The Assembly of Animals

Tim Spooner (United Kingdom)

5-8/5|Thursday to Sunday|8pm (5, 6/5);3pm, 5pm (7, 8/5);7-8/5|8PM     Old Court Building, 2nd floor (no elevator)     Tickets: MOP 200

Creation: Tim Spooner
Lighting Design: Marty Langthorne
Operators: Tim Spooner, Natacha Poledica and Marty Langthorne
Producers: Marine Thévenet and Nicky Childs

Tim Spooner is a visual artist and performance maker. Since 2010 he has presented a series of “performed sculptures” which fuse scientific experimentation together with puppetry. Creating vibrating compositions of living and inanimate matter through a combination of sound, electricity and often mundane everyday materials, his idiosyncratic and unique performances attempt to expand our understanding of the physical world by revealing the inner life of objects. Adaptable to different environments, Spooner’s work – usually non-verbal and suitable for all ages – has been presented in puppetry, dance and visual art contexts at galleries, studio theatres and festivals across the U.K. and Europe.

Exemplifying the low-tech, handmade yet magical quality of Spooner’s work, The Assembly of Animals is a series of demonstrated experiments, where the performers assemble, reorganise and animate an array of ingeniously constructed “animals” of very different sizes and forms. Magnets, motors, inflating objects, travelling glowing liquid and other mechanisms give this complex installation a movement and life of its own. After the performance, the audience is invited to explore the objects more closely and to discover the ways they function. 

Produced by Artsadmin for Bamboo funded through the EU Culture Programme.
Co-produced by TJP-Centre Dramatique National d’Alsace-Strasbourg. Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England with additional support from Cambridge Junction.

Duration: approximately 30 minutes, no interval