Klick, and a very very bad bad musical !, solo
show at HMKV–Hartware MedienKunstVerein,
Dortmund, 2021
Solo exhibition curated by Inke Arns, with nine art works, including three new video installations:
Border Control (2021, Premiere), DEFENDER (2021, Premiere), If You Tell Me When Your Birthday Is (Machinima) (2020),
as well as HOSTEL (2018), Freeroam Ŕ Rebours, Mod#I.1 - Installation Version (2017/21), Noch ein Sportstück (2014).
Two new sculptures: Erlkönig (2020, Premiere), Untitled (Vests) (2021) by Andrea Winkler and the photo series
Bringing the WoW Home (2021, Premiere) by Stefan Panhans.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Inke Arns, Tom McCarthy and Martin Herbert.
DEFENDER
DEFENDER is a post-industrial (anti-) musical. Three women form a work team that is sent to an underground garage with an unknown assignment. All they find is a mysterious SUV wrapped in a kind of 'Erlkönig' camouflage used by the automotive industry to camouflage design novelties. Should this be their new "SMART-MOBILE-HOME-OFFICE-DRIVE-MACHINE THINGY"?
Seemingly quite close to burn-out at some moments, a breathless trialogue of restlessly spoken and sung slogans from self improvement rhetoric, fragments from SUV commercials and self-help slogans of evangelical megachurch gurus unfolds, all of which show amazing parallels. "There must be something better!" they chant at the end, before then expressing themselves only in animal sounds - theinevitable collapse, or rather an act of liberation through which they reclaim their own voices?
In the film, the symptoms of the conditions of our working and living environment are directly linked back to our individual fears, wishes and desires - resilience training, SUVs and pseudo-religion do not seem to be the right way out.
crashpads, variable sizes
photo: Jannis Wiebusch
crashpads, variable sizes
photo: Jannis Wiebusch
Erlkönig
The SUV in in the video DEFENDER wears an Erlkönig by Andrea Winkler: camouflage suits for car models that are supposed to remain invisible on test drives. The Erlkönig sculpture illustrates the principle of a marketing value shell. Since the [real] SUV did not fit into HMKV's freight elevator, we now see - in a punch line ŕ la The Emperor's New Clothes, only in reverse - the nothingness, enclosed in a supple padded shell that appears as a hybrid between image, sculpture and body. (Celina Basra, Springerin)
5 m x 2,14 m x 1,74 m; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
5 m x 2,14 m x 1,74 m; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
If You Tell Me When Your Birthday Is
If You Tell Me When Your Birthday Is is a 'lost in translation' machinima mini-drama in three fragments. It develops against the backdrop of the ever-expanding so-called 'linguistic capitalism' (Frédéric Kaplan) and its current trends in digital AI and robot-driven culture-industrial language production. It combines 3D scans of real objects with real-time computer graphics and was 'filmed' entirely in the virtual world thus created.
What can be heard is a dialogue based on communication with and between artificial intelligences such as algorithm-driven chatbots from different areas of current user culture. This dialogue poetically uses and reflects the peculiarities and differences to, but also the similarities of this kind of communication with that of human to human. The shortcomings of the combination of techniques used remain consciously visible rather than striving for absolute seamlessness and perfect consumability.
size variable
size variable
size variable
size variable
size variable
If
You Tell Me When Your Birthday Is (Machinima Version),
2020, Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler,
CGI video, 4K, colour/sound, 12:18 min., 4K screen, turnstile,
size variable
Border Control
Border Control could itself be described as a kind of border migration. In the video, which is condensed like a dream structure, a group of female dancers adopt scenes, clothing, gestures, movements, and looks from a milieu that is otherwise still largely dominated by men and role models of masculinity - border control in the actual, as well as in the figurative sense.
