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...

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.