Single frames from a direct animation appear on the screen in staggered repetition. The shapes painted, printed and scratched on 35mm material evolve, with minimal time lapses, from one edge of the frame to the other. A trace is left, telling of time itself and asking: When exactly is “now”? The past, present and future are spinning in the chaos of moments.

The winner of the first golden “Animation Dove”: nine years of war between Greeks and Trojans have gone past. The impulsive Patroclus, comrade in arms and bed mate of the rather battle-weary Achilles, thinks that victory can be achieved by other means. The tragedy takes its course – just as it was passed down in the classical myths but supplemented by what they left unspoken.

A person sits at a plain table. Time makes its usual rounds – until there is a hiccup. Moments fall into each other, angles of vision diverge, normality slips. The table becomes an unmanageable combination of constantly changing perspectives. The troubled person is transformed into a distorted temporal body. The world atomises itself in basic shapes and colours.

It was only long after the end of the GDR that the Leipzig audiences had an opportunity to get to know the work of John Smith, the British master of the trenchant, short artist film that continues to expand enormously in the mind. The ideas of conceptual art and structural minimalism prevalent in the 1970s have influenced his works, which he sees as documentary films according to John Grierson’s definition, as “creative treatment of actuality.” In his view of the world details are highlighted which then cease to be taken for granted. In “Associations”, he recites a text by the linguist Herbert H. Clark. Words conjure up matching images, but mean something different. An experience that could also be had in the “actually existing socialism” of the GDR.

In the mythology of the Kikuyu community the Mugumo, the Kenyan fig tree, represents transformation and rebirth. This multiplayer VR experience invites us to witness a sacred ritual: Dancing around the Mugumo can turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man. We follow Waicici, a genderless person, in the quest for the most honest version of themselves.