THE INSTALLATION – The Molok

The Puppet

Molok is a 16′-tall live-action kinetic sculpture originally designed and built by artist Annalisa Barron, brought to life as the human-powered monster in the short film, The Molok. The sculpture was commissioned by co-creators Sam Wilson and Xander Chauncey in Fall 2017 and has since created a community based on shared memories told through storied items. Currently the sculpture is touring galleries across Pennsylvania, where visitors can continue to donate objects, growing Molok’s body and hoard.

The Molok Installation is an interactive sculpture exhibit centered around the story of The Molok. At each exhibit, the puppet is positioned in the space at the center of a veritable garden of additive sculptures and art pieces, all built entirely from donated objects. The Molok consumes the memories and stories attached to donated objects in his hoard and twists them into his own dark allegories for our society. These tales are represented through the large-scale sculptures built uniquely for each gallery space. Each exhibit has its own theme, drawn from the mythologies of each community we visit.

Throughout each installation, we collect objects from the local community and encourage visitors to contribute the stories of their objects to our story archive, The Molok’s Lair. Each any every object gets built into future Molok installations.; either into Molok’s body, his hoard, or one of the future sculptures, costumes or art pieces. The objects we receive from each community determine the nature of future Molok exhibits, making The Molok Installation forever a sum of the parts contributed by each and every person who has participated.

The Molok sculpture continues to grow and change into perpetuity, as more and more objects are donated to the project. It serves as a living time capsule, a moving collection of human memories. Part of The Molok‘s mission is to plant a seed for further developing non-digital forms of art that are spectacular not because they are perfectly rendered, but because they exist in our tactile reality and contain insight into the human experience.

↑Tour the Bottle Works installation!

The Molok at Bottle Works open August 6 – September 10, 2022

Sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the sculpture has received object offerings from over 100+ donors, including Orange County Choppers, novelist Steven Sherrill, Spoonbill Books owner Jonas Kyle, animator Jack Feldstein, puppeteer Bill Diamond and many more!

VISIT OUR ONLINE ARCHIVE

We opened submissions for object offerings starting in Spring 2018. Check out our online archive to see the items that have been built into our monster so far and view their stories!

Where’s Molok?

Updated: March 2023

About The Founding Artist: Annalisa Barron

Annalisa Barron is an artist and filmmaker currently working in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from Penn State University with a BFA in Painting and Drawing in 2013 and with an MFA in Sculpture from the Pratt Institute in 2017. Her short films include The Kingdom of Back (2017), E.V.E.:ERECTUS VEGETABILIS EVITANEOUS (2013), Incarnate (2013) and Chair Man (2012). Her work has been exhibited at the Cooper Union, University of Rochester, Southern Oregon University, BunkerPROJECTS Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA), U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua, NO/GLOSS film festival (UK), and the Anthology Film Archives (NYC). Her most recent film, ‘The Kingdom of Back’ (2017) was featured in GRRL HAUS Cinema’s 2018 European tour. Currently, Annalisa is starting an art based film studio, Big Al’s Flying Films, which focuses on empowering young artists to work with their hands and learn to represent themselves as professionals.