Guidance

The characters created by puppeteer Moti Brecher emerge from his torso, loins and stomach. They protrude out of his body like a prosthetic limb or a wisecracking growth eager to pontificate. In his performance-lecture, Brecher marries together pedagogical techniques and experimental, edgy stand-up, as he leads groups through the festival into the warren of the Canada House.

At each stop on the tour, a puppet designed by Brecher appears. He operates the human-sized puppets in real time, carrying them on his back as they weigh him down. Each character represents a different mode of observing art: the psychologist, the sociologist, the art critic, and so on. These reflect the thoughts, fears, and dreams of a viewer who is trying to make his way through the maze of consciousness created by the festival. In the conversation between the tour guide/teacher and the personas-puppets, Brecher looks at the format of the guided tour/museum walk. The tour, meant to provide information and background about the artworks, is reimagined as a work of art in its own right.

Assistant: Sara Hadar