Cast behind you the bones of your mother
‘Cast behind you the bones of your mother’ is an instruction found in the Greek Ovidian myth Metamorphoses (AD 8), that was issued by the Oracle of Themis to the desolate Deucalion and Pyrrha—the last humans left on earth after Zeus’s great obliterating deluge. Initially perplexed, Deucalion and Pyrrha soon realise that they are the children of the earth, and the bones of their mother therefore are the stones beneath their feet. They cast these stones behind them and from the ground upon which the stones fall, a new generation of earth dwellers emerge.
It is in this terrain of dramatic myth and emerging sculptural forms that Clemens von Wedemeyer’s solo show at KOW resided; it is an extension from his 2013 solo project/exhibition Cast at MAXXI in Rome. Cast focused on ideas pertaining to cinema production: from the underlying politics of the local Cinecittà studio of Rome (the Mussolini-founded ‘Italian Hollywood’), to the many smaller industries, economies, and types of labour that surrounded it; whereas the development for Wedemeyer’s show in KOW took the project into a more textual and theatrical realm. Two newer works were included with three works from Cast thus generating a fresh thrust.
The Beginning, Living Figures and Dying (2013) comprises five HDTV screens side-by-side on the ground-floor wall of the gallery space. The screens are elevated on the wall, and show snippets of found footage from films such as Jason and the Argonauts, Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes, and so on. The clips often feature characters/actors finding, clambering over, or trying to topple large god-like (film-set) effigies. A clip appears on the right-hand screen, passes on to the screen to