Golem

How deep can we dig?

According to Jewish legend, a golem is a figure made from dust and clay by a man of learning and brought to life by means of a ritual incantation. The golem was intended as an assistant to its human creator, as a companion or protector of the latter’s threatened community. But the experiment gets out of hand, and the creature turns against its creator.

This myth of artificial underlies Thomas Ryckewaert’s latest creation. It is a tale of ambition, creativity, power, creation, madness and destruction. It is a theme that touches upon the age-old fear of creating something that surpasses us: from the Bible via Frankenstein to the ghost of artificial intelligence. It is a story that raises the same question in every age: how deep can we dig?

Using a silent cinematic visual language, Golem balances on the thin line between man and matter, reason and fear. Face to face with a figure that looks a lot like man but is at the same time radically different, a mirror is held up to man. He sees monsters being born in things, in the other, in himself.