HAMBURG.- Most artists endure a frugal life because they participate in something almost sacred: human creativity. So they accept an existence under pressure, full of missions and self-exploitation. The two films »OPEN CALL« and »Anima Overdrive« and the associated installation by the artist duo Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler, who live in Berlin and Hamburg, revolve around these themes. Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler work together on transdisciplinary, post-cinematic projects that include filmic elements and sculptural, site-specific installations. They examine the hypermedia character of our present, the (power) structures behind the processes of digitalization and their effects on our thinking and our bodies, as well as everyday racism and the increasing precarization of working conditions.
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Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler are cooperating on transdisciplinary, post-cinematic projects that include filmic elements and sculptural, site-specific installations. They investigate the hypermedia imprint of our present, the (power) structures behind the processes of digitalization and their effects on our thinking and our bodies, as well as everyday racism and the increasing precarity of labor relations. Recent video installations, performances, and films are shown at international festivals and in solo and group exhibitions. Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler are among the prizewinners who will take up a ten-month scholarship at Villa Massimo (Rome Prize) from September 2025.
Looking down from above, we see a woman with hard facial expressions standing in front of an oversized rucksack and starting to rap. ‘Deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver, I'm your deliver delivery, I'm your delivery deliver, I'm your delivery deliver delivery, I deliver tokenism, I deliver you a boss, I deliver your perfect coach & artsy art consulter, I deliver minijobs and alcopops, I deliver all your medicine right before you know you're ill, I deliver liver! ... ‘ raps the delivery heroine (Lisa Marie Janke) in a label-less, armoured American football shirt and feral make-up to a driving beat - alone in a storage room in front of a huge rucksack and gaming chairs wrapped in bubble wrap.
The performance and video work by Andrea Winkler and Stefan Panhans is based on the music video aesthetic of the ‘socially conscious’ underground rap of the 1990s. The duo formulates a critique of the perfidious gig and delivery economy, which, with the ever- increasing implementation of algorithms and A.I. in the service of so-called platform capitalism, generates a world in which everything becomes a commodity. But in which the promises of flexibility and independence also turn out to be deceptions, while the people in these systems are exploited and driven to exhaustion - ‘I deliver everything!’.
Filmed in a single long take, the video Open Call takes the self-optimisation platitudes of neoliberal consumer culture ad absurdum. A glitzy presenter in a silver suit conjures up an imagined audience almost like a neoliberal version of ‘Uncle Sam’ with a kind of mystical business mantra, which he preaches into the iridescent candy coloured void. The key words and formulae seem to come from the latest global advertising campaigns and the bio-Darwinian phrases of current management coaching. They seem to be strung together by a confused A.I. who wants us to join in, to ‘perform’ in the best possible way, even if it's just ‘Becaaaauuuuuse, weee lovy lovy LOVE youuuuuuu!’.
An off-screen choir increasingly expresses its doubts. The context of the film is the current manifestations of the political and ideological shift towards a society of total personal responsibility, merciless competition between rival individuals and the increasing social coldness that goes hand in hand with this, which on the other hand leads to countless companies advertising their products to us with slogans in which they try to assure us how much they seem to love us, their products or even their work.
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