Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler »Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 – Installation Version All Choices All Endings«, 2022, for the exhibition »Holding Pattern« curated by Tom McCarthy and Anne Hilde Neset. Accopanied by a catalogue by Lenz Publishing.
Taking its title in part from Joris-Karl Huysmans’s 1884 novel À Rebours (Against Nature) and in part from the multi-player ‘freeroam’ video-game mode in which storyline has been suspended to allow fans to collectively explore a game’s environment at their leisure, Panhans and Winkler’s installation shows dancers imitating gaming avatars. Homing in on the software’s glitches and imperfections, strewing about the paraphernalia of crowd-control and big spectator events that appear also to have been put ‘on hold’, the artists show their characters living — and dying — in algorithmic loops. (Kunstnernes Hus)
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. (Kathrin Busch)
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection, video stills (excerpt Holding Pattern, Lenz Publishing)
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
photo: Vegard Kleven (c) Kunstnernes Hus
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more
4K video, color/sound, 16:13 min., single-channel projection
Stage elements, guardrails, Pirelli DIABLO™ Supercorsa tire, motorbike helmets, carbon fiber, silicone, handbags, high-performance shirts, chains, ropes,
hi-vis vests, and more