It is demonstrated that the terms ascribed to the puppets often do not do justice to the performing objects, since they only describe individual elements and do not take the actual performative action into account.
Particularly in the case of those puppets that are animated by the physical movement of the puppet player—as is the case with costume puppets —a fragmentary view of the performing objects leads to an enormous loss of meaning.
The complexity of moving animal puppet stages is demonstrated by a presentation of their versatile performance techniques and stage contexts. How the puppets from Mali within the collection KOLK 17 were actually played could not be conclusively clarified. Nevertheless, the objects could be extended to include possible contexts of use and meaning: these contexts are essential for further research. Riehn, S. Contrary to this museal practice, Fritz Fey Jr. They collected diverse forms of cultural expression from the African continent.
Despite this detailed consideration, only individual set pieces of the puppets were collected, such as face masks or the zoomorphic or anthropomorphic head parts of full-body masks, but not elements such as costumes, carrying frames or guide rods, nor documentation of performance scenarios or information about figure carvers or players. The puppets were exhibited only in fragments, mostly in an unrelated and uncontextualized manner, which is particularly evident in the way the animal puppet heads were once displayed, hung on the walls of the exhibition rooms like hunting trophies.
The parts were individually inventoried during a photographic survey in — Only in could the individual parts be reassigned to the original puppet. In most cases, the objects were only assigned to the continent of Africa broadly; in less than a third of cases, a country, region or community was given. The physical fragmentation of the objects in the collection and the lack of documentation of their previous functions and meanings impede our understanding of the former performance pieces.
