Projecció

Homburg / Saar, Germany, 1966.

Philip Scheffner has worked as a visual artist since 1985. Exhibtions in Berlin since 1987. From 1990 to 1995 co-founder and member of the group "Botschaft e.V." together with 10-15 artists, filmmakers, musicians, net activists a.o. Works as an artists group, screenings, exhibitions, concerts a.o. in the association's independent club space "Friseur" (Berlin-Mitte). Participations in national and international art exhibitions and events.

From 1991 to 1999 member of the authors and producers group "dogfilm" together with the video and filmmakers Bettina Ellerkamp, Jörg Heitmann, Merle Kröger and Ed van Megen. Development and production of videos between the genres documentary, essay and video art, in cooperation with Kanal 4, ZDF/ Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, ARTE and 3Sat. Complete development of two "theme nights" for ARTE. Composition of several sounds / music for dogfilm productions.

Since 2000 video projects in progress. Composition and Production of electronic music.

2001 co-founder and member of the media production platform "pong" together with Merle Kröger. Release of the first audio-CD "fon" by pong in April/May 2001. Release of the audio-CD “a/c” on pong in October 2002.

The 'a/c' bus-shuttle project by Philip Scheffner is invited to be performed on the opening night of the LEM Festival-Barcelona on the 2nd of october 2003.

“pong” was founded by Merle Kröger and Philip Scheffner in the beginning of 2001. Still "under construction" we want to build up a platform for music, video, text and all the things which exist inbetween. Depending on the projects we are working on, “pong” will appear as record label, video production or publishing house. “pong” could also be the name of a bar which exists only for a few days. Or an agency for audio-fiction...

A/C
2003_42 min

Director: Philip Scheffner. Script & Camera: Philip Scheffner & Merle Kröger. Sound: Philip Scheffner. Dialogues: Merle Kröger. Editing: Philip Scheffner. Soundmastering: Rashad Becker. Production: pong.
The video a/c is based on the audio CD “a/c” by Philip Scheffner, released on the label pong.
The video a/c is not the 'musicvideo' for the CD but its own, independent piece of work, using the moving image. Based on the CD a/c Scheffner developed a 42 minutes long experimental video, referring at places to the audio tracks and includes them in its narrative form.
The video elaborates moments of (a)synchronisity between image and sound and develops its own narrations using associative images and subtitles. To me it means a re-interpretation and further development of the work, using the medium video.
The video was first publicly screened at the Ear we Are Festival for experimental music in Biel, Switzerland in 2003.
a/c is a journey to a fictional place, where nobody belongs to and which doesn't belong to anybody. A place which is composed out of short, fading and coincidental moments and memories. A place which you cannot store by pressing the 'record' button, but which only comes to existence by pressing it.

Planeta Alemania - Observations from Invisibility
1999_38 min

dogfilm & compañer@s for ZDF / ARTE
Planeta Alemania is the attempt to make a cinematic portrait of a woman, who is not able to position herself in front of the camera. "It is like being constantly on the run. We live practically like criminals without having committed any crime." In Germany are many people living and working without a status of legal residence, "without papers". From television we know them as "illegal people": made unrecognizable or degraded to "shadow people", equally as victims and suspects.
Within talks / audio recordings over several months we have, together with our protagonist, developed the drama structure for this film, from which the concept of images resulted.
Fragmentary, in different tableaus, an image of a person comes into being, without her actually leaving invisibility. Her analysis, her dreams, her expectations and her thoughts enable us to take a different point of view onto the Planeta Alemania.
Concerning the directors: Planeta Alemania was realized through all phases as a cooperation between filmmakers, translator and the protagonist. Although herself being a journalist, she is for obvious reasons not able to sign this half-year-work with her name. Therefore we have decided to have the credits without personal names and to label the authorship through our filmmakers group dogfilm.