dance

EVENT: STEFAN PANHANS AND ANDREA WINKLER (JANUARY 5 - 18 2024, ONLINE)

Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1

digital video, color, sound, 16’ 13”, 2016-2017, Germany

Created by Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler

Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 is a 16-minute video work combining experimental film, music video, performance, and contemporary dance which examines the stilted behaviors and motions of avatars controlled by humans in video games. The avatars demonstrate awkward gestures, repetitive motions, and failures to perform actions. Groups of live dancers and actors physically reenact these movements in a series of situations. Their bodies recreate the avatars’ gestures and repetitions. The performers interact with constructed sets and environments that resemble video game aesthetics. The scenes cut rapidly between the choreographed reenactments and footage excerpted from the games, literally juxtaposing the human and the post-human.

Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler explore contemporary media and its effects on the mind and body through video, photography, installation, and text. Panhans (born in Hattingen, Germany) undertakes a mental archaeology of hyper mediatization and digitalization, examining their influence on the mind and power relations in society. His work also engages with racism, celebrity worship, stereotypes, and diversity. He studied at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg. Winkler (born in Fällanden, Zurich, Switzerland) examines similar themes through sculpture, video, and installation. She studied at Slade School of Fine Art in London under John Hilliard and Bruce McLean, after completing a degree in Visual Communication at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg under Wolfgang Tillmans and Gisela Bullacher. Together, the duo create interdisciplinary works that critically investigate contemporary media culture and human-technology interactions through experimental aesthetics. Their collaborations take the form of video, performance, and installation.



NEWS: MIGUEL GOMES’S ALGORITHMIC BALLET ON THE SOCCER PITCH

Miguel Gomes, Pro Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League, 2004

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VRAL is currently exhibiting Juan Obando’s Pro Revolution Soccer, a modded version of Konami's popular soccer game celebrating a counter-historical event: a match between Inter Milan and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation soccer team that never took place. Today, we are showcasing another example of Game Art made by hijacking, appropriating and recontextualizing Pro Evolution Soccer, Miguel Gomes’s Pre Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League (2004). This article is the first of a series.

In a delightful diversion that lasts a mere minute entitled Pro Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League (2004), Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (b. 1972, Lisbon) playfully explores Konami’s popular soccer game Pro Evolution Soccer, infusing it with a captivating dance of joy that follows a triumphant goal. The viewer is invited to witness a symphony of robotic movements, as players Takemitsu, Berardo, Ringo Starr, Tomasson, Arnold, and Bonga grace the virtual field. Through skewed perspectives, uncanny choreographies, and a peculiar routine of replays, Gomes invites us into a world where algorithmic exultation reigns supreme, accompanied by the resounding clatter of a projector (!).

Unbeknownst to some, Miguel Gomes stands as one of the most accomplished Portuguese directors of our time, his cinematic prowess evident in his magnum opus, the epic Arabian Nights (2015). This monumental work — a visionary reinterpretation of the beloved tale One Thousand and One Nights — unfolds over an astonishing 382 minutes, masterfully set against the backdrop of contemporary Portugal. It comes as no surprise, then, that Gomes embraces a mantra that encapsulates his creative ethos: “Cinema is a game.” Trained at the esteemed Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (Superior School of Theatre and Film Lisbon), Gomes initially carved his path (1996-2000) as a film critic and prolific author of insightful theoretical treatises on the art of cinema.

Originally commissioned by the revered Rotterdam Film Festival and showcased at prestigious cinema-based events worldwide, including the Austrian retrospective Viennale and the Sao Paulo Film Festival, Pro Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League is almost twenty years old. This production coincided with the release of Gomes’s debut film, A Cara Que Mereces, in Portugal — a film that heralded his arrival on the directorial stage. Notably, Pre Evolution Soccer One Minute Dance… was five years prior to the pioneering work of Spanish artist Marta Azparren, who harnessed the same game fondly known among enthusiasts as PES, to craft the esteemed machinima The Goalkeeper and the Void (2009) which was shown, among others, in the context of the 2016 exhibition Game Video Art. A Survey at IULM University.

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Matteo Bittanti

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