Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler
4K video mini series, 4 episodes, colour/sound, 79:00 mins.
monitors, media players, headphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, nonslip mats, beanbags, peanut ball, exercise ball, yoga mats,
battle rope, folding camping stools, resistance bands, camping lamp, body power exercise equipment, etc., approx. 5 x 5 m
DEFENDER is a postindustrial (anti)musical. Three women form a kind of work or service team, which was sent on an unknown mission into an underground carpark. Only one single vehicle occupies the garage, seemingly a big black SUV disguised in a kind of ‘Test Mule’ camouflage usually used by the automotive industry to hide design novelties and at the same time to attract special attention during prototype test drives.
Without knowing what to do and how they came to be there, a trialogue with song interludes unfolds, which consists of, among other things, some stressfully internalised self-improvement rhetoric, fragments from SUV commercials and selfhelp messages from megachurch gurus, interrupted by moments of confusion and burn-out-like symptoms, as well as, the SUV’s virtual language assistant quoting the beginning of Georg Büchners “Lenz”. In a constant movement, interspersed with workout elements, dance and aerobic routines, they circle around the enigmatic object without result and after an almost ritual-like singing evocation of it, they seem to fall into a state of liberation from all this by suddenly and seamlessly emitting only animal sounds at the end. The fact that the world's resources are finite is nothing new. In DEFENDER, the obvious moments of wasted energy and resources inscribed in the SUV issue are inter-woven with the flexibilised and selfoptimised inner life of contemporary individuals – whose energy might also come to an end eventually – and are fed back to the wishes, fantasies and desires that arise from the current conditions of our living and working environment. Many of them are paradigmatically served by the appearance and the advertising world around the more and more - and in the pandemic crisis even increasing - boom of the phenomenon SUV, which here functions like a kind of 'MacGuffin' for the social unconscious.
Symptoms of the conditions of our working and living environments are directly linked to our individual fears, wishes and desires. Resilience training, SUVs, and pseudo-religion, at least, don't seem to be the answer.
Written by Stefan Panhans
Produced and Directed: Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler
Director of Photography: Lilli Thalgott
Camera Operator Bernese Highlands: Florian Winkler
Sound Engineer: Tom Schön
Production Design & Costume: Andrea Winkler
Music & Sound Design: Kirsten Reese
Dramaturgical Advice: Jelka Plate, Can Rastovic
Production Supervising: Can Rastovic
Editing: Lilli Thalgott
Postproduction: Wolfgang Oelze
Color Grading: Adriel Pfister
Computergame Advice & Special Gaming Footage: Tilman Walther
Set Runner & Special Appearance: Kurt Guo
Performing: Serge Fouha, Lisa-Marie Janke, Olivia Hyunsin Kim, Koffi Emile Odoubou, Anne Tismer
Avatar Voice: Anne Ratte-Polle
Additional Music: “BIEST”, written and composed by Jannik Giger
Commissioned by: Edith Russ Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg
Funded by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus.
Kindly supported by Poolhaus-Blankenese Foundation
Viewing link and more information:
https://vimeo.com/330947317
password: HOSTEL ALL 4 EPISODES
