Enacting an emergence from a Pupa
This image is from a performance at a festival in Germany, near Lubeck called Kultur Sommer.
Emergence from a Pupa was an attempt to enact the emergence of a butterfly from a pupa. I made the chrysalis from a thick black fabric. It is dangling from the bridge at Anker which spans the Lubeck-Elbe canal. Once I had climbed inside I sat there for some time before beginning to blow up a rubber dingy, to represent how a butterfly inflates its wings (with a fluid stored in its abdomen which is swollen when the butterfly first emerges from the pupa).
Once the boat was mostly inflated I emerged from my pupa, dangling, and finished blowing up the boat before lowering myself into it. Then I paddled downstream.
There is an article about it at
http://rzkultur.de/index.php?kat=31&cont=1226
From where I nabbed these last two images.
A working knowledge of German will be necessary for your comprehension of this article.

I’ve been increasingly fascinated by the lifecycles of insects for some time now. Particularly the sessile phase, when the larva sheds its outer casing for the last time and discards its limbs and head and mouthparts – everything that had been necessary for its survival, and just waits for adulthood. It is a remarkable right of passage.

I would have liked to put a quiktime movie of it on here, but blogspot seems not to be up to it. If you were interested enough in it to really want to see it I'd be unusually happy to send you a cd. For a bit of p&p perhaps if you live far away.
I’ll get back to pupae another day.