Hier sitz ich, forme Menschen
Here I sit, forming humans

“Here I sit, forming humans

In mine own image,

It will be a race like me,

For suffering, weeping,

Enjoying and rejoicing,

and shall Pay thee no attention,

Like me!”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Prometheus

The cycle of works “Hier sitz ich, forme Menschen” is a quote from Goethe’s poem “Prometheus” and deals with people’s striving for self-optimization and a unique human evolution. 

The word “evolution”, in contrast to all other living beings, refers in context with a human to a technical-cultural development and not a biological process. With self-responsibility and initiative, people shape their own development through technical progress. They adapt their environment to their body and not the other way around as in conventional evolutionary developments. Man can therefore be described as his own creator. 

I am interested in the origin of this constant striving for further development. In the Christian mythology of the West - and thus the basis of Western culture - for thousands of years people were convinced that humans were sinful and imperfect. The people themselves caused this through the Fall of man. It is therefore mythologically assumed that a perfect life situation has been lost. This lost perfection in a society's cultural memory causes the scientific pursuit of improving a flawed living environment and a sinful body. 

In my work I revolve around the thesis that people's own optimizations are based on a deep-seated, divine ideal image, that the culturally present ideal determines technical development by shaping the physical ideal of Western people. This wishful image directly influences the willful, evolutionary tendency that is taken.