narrative Archive - ERIKA KASSNEL-HENNEBERG

Sleep Well, My Love

Posted on 03/03/2024 | by Erika

Is this a bedtime story? Hardly. The starting point in “Sleep well, my Love” is an old family photo album. With the help of artificial intelligence, the photos in it come to life in an uncanny way. Over these disturbing images, a child whispers “The Willful Child” by the Brothers Grimm – a fairy tale about a mother who literally beats her child into the grave out of love because it is disobedient beyond death.

“Mother” stands for care. But what makes a “good” mother? Although we like to believe that there are universal truths, the concept of motherhood is profoundly shaped by changing social norms and cultural expectations.

Inspired by the photo albums and the fairy tale, this experimental short film questions idealized notions of motherhood. What begins as a nostalgic exploration becomes a disturbing reflection on memory, identity and the narratives we inherit.

UT: German, English, French, Romanian

Language: German

Rabbit Hole 4.0

Posted on 11/10/2022 | by Erika

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Suzanne is lured into a seductive virtual dream – guided by flashing buttons and a calming voice assistant promising relief from insomnia. Unbeknownst to her, she is part of a behavioral experiment designed to manipulate her actions through algorithmic control.

The film rejects traditional narrative in favor of a fragmented, immersive loop that mirrors the disorienting logic of digital platforms – addictive, cyclical, and subtly coercive.

Social networks now shape a global economy in which attention is the most valuable resource. What appears to be free access conceals a deeper cost: constant surveillance and behavioral conditioning by tech corporations using Attention Engineering – a system that combines persuasive design, gamification, and AI, grounded in psychology.

Rabbit Hole 4.0 explores the loss of personal agency in a world where algorithms anticipate needs before we are aware of them. It reflects on the illusion of choice, the commodification of behavior, and the quiet erosion of self-determination in an era of total digital recall.

At its core, the film poses a simple but urgent question: in a world shaped by invisible influences, do we still have control over ourselves?

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Conditio Humana I

Posted on 28/09/2022 | by Erika

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The conditio humana refers to the conditions or circumstances of being human in general, usually in contrast to animals. What makes a person human? Is it language? Is it the imagination? What is the conditio humana in relation to artificial intelligence? In a monologue, I let a (fictitious) AI discuss this here.

The starting point for this work was a report on a new milestone in the development of artificial intelligence: In 2019, researchers succeeded for the first time in developing an AI that won a poker game against five real professional players. All in all, this requires special skills that catapult artificial intelligence to the next level of evolution.

Is an AI the better human in the end?

Dancer: Dominic Feistmantl

Premiere: Façade projection in Buenos Aires / Argentina on December 17 2022

Wailing Song

Posted on 02/06/2022 | by Erika

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Countless small will-o’-the-wisps buzz in this artificial underwater world. They symbolise all the people who drowned between 2014 and 2022 on their flight to Europe. At the bottom of this sea, we listen to the stories of five young refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Gambia. They talk about their families, their flight from violence, their hopes and dreams.

The audio material was made available with the kind permission of the Junges Theater Augsburg.

Garden of Eden

Posted on 13/10/2020 | by Erika

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2016 / 2023, Video with sound, 20:57 min

We are the narrative of our own memories and others’ memories of us. This work is about home as utopia, about childhood as a lost paradise, and about identity that is fed by stories.

Here we are, sitting at the dining table of my childhood, listening to my father’s memories. A very intimate moment that will last forever.

Utopia Lives Next Door

Posted on 13/09/2020 | by Erika

2015 / 2019, Joint project with Gerald Fiebig, sound produced for ORF Kunstradio, premiere 27.12.2015, 22:30 min

“25 years after the end of the Cold War, the political distance between Western Europe (e.g. Austria) and Eastern Europe (e.g. Romania) seems to be increasing again in many respects. But this distorts the fact that there is a lot of shared history, which already becomes evident when looking at the parallels between the cities of Vienna and Timisoara. For their piece Utopia lives next door, the authors move through both cities, inspired by the situationist concept of psychogeographical examination of urban environments by means of “dérive” the deliberately drifting walk through a city. The starting point of the excursions are the quarters Innere Stadt and Josefstadt â€“ due to the shared history, both Vienna and Timisoara have districts with these names. From the field recordings thus collected, the authors compose the soundscape of a utopian city in which the difference between West and East has been erased. Woven into the composition are voice recordings from interviewees recalling instances of lived solidarity under difficult social and political circumstances in Vienna and Timisoara during different phases of the 20th century. Based on shared thematic motifs, the quotes are arranged into a quasi-dialogic relation to each other that offers a glimpse of the possibilities that were at hand, but were missed in the actual history of Austria and Romania. The speakers are Friederike Brenner (born in 1923 in Mödling near Vienna) and Johann Kassnel (born 1932 in Jahrmarkt near Timisoara).” (Gerald Fiebig)