Oppenheim uses puppets in some of his artwork. These puppets are moulded from the artists face they are displayed using the stings of control still hanging them from the ceiling.
Dennis Oppenheim: Attempt to Raise Hell 1974
The bell hangs at head height the puppet is held within the movement between siting and lying it cannot stand without hitting the bell making noise. the plinth replicates the wooden floor to which the puppet is staged.
‘By the mid-’70s he was making mechanized objects such as “Two Right Feet for Sebastian” (1974), in which a pair of boots kick the gallery walls sixty times a minute, and “Theme For A Major Hit” (also 1974), the current showstopper at Valentine. “Theme For A Major Hit” consists of a marionette — its bronze-painted head is a self-portrait — decked out in a silver suit and black turtleneck.
The puppet, operated by a motor clamped to the ceiling, taps (or, rather, clops) on a circular platform to a two-hour-long recording of “It Ain’t What You Make It’s What Makes You Do It,” a song written by Oppenheim and performed with a band that included Jim Ballard, Roger Welch, Bill Beckley, Connie Beckley, Christa Maiwold, John Shole and Diego Cortez.’
(http://hyperallergic.com/128192/homage-to-absurdity-the-restless-legacy-of-dennis-oppenheim/)
the fact that the puppet stands and moves by direction to me comments on the fact that ‘It’s what makes you do it,’ a reference to ‘the man’? again the puppet show us what we are forced not to see.
