Pygmalion Event

Overview

The simultaneous double projection of The Pygmalion Event is concerned with the topic of metamorphosis and the transitions in the process of cognition. The left hand screen shows the priest of the chapel at the dominican monastery in Vence, France, as he puts on his robes and presents them to the viewer. The chapel in Vence was designed by Henri Matisse as a Gesamtkunstwerk (an untranslatable German term denoting a "total", "complete" artwork), from the windows to the exact liturgical robes the priest is putting on in the film. On the right hand screen, a movie is projected that appears to react, as it were, to the scene on the left hand screen, for its images correspond to the actions of the priest. Colors, landscapes or pictograms are evoked and add a formal commentary to the narrative structure of the film on the screen to the left. Just like two different linguistic systems which read and react to each other, the images change because of their respective counterparts.