Chris Ziegler: Corpus Pygmalion

The myth of the artist, who falls in love with the creature of his own creation, goes back to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In the 55 short verses (X 243-297) there emerges the mini-drama of Pygmalion and Galathea (here, untitled), which, as a poem, epic, novel, drama, musical or film has meanwhile undergone countless adaptations and variations.

Obsession, male fantasies, crazed demiurges? Pygmalion’s transgression of hybrid borders have fascinated the human imagination since time immemorial, courting body and soul in an erotic interplay. The contemporary ideal of the body oscillates somewhere between the obsession with fitness and virtual future, between the cult of the body and complete disembodiment, or questions of mental and physical hindrances. And yet, the body is always expression and medium of a self, far more than just a surface of pure externality. Power relations are defined through the body. Hence, the question is how today artists perceive the body. In "corpus pygmalion" we also seek the specifically female standpoint in this interplay.

"Corpus pygmalion" takes place in a multi-dimensional image space in which the perspective on the observed subject undergoes perpetual transformation. The body is the venue of confrontation; cultural conditions change the artistic process of transformation. The artist finds himself, all of a sudden, in a relationship of antagonism with his work: what is cause, what is effect, what is creation, what is creature?

Conception, direction and stage design: Chris Ziegler
Dance: Moya Michael
Music: Hugo Paquete
Text: Michael Hewel
Software: André Berhardt, Niko Völzow, Martin Bellardi, Chris Ziegler
Production: Chris Ziegler at the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media