Felipe Arango Arzuza

A strange being loses its way in the chaos of the transportation system without finding an exit. The pathways are overwhelmed by accelerated flows that come and go like human waterfalls. The passersby, faceless, move automatically, creating a maze in which the routes seem endless. Sleepy and exhausted people merge with the surroundings, and as the bus continues on its way, the being finally manages to discover itself.

For the multimedia exhibition Tangenten I (Tangents I), Dammbeck and co-organizer, sculptor and painter Frieder Heinze had planned to collaborate on a film that would combine non-camera animation with 35mm footage of a train ride between the two Dresden districts of Radebeul and Pieschen. When the exhibition was banned in 1978, Heinze turned to other projects, but Dammbeck continued working on the film by himself. Metamorphoses I—the first experimental film ever to be shown publicly in East Germany—marks the filmic beginning of Dammbeck’s long-term art project the Herakles-Konzept (Hercules Concept).

A fictionalised essay read by Ben Wishaw exploring the complicated relationship between British espionage and male homosexuality.  An anonymous narrator talks through the various chapters of his life as a spy and a gay man in late 20th-century Britain. His vivid stories of intimacy and surveillance play out over shots of the luscious countryside, busy Central London streets, and nighttime cruising zones.

A solitary Frenchman seeks inspiration in a ruined duchy, meeting eccentric figures with their visions of art, madness, and myth. During 15 minutes he wanders across the broken edges of reality and sanity, he questions what form inspiration can still take among fragments of ruins and environment, as the viewer steps into his eyes and ears, discovering beauty within decay.

Abstract video art set to the music of Philip Glass.