The impetus for Border Control came from a high-profile exercise that the Austrian government held at the border with Slovenia in the summer of 2018. In the course of this exercise, hundreds of highly equipped police officers and soldiers of the new police border protection unit "Puma" rehearsed the fight against mass border crossings - accompanied by numerous journalists and television cameras - the defense of the European external border as a theatrical performance and demonstration of defensive strength. A demonstration of power, the effect of which is not only directed outward, but is also always an assurance inward.
stacks of discounter flyer; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
Freeroam Ŕ Rebours Mod#I.1 - Installation
Displacement activities, idling modes, failing to repeat attempted actions, the imperfect imitation of human movements and gestures and other 'behavioural flaws' by avatars in the game are usually regarded as inefficiency and incompetence in a society whose characteristic aims are functionalisation, economy and (self-)optimisation. However, the film works with just such 'flaws', operating where experimental film, videoclips, performance and forms of contemporary dance overlap. By restaging and transforming these 'failure scenarios' of the avatar aesthetic with human performers, the project exemplifies a kind of practicing insufficiency 'from within', and embraces the defects of the algorithmic machine instead of longing for its perfection. If one can read into the computer game an ideology of practicing skills, efficiency, and optimization, the game characters in the video are copied aesthetics of failure and a choreography of hesitation that are revealing in the context of current theories of passivity and inefficiency, and formulates an almost utopian content through the unintentional passivation of the characters in the computer game.
single-channel projection, stage elements, queue management systems, chains, handbags, motorcycle helmets, carbon, silicone, pizza
delivery bag, mannequin leg, leggings, functional shirts, novel, etc., size variable; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
single-channel projection, stage elements, queue management systems, chains, handbags, motorcycle helmets, carbon, silicone, pizza
delivery bag, mannequin leg, leggings, functional shirts, novel, etc., size variable; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
single-channel projection, stage elements, queue management systems, chains, handbags, motorcycle helmets, carbon, silicone, pizza
delivery bag, mannequin leg, leggings, functional shirts, novel, etc., size variable; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
single-channel projection, stage elements, queue management systems, chains, handbags, motorcycle helmets, carbon, silicone, pizza
delivery bag, mannequin leg, leggings, functional shirts, novel, etc., size variable; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
Untitled (Vests)
“Also in her new work, Untitled (Vests), one can connect the vestlike material collages with fighting outfits in video games. Body shape is simultaneously fluffed up with down fabric and fleece and sewn up in distorting fashion. Visually these hunched volumes draw on protective clothing. Their simulated armour makes them appear more precarious. The soft, material nature, the loss of any hardness, opens a space for reflection on the overloaded subject, or better: on the present form of subjectivisation through overload. A hold merely provides the framework. Its rods end in stump-like appendices, dysfunctional or precisely because of this, as one might hope along with Haraway, ‘capable of connecting with others’1 or open for entirely new structures and forms of becoming.”(Kathrin Busch)
HOSTEL
Conceived as a series, HOSTEL entails four episodes. They take place in a fully occupied hostel room, equipped with metal bunk beds and sleeping bags, as well as sports paraphernalia like yoga mats, exercise balls, a stepper and climbing ropes. The five protagonists are workers of the cultural sector, living precarious and flexibilized lives. In a dialog with, or directly addressing the camera, they fight a restless spoken word battle.
At the same time, texts are circulating between the performers, who then take on parts of the identity of the other. National attributions are distributed in form of cliché garments like a Pakistani Anarkali, a traditional alpine jacket, a blonde wig and an Asian cone hat. This principle is similar to the selection of video game characters and their layout with hairstyles, clothes and accessories. These types are often characterized by racist clichés like for instance the dark-skinned gangster. The characters in HOSTEL on the other hand come together as the voice of a multiple identity that deconstructs clichés and makes similarities recognizable.
A hostel functions as a setting for this chamber play about a globalized and increasingly burnt out society, an exemplary non-space in the sense of Marc Augé; as a transitional space for different cultures and nations. The number of such spaces has increased in the past years, due to a stronger global network and mobility, which has become more affordable. Ryanair, Flixbus and precisely hostels have become the non-space of those who would like to keep up with the fast pace of globalization. If Michel Houellebecq spoke of the economy driven world as a supermarket in the 1990s, then today the world has become a discounter.
Winkler, UHD video monitors, media player, amplifiers, loudspeaker, non-slip mats, beanbags, peanut ball, exercise ball, yoga mats, battle rope, folding camping
stools, resistance loop, camping lamp, body power exercise equipment, etc. approx. 5 m x 5m; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
Winkler, UHD video monitors, media player, amplifiers, loudspeaker, non-slip mats, beanbags, peanut ball, exercise ball, yoga mats, battle rope, folding camping
stools, resistance loop, camping lamp, body power exercise equipment, etc. approx. 5 m x 5m; photo: Jannis Wiebusch
