Demi-Urges: Recent films by Martin Gerigk

Demi-Goddesses (2023)

Anyone familiar with Martin Gerigk’s films will not be surprised that this one, like all of his works, is expertly crafted, with exquisite attention to detail. The shimmering, evocative music functions as a fluctuating field of sonic energy, giving birth, moment by moment, to a sequence of equally exquisite animated collages, with visual elements supplied by Gerigk’s frequent collaborator Nikola Gocić.

Fans of Gerigk’s work will also be familiar with the powerful impact of the poetic imagery in these mostly wordless collages. The images in Gerigk’s films tend to speak elliptically yet eloquently, often about deep energetic structures which underlie everyday experience, whether Gerigk is examining biological and ecological structures, as he did in Structures of Nature (2017), or, as in this film, the structures that seem to externally guide our life-choices and passions. Scientific and mathematical symbols abound in his work, but these symbols are given poetic and emotional significance. This feels natural in the work of an artist so focused on the structural aspects of life.

Gocić’s collage materials come from 19th century photos and antique designs, and Gerigk colors them in sepia tones, often on a backdrop of faded, antique parchment, setting the film in the past. The film consists of several short poetic episodes, featuring female figures who are clearly more than ordinary mortal women: they possess the power to create, destroy, and transform objects, to pass through walls and tele-transport themselves, shaping the fates of the hapless male figures on which they are fixated. Although these female figures appear to re-write the stories of mortal men at will, much like Athena or Aphrodite in a classic Greek myth, the ambiguity of their part human/part divine nature gives the film a shimmering spectrum of possible poetic readings.

In the opening section, Selection (complacency), one of the Goddess figures singles out a gentleman from among a large crowd and transforms him into an egg. The suggestion might be of a flesh-and-blood woman setting her sights on a man because she thinks he would make a good father. I’ve observed that behavior in real life. In some cases the woman quickly gets rid of the man, as soon as she she has the child. One may also view the “demi-goddesses” in the film as more goddess than woman; they represent the hidden forces in the universe that seem to single us out for a specific fate, altering the course of our lives. I certainly have had the feeling, at times in my life, that hidden forces were conspiring to send my life in a particular direction, often a direction I had no conscious wish to go. It certainly felt as if some minor deity was amusing herself by playing ping-pong with my life. In the case of this man who becomes an egg, perhaps he will give birth to a powerful idea, or a political movement, rather than fathering a child. These feminine figures can be viewed not only as particular women, hyper-focused on motherhood, but as embodiments of the creative, generative forces of the universe.

In his artist statement, Gerigk writes that the film envisions a “reversed gendered world,” where women have power over men. Nevertheless, the film is made from an exclusively male point of view, and the goddesses seem only to be interested in developing handsome, strong males in their eggs. Although the female figures are powerful, the film is far from a feminist statement, as it embraces the traditional view of women whose existence revolves exclusively around their relation to men. Although there is no dialog, one could say that the film fails the “Bechdel test.”

In a section called The Failed Experiment, several female-scientist-goddesses contemplate an egg which gives birth to a handsome, muscular man, but one with a green leaf growing out of his butt. It seems their experiment has gone awry, and they do away with him, to the sound of female giggling. Perhaps the man was too interested in his own anal pleasure to be of use to them.

The final section, Transcendence, is indeed transcendentally beautiful, a vision of the Great Mother Goddess, whose hair is made of a galaxy of stars, surrounded by shooting stars which rise rather than fall. The soft, sepia vision is made numinous by Gerigk’s shimmering sound score, full of immanent energy. A few nomadic figures on horseback watch in awe as she rises against the night sky. She is now fully a goddess, no longer demi, and her radiance reminds us of the feminine, generative power which underlies creation. This moment of pure, cinematic magic reveals that the film was not so much about scheming women, trying to manipulate men, but simply about the forces of the universe, going about their business, the perpetuation of life. Gerigk guides us by steps, throughout the duration of this short film, from the earthly to the divine, uplifting us to the level where we perceive how the universe works her will through us, whether we want her to or not.

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