Short film programme & artist talk: Serious Games
HMKV at the Dortmunder U | level 3, event room
Image: Valeria Hofmann, AliEN0089, 2023, video still
The HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein presents a short film programme with the event Serious Games and invites you to watch films together and exchange ideas. Those interested in film can look forward to two short films followed by an artist talk with the artist duo Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler as well as Simón Jarpa Ruiz (production AliEN0089).
The short film programme Serious Games will take place as part of the Kleiner Freitag event series in the HMKV premises on level 3.
Serious Games - Gaming serves as a central platform in both short films to negotiate profound social and personal issues. The two films, which are presented in the context of the exhibition Silke Schönfeld: You Can't Make This Up and the Next Level Festival 2024, explore the interfaces between technology, humanity and the social impact of virtual worlds. They address the tensions between the real and digital worlds and the question of how virtual experiences can influence and shape our physical lives. It is not just about the gaming experience itself, but about the way in which video games increasingly function as a reflection and amplifier of real social dynamics.
Valeria Hofmann – AliEN0089 (2023), 21:49 min
During the protests in Chile, a stranger sneaks into a mysterious spiral house on the outskirts of the city. What looks like an entomologist's studio is also the home of SABINA, 32, a gamer who has just recorded a video about the harassment she is subjected to in a war video game. She publicly states that the aggression goes beyond the screen and she knows she is being persecuted in her real life. As if it were a first-person video game, the stranger manages to avoid Sabina's gaze and hacks into her computer, blurring the lines between the real and virtual worlds with chaotic consequences.
Valeria Hofmann (1988) is a Chilean director who lives between Santiago and Valparaíso and works with media and technology. Her work is mainly centred around documentary films and innovative narrative forms, with a particular interest in the horror and science fiction genres. Hofmann was a member of the artist collective MAFI - Filmic Map of a Country - whose projects have been shown at various venues including the IDFA DocLab, Centre Pompidou, MAC Santiago and public television, and with whom she made two documentaries: ‘Propaganda’ (2014), which premiered at the Visions Du Reel festival and was awarded the jury prize for the most innovative documentary, and ‘God’ (2019), which also premiered at Visions Du Reel. In 2019, Hofmann studied experimental cinema at the Lav School in Madrid and directed various short films such as ‘The Ram's Nap’ (2020), a documentary that reflects on the intersection of food, magic and technology. In 2023, she released the short film ‘AliEN0089’, which blends animation and live-action techniques to tell the story of a gamer who is harassed in a virtual game world. ‘AliEN0089’ premiered at Sundance in 2023 and won the award for Best Director for an International Short Film. Hofmann is currently developing ‘LUV’, a website dedicated to media archaeology and funded by the National Production Fund for New Media in Chile.
Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler – Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 (2016), 16:14 min
The starting point for Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 is various shortcomings in the behaviour of video game avatars controlled by human players. These ‘error scenarios’ are transferred to the bodies of real performers and re-enacted in the medium of film. Those ‘failed behaviours’ of game avatars - including skipping actions, idling behaviour, repeatedly failing to perform an action or imperfectly approximating human movements and gestures - are generally seen as the result of inadequacies and inability. This is especially true in a society characterised by the pressure of functionality, economic imperatives and self-optimisation. At the interface between experimental film, video clip and contemporary dance performance, Stefan Panhans' film takes a precise look at these “mistakes” with subtle humour.
Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler are cooperating on transdisciplinary, postcinematic 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. In 2019 they received the Innogy VISIT Award, Essen, and an honorable mention for HOSTEL from the Videonale.17 Award. In 2020 they had a Research Fellow Residency at the Academy for Theatre and Digitality in Dortmund. Furthermore, they were nominated for the 2022 Paula Modersohn-Becker-Award, as well as for the MuVi Award of the 69th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. 2023 they received the Visual Art Award from Aargauer Kuratorium. In 2024 hey received the Rompreis of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo for 2025/26
Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler, two familiar faces, are coming to visit: In 2021, the HMKV presented the exhibition The Pow(d)er of I Am Klick Klick Klick Klick and a very very bad musical! The title of this exhibition by the artists’ duo Stefan Panhans (DE) and Andrea Winkler (CH) refers to the rhetoric used by Evangelical Protestant megachurches in the USA, preaching a market-compatible neoliberal ideology of individual self-optimisation under the guise of Christian morals. The two artists’ works revolve around SUVs, communication with artificial intelligences, everyday racism, the cult of celebrity and clichéd roles, the “uncanny valley” and other post-digital feedback loops between human beings and virtual worlds as well as, last but not least, the precarious status of cultural workers.
