Paper short abstract:

This paper explores applied puppetry as interspecies practice which opens more-than-human relational fields and can disrupt or decenter knowledge about selves and others for greater well-being.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores applied puppetry as interspecies practice which opens more-than-human relational fields and can disrupt or decenter knowledge about selves and others for greater well-being. To train to animate puppets and objects for performance is an education in material agency and vibrant matter (Bennett). "When people are engaged in puppetry practice, they are already practicing cognitive empathy by attempting to understand how people, beings and other consciousnesses may move, think, act and react" (Astles). Puppets are called upon in child and adult therapy, in autism and dementia care, and are utilized in the liminal spaces of illness by traditional healers or by applied puppetry practitioners. Working with the animation of puppets, objects, and materials, provides an aesthetic and a methodology for exploring, manifesting and performing empathy, connectedness and "topographies of flesh" (McWeeny). Those who study puppetry tend to "consider people, objects, animals, and the natural and fabricated worlds as sharing some DNA and reflecting our assorted strengths and shortcomings back to each other in a porous feedback loop" (Schutzman). The paper will draw from applied puppetry workshops held with selected health professionals, as well as migrant and local groups affected by conflict, displacement, polarization, and economic instability in Istanbul.