Short of the Week

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Experimental Patrick Buhr
ma

Something About Silence

An experimental sojourn into self-help culture and unprofessional hypnosis tutorials. A self proclaimed model attempts to share self help techniques on how not to be boring. Over time he drifts off in thoughts about pigeons, film making and his wife.

Play
Experimental Patrick Buhr
ma

Something About Silence

An experimental sojourn into self-help culture and unprofessional hypnosis tutorials. A self proclaimed model attempts to share self help techniques on how not to be boring. Over time he drifts off in thoughts about pigeons, film making and his wife.
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Something About Silence

Experimental about Identity in Mixed Media
Directed By Patrick Buhr
Produced By Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Made In Germany

Patrick Buhr’s is an idiosyncratic voice to be sure. No one makes films quite like his, nor do I imagine anyone’s brain works in quite the same way. His work is an acquired taste (though we’re gaga for it here at S/W), yet the experimental animator-cum-philosopher is an undeniably gifted writer. He simply employs that skill in comically absurd ways. Something About Silence, Buhr’s second featured short on this website, continues his fascination with the psychic weight of individual identity cultivation in modern capitalist societies, and ok—that sounds heavy. But, our narrator makes time along the way for talk of fashion, walking a pigeon, and berating his wife, so levity is to be found!

Still, a somehow even more experimental work than his prior film, What I Forgot to Say, this piece, which premieres online today after a festival run which included Slamdance and Dok Leipzig, represents a confluence of Buhr’s individual interests: bad self help videos, bad hypnosis instructional videos, and an overall curiosity on how authority is constructed. He questions how authority is performed by individuals? What makes it effective? Deconstructing the structure and techniques of these approaches, Buhr assembles our narrator: a fashion model whose gorgeous voice and performative confidence inspire surrender from the listener, and yet whose efficacy is undercut due to psychosexual inadequacies that Buhr senses are common in the format. Buhr writes bizarre digressions into the narrator’s speech which deconstructs the genre from the inside, out. 

As Buhr writes, “When self help is done well, the structure is less transparent. But with bad self help videos (e.g. cliche advice performed with amateurish diction) certain mechanics get revealed. Just like understanding magic better when you see the whole spectrum from good to bad.”

Supplementing the auditory and thematic elements of the film, Buhr produces a mixed media approach to the visuals that is quite fascinating. His prior work, though strange, was recognizably 2D animation, but here, Buhr combines a host of techniques, from 3D and 2D animation, video processing of depth maps, and video shoots with performers and neon lights. The effect is hallucinatory, and blends perfectly with the hypnosis techniques employed throughout. 

What does this investigation into the dark, though often silly, world of online self-help and hypnosis mean though? While tackling the topic from an obscure angle, Buhr is ultimately grappling with one of the great themes of art we saw in 2017. Whether it is life-hacking via Medium articles that promise to make you a more productive worker, or obsessive Instagram and Facebook “life curation”, it is clear that our collective narcissism is approaching an all-time high. We are spending time than ever imagining, honing, and editing our identities for ours and other’s consumption. Buhr sardonically skewers one manifestation of this trend, and deconstructs its mechanics, but in doing so the impulse that powers it is laid bare. Something Like Silence, reveals a preoccupation common among many great short films this year, including, my personal favorite, I Know You From Somewhere—we are working harder than ever to be seen as “not-boring”, and it’s driving us crazy.