Stefan Panhans: Sieben bis Zehn Millionen (Seven to Ten Million)

A young man (Lisa Marie Janke) looks head-on into the camera with piercing blue eyes. He grows a three-day beard and wears a baseball cap with an orange and black camouflage pattern and a fur-trimmed hood. In the background, a buzz of alarms, horns and street noises can be heard. The diffuse, hectic soundscape, like the blurred backdrop, hazily suggests an urban space. Slow snowfall lends a calm counterbalance to the restless scenery.
Stefan Panhans' video work gets by without any cuts and with only a single camera shot. The protagonist fixes the viewer in an almost challenging manner and hurls a breathless monologue at him staccato-like and at intoxicating speed.
It is about the purchase of an undefined technical device, presumably a digital camera, as the reference to "seven to ten million" - there is probably talk of megapixels - suggests. The insistence on a purchase decision that is as worthwhile as possible seems to take on almost existential proportions for the protagonist. Greed, intoxication and obsession, even paranoia, are reflected in his blustered words. Seven to Ten Million is a clear-sighted reflection of the pitfalls of an outright absurd consumer behaviour, which we can also observe in some respects in ourselves. (Jelena Jazo)

 

Stefan Panhans, *967 in Hattingen/Ruhr, lives and works in Hamburg, Berlin and elsewhere.

Awards, fellowships and scholarships (selection): Research Fellowship Academy for Theatre and Digitality, Dortmund (2020), VISIT Artist in Residence Programme of the innogy Foundation, Essen (2019), Special Mention for HOSTEL, Videonale.17 Prize of the fluentum collection (2017). Scholarship of the Foundation of Lower Saxony for Media Art at the Edith Russ House (2017). Bremen Video Art Prize #22 (2014).

Current group exhibitions and festivals (selection): Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Louvre, Paris (2021), Something Between Us, Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2021), Zin Ex - From Abstraction to Algorithm, Tabakalera-International Centre for Contemporary Culture, San Sebastian (2020), EMAF-Electronic Media Art Festival #32 (2019) and #33 (2020), Videonale.17, Kunstmuseum Bonn, (2019) Addis Video Art Festival, Addis Ababa (2019), Fuzzy Dark Spot, Deichtorhallen Collection Falckenberg, Hamburg (2019), Osnabrück, Videonale.16, Kunstmuseum Bonn (2017).

Solo exhibitions (selection): The Pow(d)er of I Am Klick Klick Klick and a very very bad bad musical! (with Andrea Winkler), HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund (2021), Stefan Panhans-HOSTEL, Edith Russ Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg (2018), A Better Version of 人-Two Video Works by Stefan Panhans, Goethe Institute China, Beijing (2018), A Gallerina's Dream, Galerie im Turm, Berlin (2017), Stefan Panhans-Video Works, Goethe Institute, Porto Alegre (2015), Too Much Change Is not Enough, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2014).