The Bodyless Head 1983

I started with this question. How can people cause immense suffering for others at a massive scale for economic gain? Sitting in board rooms wearing suits and ties with clean hands, creating policies like war, climate change, eliminating jobs for cheap labor, paying unlivable wages, toxic working conditions,  poisoning water,  etc.  

The Bodyless Head is a Puppet Show about Joe, the man who eats his body to get ahead  and the parallel story of the effects on the body of the Earth. It is a story of dismemberment and how the return to our own bodies and to the body of the Earth is where re-membering takes place. 

We explore our culture’s numbing of body and feelings. Only the head and getting ahead are respected and valued.  

The story is told with humor by a ringmaster in a circus sideshow. Joe, a rather unusual freak, who yet maintains a normality beyond belief, eats his body and becomes all head. Parallel to this, the earth and its people are devoured by abstraction – where flesh and blood become black and white marks on a profit loss tax form. 

(photos below show some of these)

To tell the Earth’s Story are 9 – 8’ x 7’ painted drops. The first 2 are in color where the people’s feet are still firmly planted in the earth. As Joe begins to eat his body, the last 6 panels are black and white marks becoming ever more abstract and removed from the earth. Finally the bomb destroys the earth and Joe becomes only a head. 

(no photos of this)

To tell Joe’s story is a Cranky, paintings rolled between two rods, stopping for each scene. Joe is a 3 ‘ puppet whose body is velcroed together and a mouth large enough to eat his body parts. 

Each scene ends with Joe eating a body part. He begins with his finger. 

Eventually Joe devours his whole body becoming only a head.  

Joe eats his body to get ahead.