Length: about nine minutes - edited on a loop
Clay-work and camera : Jakob Gautel
Warmest thanks to Céline from the TRIAC and to Eriko Momotani.
FRAC Haute-Normandie collection

Actors: two hands and a small ball of clay.

A character - a little person - a man, is born from clay - the raw material - before our eyes, in real time.
Two hands bustle about around him, modeling him, manipulating him, pressing and caressing him, giving him a human form - and, as they leave the frame, abandoning him to his own life and our viewing.

Will he become alive? Will he get up, and start to move?
He’s lying down, peacefully, in a lifeless slumber.
In a suspended breath.

The artist as demiurge.
Creation.
Adam.
Prometheus.
Golem.
A return to the raw material.

Exhibition Golem ! Avatats d’une légende d’argile, musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, 2017 (curated by Ada Ackerman, Thalim-CNRS, on the invitation of Paul Salmona, mahJ). The video opens the exhibition, opposite the voice of Jorge Luis Borges reciting his poem The Golem.
→  Golem ! at the mahJ