Phantom

A friend gave me this old album of her family. It touches me that she wanted to throw it away a long time ago. Because the people in the photos have no meaning for her, she says. But she didn’t have the heart to do it yet.

Now I hold it in my hands and ask myself, if someone could tell the stories of these people, would these memories be true? They would be told memories or remembered narratives or told narratives of narratives of memories…

Science has taught us that the subconscious puts a distortion filter over memory to make it useful to us. But if memory is distorted more and more from person to person, what comes out in the end? Would these stories therefore only be uncontrollable mirages of an inner archaic power?

For me, this photo album is proof that all our efforts for a little immortality are in vain.

  • Erika Kassnel-Henneberg
    Director
  • Erika Kassnel-Henneberg
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Video Art
  • Runtime:
    2 minutes 45 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 31, 2022
  • Country of Origin:
    Germany
  • Country of Filming:
    Germany
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Erika Kassnel-Henneberg

Erika Kassnel-Henneberg is a conceptual and video artist with German-Romanian roots. In her works, she explores the process of remembering and questions identity as an artificial construct between reality and fiction.

Erika Kassnel-Henneberg studied Restoration at the Bern University of the Arts / CH and Interactive Media at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences / DE. She has been working as an artist since 2010 and lives in Anhausen near Augsburg. Her works are shown nationally and internationally in exhibitions and festivals, such as FILE – Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paulo / BRA or IVAHM – International Video Art House Madrid / ES.

2022 she received the Augsburg District Art Prize for her body of work.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

We are the narrative of our own memory and the memory of others about us. This is how our identity is formed in a chronological context.

But today we know that memory is neither true, nor objective, nor complete. We lay traces, collect documents and photographs, and archive them. I see in this an existential doubt: who am I really if I cannot trust my memory and the memory of others? If I leave no traces, did I ever exist?

In the digital age, cloud archives with huge storage volumes are our memory. Algorithms collect vast amounts of data and traces that we leave behind in the infinite expanse of the internet. They find everything and forget nothing. They seem to know us better than we know ourselves. And more than that – they even know with statistical probability what we will do next.
Can they tell us who we are? Can we trust them? Or are these also just distorted images of artificial intelligences whose logic and intentions no one can see through?

The focus of my interest is the human being with his subjective perception and his ability to remember, to forget, to associate and – consciously or unconsciously – to think up his own utopias.