Many-body systems far from equilibrium can exhibit self-similar dynamics characterized by universal exponents. Numerical studies of a quenched ferromagnetic spinor BEC have revealed the appearance of extreme wave events on the way to the universal regime. Furthermore, as a result of these caustics, real-time instanton defects are generated, which take on the form of space-time vortices in the transversal spin order parameter. However, the random appearance of real-time instantons in space and time makes it experimentally challenging to study these excitations in a controlled way. Thus we aim for deterministic preparation of a single instanton event. We employ local spin-dependent phase imprints, which lead to excitations in the transversal spin length. We probe their time evolution and characterize their structure with spatially resolved detection of all relevant spin observables.