PAN
a Video directed by Anna Lugemeier
Music by Federico Luz
premier on the 4th of March 2021 on PW-Magazine

We step into the unknown.

We, a group of individuals rehearse a new version of the ancient Greek play `ANTIGONE’. The tragedy is staged in a colossal 6×10 meter large hand-painted green screen canvas scenery, pointing towards a certain space, that is not there yet, a space that implies we could be anywhere. Wearing scraps, prototypes, traces, fragments of costumes that would never make it onto a stage, and now they made it into the final cut of this video.
We step into the unknown, it has become our Leitmotif.
One strange year passes by.

We went hiking, onto a mountain called Lusen, in the south of Germany, a seemingly forgotten place right at the edge of the check republic. Once we reached the top we looked in all directions, and there you can literally cross the border, with a simple gaze. All, that seems impossible right now is enabled to speak, gets a voice and a rhythm.

The day before the shooting we went to have a look at the fortress of Passau, where we also peed in public, semi-hidden, while we were asking ourselves if we could detect a Nazi by sight or if they are well hidden behind their everyday mascarade. We don´t know, but we peed on the roof of the Sternernwarte. In times like this, in many places, there are no public toilets to be found, safe spaces are not easy to access unless you have a place on your own. We spent 1€ to feed an audio-guide-machine, telling us how marvelous and prestigious the history of Passau was. We imagined standing here forever and telling people a different story, quite the opposite. Sometimes it is more effective to quickly put on your prosthetic witch-nose, turn around and, directly look into someone’s face.

Meanwhile, fog surrounded the mountain top. The mountain top, dry, in comparison to the way up which was covered in snow. The mountain top, rocky, many rocks, covered in almost fluorescent, powdery lichen. Nothing new to them, billions over billions of years old. We must seem quite anachronistic to them, wondering about a pandemic, they have seen it all. They even experienced the fading of the dinosaurs…

We question materiality: what even is material? How do we store material and how do we identify material?
How do all these above-mentioned events reinform the work we are doing, the lives we are living right now?
And what is quality then? Where and how is quality being constructed? And who decides how many filters are just the right amount of abstraction needed to allow reality?

Just like the song Pan, which calls upon the Greek god of spring and music to be its patron and protector, the creator in-between god and goat at the same time, half humanoid half bestiality, also we – more than we might admit – frequent ‘in-between’: we look at this interstice we provoke, by cracking open and we try to sense what is there to be sensed. By performing togetherness we tease – maybe even provoke an over-romanticized image of unison. In some other places, our mind can find shelter where a green-faced creature appears, quarantined for X-MAS. What a troll!