The Variational Mode: Three Cases about Documents, Artworks and Animation - Giacconi, Richard (Leiden Leiden University, 2019)
My artistic practice deals with documents and, more specifically, with the use and the exploration of their narrative potential. This dissertation is about three different cycles of artworks I produced as part of the research project. The notion of animation inheres in each of the three case studies: Case 1 focuses on my artworks about Simone Pianetti (1858-?), an Italian mass murderer who escaped and disappeared, and who then became a puppet character, animated as a stock character. Case 2 focuses on Augusto Masetti (1888-1966), an Italian soldier who shot at his superior officer and declared not to remember having done it, as if in a state of ecstatic possession, as if animated by an external entity. Mainly using publications and workshops, I produced a series of artworks related to legal, medical and anarchist records on his case. Case 3 follows the appearance of a puppet character in Colombia, el espiritado, and its supposed connections to the Masetti case. I describe a series of artistic works I produced, starting from a puppet script about the self-destruction of a village, which can be read as a commentary on puppetry, anarchism and animation.
Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor promoties te verdedigen op 13 november 2019.