Stefan Panhans

A jam-packed train ride of a bunch of restless, tired and closemouthed people looking like half-professional, contemporary celebrity look-alikes; among others, in the company of lots of XXL-coffee-to-go cups, a ghost of a 1930’s dirndl, two police officers in full rig, a jogging zombie and the military...

“I deliver all your medicine right before you know you’re ill!” Clicked. Ordered. Delivered. Anima Overdrive sells the poison for overstrung souls. To pulsating beats from the nineties, a performer spits word salvos through the ether with the penetrating force of a turbo-capitalistic ad campaign.

Stefan Panhans’ Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 takes as its point of departure various shortcomings in the behavior of videogame avatars controlled by human players. These 'failure scenarios' are transposed onto the bodies of real performers, and recreated in the medium of film. Such 'failed behaviors' by game avatars – including displacement activities, idling behaviors, repeated failures to perform an action, the imperfect approximations of human movements and gestures – are generally considered to be the result of inadequacies and inability, especially in a society shaped by the pressures of functionality, economic imperatives and (self-)optimization.

A jam-packed train ride of a bunch of restless, tired and closemouthed people looking like half-professional, contemporary celebrity look-alikes; among others, in the company of lots of XXL-coffee-to-go cups, a ghost of a 1930’s dirndl, two police officers in full rig, a jogging zombie and the military...

“I deliver all your medicine right before you know you’re ill!” Clicked. Ordered. Delivered. Anima Overdrive sells the poison for overstrung souls. To pulsating beats from the nineties, a performer spits word salvos through the ether with the penetrating force of a turbo-capitalistic ad campaign.

Stefan Panhans’ Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 takes as its point of departure various shortcomings in the behavior of videogame avatars controlled by human players. These 'failure scenarios' are transposed onto the bodies of real performers, and recreated in the medium of film. Such 'failed behaviors' by game avatars – including displacement activities, idling behaviors, repeated failures to perform an action, the imperfect approximations of human movements and gestures – are generally considered to be the result of inadequacies and inability, especially in a society shaped by the pressures of functionality, economic imperatives and (self-)optimization.