Poncili Creacion
July 2018
Founded by twin brothers Pablo and Efrain Del Hierro, Puerto Rican experimental puppetry troupe Poncili Creación generates performatic and audiovisual experiences that sprout from their interactive sculptures which they call objects. Since 2012, they have worked with large-scale objects, installations and video, although they are most known for their performances that involve live music, dance and experimental storytelling. Their performance tours have taken them around the United States, Canada, Europe and The Dominican Republic. Their objects have been exhibited in museums such as the MAPR and the MoCa as well as in independent galleries 787 studios, Art lab, Grund, Edge zones, Meta-gallery, and Poor Farm Experiment, among others. They view the world, life, and reality as rewritable code. They focus on objects and movement, as these are two of the most important pillars in which the universe and civilization are based, and thus, they are perfect tools to hack reality. Their aesthetic focuses on bonding ugliness and beauty. Roughly carved objects made of polyurethane foam and materials scavenged from the trash complement crafted mechanisms and shocking colors, providing catchy imagery. Their artistic process is an exploration of how they can alter life, others, and reality through objects and movement. For this reason, they have never limited themselves to specific locations or scenes, and have presented their work in puppetry festivals, galleries, museums, schools, bars, art fairs, music festivals, and bathrooms.
Transcript
EDH (0:07): We start the scene and everyone’s dead. The lights, they start flashing, coming in, off, in, in-off, you know, like — It’s not really there. It’s not really there, the whole power and that’s what wakes you up is a fear something’s missing. Then everyone wakes up, everyone’s doing their own little action, the musicians, they start playing.
EDH (0:37): He’s Pablo, I’m Efraín — He’s my brother. We both started because we were bored. We wanted to know about life and live lives that were different to our life inside the system that we had known.
EDH (1:13): Alex has this giant camera, he’s like a cyborg, and he’s desperately trying to eat canned sausages.
EDH (1:33): Then we have this large maggot hunting this character that is making this other character run that is hanging from the wall. This puppet that needs to be moved is this idea that you have to push people because they won’t do it by themselves.
EDH (2:08): And then this character loses his eye and loses his identity and therefore disappears, and his soul goes around to look for something else.
[Percussion Crescendos]
EDH (3:45): This life line that is holding a bus and a car in the middle is like this fight that happened here over gasoline, over highways — all these necessities the country shares, but that sharing became a tug-of-war over resources: Who had them, who didn’t, who needed them, how bad did they need them.
EDH (4:30): This tug-of-war between these two powerful forces finally breaks and they both land down, no one wins.
EDH (5:23): Then we take out the bike, which is a thing that is talking about going from here to a different place and in a different fashion. It’s like a hope.
EDH (6:49): The debt, this is more a symbol of everything that is happening before and after the hurricane with the politics in Puerto Rico. That comes out and challenges the hope. Hope challenges debt, and that’s the mystery.
EDH (8:43): Hope pretends to die or falls. The debt kinda walks around celebrating, and then the bike gives birth and it’s this dog that has the head of a palm tree. A new creature, maybe a new kind of hope. And that’s the end
EDH/PDH (9:53): We don’t call them puppets. We call them objects. Every object can be a puppet. The most important thing is that it’s everywhere. You can find foam in discarded mattresses. It’s objects. Objects are relatable, playful, creative, you can build on it—it’s very direct, and in that way, an excellent way of storytelling.
(10:18): [Credits Roll]
