsulate it in an object?
I found the solution
in “Photophases of Death,”
a dual device
showing successive phases
of a character’s demise after being shot
(here theatrically dramatized).
The object,
the image of a naked woman and man,
makes a direct reference
to Adam and Eve,
supposedly the First People Sentenced
by divine judgment
to mortality
– for the tort of sin.
The original sin.
This other manifestation of
“machine acting”
uses the image of a character
frozen by a fraction of movement
in a photographic frame,
so that it can the
– by duplicating
its successive phases
– activate full expression
in the automatism of repetitions
that the machine creates.
