The American artist Laurie Simmons started photographing miniature tableaux of dolls and dollhouses over 30 years ago. Thus, it is not very surprising that the artist chose to use this refined visual language in her first film-a 40-minute musical. While during the 1970s, Simmons focused mainly on the interiors of empty dollhouses, her attention gradually moved to the dolls that she had previously put to one side. The early creative period with these figures was dominated almost entirely by women in interiors, a focal theme that is visible throughout the artist's oeuvre. From 1986, Simmons staged her first production with carefully selected hand and ventriloquist puppets, whose appearance she altered with the help of bright lighting or unusual perspectives. Later the artist developed an interest in everyday objects, for which she prepared elaborate settings. In her Walking Objects series for example, she shows a dollhouse, an hourglass, a child's microscope, an old microphone, cakes and petit fours, as well as a firearm walking on small puppet legs that make them reminiscent of the anthropomorphic characters from Lewis Caroll's book Alice in Wonderland. [...]

Jan Seewald
Translation: Sarah Trenker


Catalogue excerpt
fast forward 2. The Power of Motion
Media Art Sammlung Goetz
Editors: Ingvild Goetz and Stephan Urbaschek
Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2010

Laurie Simmons, The Music of Regret, 2005/06
Single-channel video projection, color, sound
Edition 4/10 (+ 2 a. p.)
40'