Karl Dunér | THE ISLAND

Karl Dunér´s mechanical dolls are challenging. We encounter them in an empty space of total openness – anything can happen, anything can be inscribed on them, and on us. I stand before them, waiting. There is an expectation that something is going to happen. Their automated electronic steering will produce some moving, sometime. My eyes wander slowly over their grey surface, their gestalt. Their white and eyeless faces do not give any indication of identity. They do not represent any women or men, any young or old, any weak or strong. Ageless, genderless, unaffected and unmoved. Their universal openness condemns me to waiting. I cannot but start thinking about them and also about myself who is standing in front of them, equally motionless, maybe equally unreadable for my environment. There is an aspect of mindful release in this waiting. My mind starts wandering, yet my senses enter a mode of increased awareness. Is this turning into a meditation?

This whole scenario is radically transformed at the moment when I perceive a tiny twist of the head, a slight moving of the breast. Slowly up and down, up and down. One of the dolls has started breathing, and soon the other ones also join in. Immediately I start perceiving them as something living. They leave their objecthood behind and turn into living beings. My animal instincts identify a kind of animated familiarity: These dolls are like me… And yet, a slight feeling of uneasiness emerges… [...]

Karl Dunér's mechanical dolls differ from theatre puppets, they do not make visible the unmoved mover behind their gracious little gestures and light breathing. The automated electronic steering is hidden beneath their floating grey cloaks. They also differ from traditional automatons that became popular in eighteenth and nineteenth century. These old mechanical dolls fascinated through their display of extraordinary skills, the artificial flute player, the mechanical writer almost outperformed ordinary human beings at the time. In comparison to Dunér's dolls they were overachievers.

In his case, the dolls rather scale down their performance to some basic movements: a slow nodding or tiny twist of the head, a hardly noticeable bending of the trunk, a small gesture of the hands, and – the breathing. So, on one hand, Dunér's dolls seem to be quite limited in their expressive means, on the other hand it is exactly this limitation that makes their performance so intense. The acute mindfulness of their movements has a powerful impact on my own bodily sensation. I am totally focused on their small twists, little slippages and tiny changes in posture – connecting, bonding, relating.

A certain intimacy emerges that is strangely mixed with an uncanny feeling of otherness. I perceive them as animated beings, but at the same time I know that they are automated mechanical dolls built from wood, wire, gauze and plaster. [...]

Karl Dunér offers us a performative scenario through his artworks. His dolls open a wide horizon of imaginary readings and existential challenges. They are positioned in the 'in-between' that stimulates my creative thinking. Their 'natural' movements provide them with the status of a living being, their visibly artificial design though – the lack of individual faces, the neutral costume, the sometimes clumsy motion – emphasises their object quality. [...]

Their assumed interactivity with their neighbour doll gives them a potential to spark imaginary dramatic narratives. Their seemingly intentional interaction embraces not only the museum guardians but also the visitors and gives them, voluntarily or not, a part in the performance. Therefore, all present in the exhibition space have the opportunity to respond to them with curiosity, attention, rejection, and maybe even love and caring to provide them performatively with a subject character.

Through these ambivalences, the claims to interaction and the stimulation of the imaginary, the dolls have on me a long-lasting impression. They pull me out of my comfort zone – and this is what I am striving for when looking for art.

Text: Meike Wagner, professor of Theatre Studies

Karl Dunér (b. 1963) is an artist and play director based in Stockholm. In 2020-2021, he presented the critically acclaimed solo exhibition ÖAR [Islands] at Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, which was subsequently shown at the Swedish Institute in Paris. Dunér's work has previously been exhibited at Kristinehamn Art Museum, Vandalorum, Freiburg Elwerk (DE), to name a few,  as well as in Belgium, Ireland and Japan. He is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet and the Public Art Agency of Sweden, and holds a ten-year working grant from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. Dunér has formerly directed a large number of theatre productions at The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, most notably Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (2019), which received unanimous acclaim.