This research explores the power of thauma automata: mechanical puppets, robots and kinetic sculptures that, as lifeless things brought to life, can move people emotionally or move them into action. Starting from a personal and collectively shared search for consolation, investigated whether automata can function as therapeutic and activist tools: as movers, community-builders, magnets for debate and allies.
Across some ten artistic projects, I began each time from archaic and contemporary scapegoat myths and rituals. Inspired by René Girard’s scapegoat theory, I re-enacted these in public space, together with people from different communities, from the perspective of the scapegoat, which was staged as an automaton. The central question was whether automata can both enchant and disenchant us: can they console, heal and connect, while at the same time confront us with our responsibility for the violence inflicted upon the scapegoat? Gradually, my research shifted. The strict search for scapegoat mechanisms gave way to a broader investigation into guilt, responsibility and the role of non-human entities in social, ecological and political conflicts. With Jane Bennett, Bruno Latour and Graham Harman as theoretical guides, I examined how non-humans -bridges, loudspeakers, ferryboats, space debris, Chinese mitten crabs, and so on- are not merely passive objects, but form part of complex networks in which humans and non-humans play upon, influence and render one another co-responsible.
Automata proved capable of giving concrete bodies to these abstract, voiceless entities. Their hybrid composite nature, as assemblages of materials, performers, actions and associations, makes visible the layered complexity of that to which they refer.
Over the course of the research, the ambition to construct rituals was subjected to more critical scrutiny. Byung-Chul Han’s thinking on rituals warned me against the emptiness of artistically contrived rituals, and against the ease with which community, consolation and connection are presented as manufacturable products. Yet precisely within the artificial interplay with the automata, something emerged that participants described as connecting, and at times therapeutic. It was not the constructed ritual itself, but the collective making process around the automata that proved to have transformative power.