Abstract

This article explores the phenomenon of object performance in the US and France in the late 1970s and early 1980s, variously described as tabletop spectacles, ready-made puppetry, and théâtre d’objets. It focuses on the late-1970s work of three artists: Stuart Sherman, Paul Zaloom, and Christian Carrignon (of Théâtre de Cuisine), whose work in this “minor genre” has been widely influential. Examining the shared and diverging formal aspects of their object work, this article argues that their performances are marked by an implied or explicit ecological consciousness and a connection to childhood and play. Situating the emergence of tabletop object performance within the end of the postwar economic boom, the article claims that these artists working in affluent economies invented a playful and incisive response to the growing crisis of the accumulation of waste. Drawing on Michael Marder’s Dump Philosophy, the essay argues that these object performances intervene in the epistemological and material dump of postwar consumer capitalism, offering playful strategies of navigating a world of refuse. The article suggests that these performances continue to resonate in the present day, with object play remaining a viable mode of grappling with the material and psychological overwhelm of our current ecological crises.