Honouring Mr. Stevens is being put to bed for now, and “The Collector” is the next project step.
Planning for the next iteration - “The Collector”.
Jason and I have been working on the design for the next iteration of my project, “The Collector”. This iteration will be a series of tests of elements from the first iteration, “Honouring Mr. Stevens.
“The Collector” will be a single room, approximately 3m x 4m, constructed at a secret location in Fitzroy North. It will be a complete late Victorian/early Edwardian style fit-out. It will have a door through which participants can enter, and once inside, people will be able to discover:
Kinetic puppetry.
Miniature worlds.
Shadow puppetry.
Body-puppetry in the form of a Raven in a three-piece suit.
Objects hidden within objects.
Drawers, suitcases, boxes, and the like, containing items to be discovered, explored, and played with.
A balloon-back Victorian chair with black upholstery, fitted into a corner and built into a nest.
The room may possibly have an arched ceiling, like a rib cage, and I fantasise about having a whole lot of furniture shoved into the rib cage, the hoarders hoard. (I have just spent time looking through Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s installations - there is a parallel aesthetic - liminality.
In one corner of the space will be a chatty mahogany balloon back chair, which functions as the centre point of a raven's nest. The performer will wear a three-piece suit with a full-head raven mask – this is a body puppet. The performer will not be present for all of the experiences, but when they are, they will have a Victorian table beside them where they offer the participant the opportunity to play a game of noughts and crosses. There tea, Iced Vovos and marshmallows - whether the raven is present or not. The noughts and crosses game will be made out of sticks and objects that are in-world with the raven as the “O” and “X” game components
The first interaction between the raven and participants is the offer to join in the game of noughts and crosses. I intend a second interaction to be a dance. This dance offer is risky creatively, and I am interested to see what happens. The purpose of this inclusion is to explore the extent to which interactivity can be effective in this weird, liminal environment. A third interaction will be a gift: the raven will offer a piece of jewellery to the participant, to keep.
The aesthetic of the space will be uncanny—a wunderkammer aesthetic, reflecting Jason and my interests and style.
The first iteration of the PhD project, “Honouring Mr. Stevens,” was a meditation on life, death, mortality and what it means to be human. “Honouring Mr. Stevens” asked the question: what do we hold onto, and why. The premise of “The Collector” comes from the same base, but presents the statement “If we don’t let go of things, we can become stuck”. This refers to both emotional and physical baggage. The hoarder is a central figure and metaphor for this baggage. The raven is clever, quick to learn, and a psychopomp —a being in between worlds.
Even though in my research it has shown that crows/ravens do not collect things, there is enough of a myth around this for me to include this as part of the installation. Also, because it’s half human, half raven, it’s poetically justified—the will be seated in the Victorian black balloon back chair. Around the chair will be the nest of sticks and feathers and grasses and bits of wool, and baubles, trinkets, jewels and other bits and bobs that the raven has collected.
What is the participants’ engagement and purpose here?
I wonder if the participant is given a talisman of some sort before they enter and tasked with putting it somewhere in the space. It may feel a little like an offering to a God, which I don’t particularly like. It could be, that the participant. Is given an obituary to read before they enter and then asked to send a message to the inhabitant of the Space after they have left.
References June 3
Cardiff J and Bures Miller G (2025) Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, accessed 3 June 2025. https://cardiffmiller.com/installations/