GOLEM

The cone of earth is the strange fusion of nature and cul­ture, the most idio­syn­crat­ic result of pure geom­e­try in the nat­ur­al world we expe­ri­ence. There­fore, the start­ing point of the scenog­ra­phy is the geom­e­try of the mound of earth, the cone of earth from which the Golem was cre­at­ed. This geom­e­try is con­tin­u­al­ly var­ied, cre­at­ing dis­tinct spa­tial qual­i­ties in each exhi­bi­tion chap­ter and exhib­it group, which, not with­out rea­son, are rem­i­nis­cent of Expres­sion­ist films of the 1920s. For exam­ple, beau­ti­ful Golem lith­o­graphs by Hugo Stein­er-Pratt are pre­sent­ed in a room rem­i­nis­cent of Fritz Lang’s film set.

Just as the writ­ing brings the Golem to life, the explana­to­ry texts on the walls appear and dis­ap­pear again. Using spe­cial pro­jec­tor tech­nol­o­gy, the writ­ing is also brought to life. In a visu­al­ly mag­i­cal cab­i­net of curiosi­ties, the var­i­ous Golem rep­re­sen­ta­tions reach into the vis­i­tors’ space (using 3D glasses).

The film instal­la­tion, devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for the exhi­bi­tion, trans­forms the rich earth tones of the scenog­ra­phy into a lumi­nous cen­ter of pow­er. More than 50 films from film his­to­ry cre­ate a visu­al essay on the theme ​“The Golem is Com­ing” on a three-part screen. The theme is traced through­out art his­to­ry and presents impres­sive works and instal­la­tions from con­tem­po­rary art. In the space, illu­mi­nat­ed sole­ly by day­light, pop-cul­tur­al adap­ta­tions (comics, ani­ma­tion, and com­put­er games) of the Golem theme are made acces­si­ble to vis­i­tors via tablet in a space still char­ac­ter­ized by the repose cone geometry.