The human body, as a space of imagination, reflection, and interaction, has continually been an endless subject of investigation. It is more than a mere biological entity; it is a site where human history, personal agency, and social and cultural values are inscribed and negotiated. Within the context of performance art, the body becomes both the medium and the narrative itself, a living stage that continually reinterprets the meaning of its own existence. In Iwan Effendi’s artistic practice, specifically as a puppeteer, the body serves as the point of departure for a profound philosophical and theatrical exploration, where the boundaries between subject and object, the living and the crafted, become indistinct.
This reflection on the body finds its distinctive poetic tension when confronted with the puppet--an inanimate object staged to be "brought to life" theatrically. Here, an intimate and fundamental paradox unfolds: the body of the puppeteer must simultaneously be present in physicality and energy, yet absent from the narrative and the audience's focus. It must immerse itself totally into the soul, character, and movement of the puppet, while at the same moment resigning its own ego and expression so the puppet may breathe as an autonomous entity. This process is a discipline demanding a conscious surrender.
This symbiotic relationship gives rise to further creative contradiction: the artist's body strives to resemble, embody, and merge with the object it animates, yet it must also conceal itself, both literally behind the screen and metaphorically behind the illusion of life it creates. This tension between presence and absence, immersion and release, resemblance and concealment is not a shortcoming, but rather the very heart of puppetry performance. It is through this continuous negotiation that the inanimate object undergoes a transformation into a creature that is believed in, felt, and loved, while the puppeteer's own body experiences a transcendence, shifting from an individual into an agent for a greater force of narrative and imagination.
