Intertidal Maladies

Set on shores haunted by Dreamworlds of Progress, the five stories in this puppet show span sites implicated in industrial, socio-ecological and colonial timelines. They take place amid unequal relations between bodies, where some are considered more disposable than others. Sites, bodies and materials are activated and manipulated to perform in a theater of destruction, where the violence is slow and the consequences far reaching. The scenes are informed by the extractive industries and unjust relationships I have observed in and between places I have lived. This includes my own family history tied up in the extraction of iron ore in Goa and the transport of oil within the Bombay harbour, as well as extractive industries along the Dutch coast, my home for the last 9 years. In each place, narratives of Progress are spoken loud and valiantly by ruling powers. Between each place these narratives are exchanged and emboldened, denying the damage they cause. While developing a practice of puppetry over the course of this program, I have been learning about its historical use in playfully subverting the state, a skill that has become increasingly valuable under current regimes of surveillance and censorship. Puppetry creates the ability to bring a wide range of voices together. Voices that are silenced within the narratives of Modernity, voices that might otherwise not meet. One of the scenes, The Sinking of Big Daddy Casino is a story about a floating casino on the Mandovi River in North Goa and a growing rebellion against it by the all-seeing-crabs, mudskipper croupier, mangrove bat and pole dancing crocodile. Casinos are illegal in India but through some Portuguese hangover laws, they are welcome in Goa as long as they are not on land. So now, in Goa, the middle of a river is considered ‘offshore’. These eyesores are emblems of the current government, selling common land for quick bucks, betting on a single Dreamworld at the cost of many. I will perform this scene along with some darling marionette puppets and beloved friends during the grad show.