Hey Walter! Great that you are also here again!
Oh, hi, how are you?
Good, good. I thought, to start with, we could
talk a little about puppets.
Oh yes, puppets. In a sense they were always
with me, since when I was a child. In my early
work on the history of the German drama, I
also dealt with the emergence and evolution
of puppet theaters. Then, I wrote some reviews
covering books on puppets as toys. And eventually,
in the context of the Arcades Project, I was
interested in the relation between puppets
and automata.
To be honest, I was only thinking of your
"Theses on the Philosophy of History".
Oh, the “Theses”, of course.… You mean
the very first one, where I talk about the
mechanical Turk, i.e. the fake chess playing
machine devised by Wolfgang von Kempelen around
1770.
Exactly.
Well, my reasoning was the following: “One
can imagine a philosophical counterpart to
this device [i.e. Kempelen’s chess playing
machine]. The puppet called ‘historical
materialism’ is to win all the time. It
can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists
the services of theology...“
I admit I completely forgot about theology
here. You really mean it should be understood
as an equivalent to the human chess player
Kempelen hid in the interior of the machine?
I am not sure, and perhaps this isn’t so
important. What I am interested in is the
affinity between puppet and historical materialism
that you put forth in your thesis.
I was quite fascinated with this aspect when
I was working on the Arcades Project. Puppets
are often children’s toys, they are sweet,
precious and reliable, something like your
best friend or even the children’s child.
At the same time, puppets can be extremely
creepy and uncanny, even for adults, especially
when they’re tall and consisting of wax,
for example, or when being able to move, like
an automaton.
I was also thinking of mannequins.
Sure, in Paris, in the 1920s, mannequins were
a topic the Surrealists were extremely fond
of, and I also thought they constitute a wonderful
illustration of a basic principle of capitalism,
namely the transformation of living things
into dead ones – and vice versa.
Apparently you also actively engaged with
puppets, as a child, but also as a grown-up.
At least there is a puppet show you authored
in the 1930s.
True, but it is more something like a radio
play. I did it in 1932, and the title was
“Radau um Kasper,” which you can translate
as  “Much Ado Around Kasper“, and the basic
idea, I confess, was a little self-referential.
In what sense?
Well, initially the project was to use the
puppet-figure of Kasper in order to explain
the then new media technology of the radio
on the radio and to describe its proper use.
The story basically is that Kasper is invited
to appear on a radio program. Others explain
to him the functioning of radio technology,
however, he then abuses this technology for
rather personal stuff.
As far as I recall Kasper uses it to publicly
offend one of his friends.
Precisely. He does not understand that the
radio, eventually, is – or at least could
be – an interactive technology, not just
a distribution apparatus but a communication
machine, as my friend Bertolt Brecht also
argued at that time.
That sounds extremely timely.
It probably was. The basic notion, and this
is what the somewhat tongue-in-cheek title
“Much Ado Around Kasper” points at, was
to involve the audience in a kind of dialogue.
The “ado” around Kasper mainly consisted
in different sorts of noise. Theses noises
provided the background for questions concerning
the actual situations and/or locations of
the play, and the audience was meant to answer
by them writing to the station.
Reminds me of what the Kasper puppet does
when he is talking to his audience.
Right.
Now, that was back in 1932. Since then, much
has changed, for example by the advent of
Facebook, Instagram, and also Youtube where
we are right now. So, according to you, is
the Internet something like the fulfillment
of your visionary ideas concerning the functioning
of media technologies as the crucial communication
machines of society?
I wouldn’t go so far. Sure it is great to
see that so many people are doing things on
the Internet and how those who, in previous
times, were just reading are starting to write
and how those who were mere spectators are
turning themselves into actresses and actors.
With respect to the newspaper and cinema I
have described similar developments in my
study of “The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction.”
Do we really have to talk again about the
“loss of the aura”?
I am ready to postpone it. But let me point
out at least that despite all the fantastic
changes in media technologies and social communication,
the basic principles of capitalism pretty
much remained the same. And in order to understand
this, we still need the puppet called ‘historical
materialism.’
