How long can I be ill, how long can I be unproductive? How long and how much can I fail in my social and professional tasks? Where do I fail in everyday life, do I not fulfil the expectations of my fellow human beings, am I too slow, too quiet, too indecisive, too tired, disappoint myself? And what has to happen after the failure for it to be socially legitimised afterwards? Perhaps an official diagnosis such as burnout and then a healthy lifestyle with biohacking components in order to be productive enough again? What self-optimisation pressures lurk even in moments of failure?
Based on the oppressive feeling of having a permanent duty to succeed, the two artists Rike Hoppse and Son Lewandowski fill a film and literary journal with thoughts on failure, cancelling, giving up and moments of collapse, asking how failure feels personally and who defines it and how from the outside. And because even failure is made productive in neoliberal narratives and failure is told as an opportunity and heroic, the two devote themselves to the quiet, supposedly profane moments and feelings of failure.
Germany 2024 | Director: Rike Hoppse and Son Lewandowski
After three months of residency in Rheine and Münster, the two residents give a first insight into their literary-filmic journal about failure. They opted for the journal because it works both privately and publicly, does not offer a well-rehearsed narrative or form and provides space for both the research itself and its poetic realisation.
