My Life Is a Gunshot

Der in Berlin wohnhafte Noise-Musiker Joke Lanz (*1965 in Basel) hat eine treue Fangemeinde. Mit seinen Performances irritiert er gerne, doch hinter der vermeintlich harten Schale steckt ein hochsensibler Künstler, der seit seiner Jugend versucht, mit dem Suizid seines Vaters zurechtzukommen. Seine eigene Vaterrolle war Auslöser für sein Lebensprojekt «Sudden Infant», in das er seinen inzwischen erwachsenen Sohn Céleste seit frühester Kindheit miteinbezog. Ein Film über Vater-Sohn-Beziehungen und die Kunst als Ventil für Emotionen.

«‹My Life Is a Gunshot› when said by the Swiss artist Joke Lanz, can mean at least two things, the first being that his life was determined, for better or for worse, by the gunshot with which his father killed himself. Marcel Derek Ramsay dedicates a large part of his film to this traumatic episode in the life of the young Lanz, whose consequences still weigh on his life today, mostly in terms of consciousness of the suffering and of the need for freedom and liberation from the societal conformism. This theme, which is connected partly to his relationship to Switzerland, recurs obsessively in ‹My Life Is a Gunshot›, but not as frequently as the image of Lanz’s face, which appears to be Ramsey’s own obsession. These two obsessions actually work as ballast to balance an explosive, high-paced and high-spirited filmic journey into the amazing world of an artist who is able to transform anything into an occasion of expression and creation.

Here is the second meaning of ‹My Life Is a Gunshot› referring to the volcanic mode of creation of Joke Lanz, for whom the matter of sound – music and noise confounded – is in perfect continuity with the matter of humanity and the matter of the world. Lanz’s fundamental intuition is that the shout of suffering can be seen as, heard as or transformed into the cry of a newborn baby – and that is why his life-long project is named ‹Sudden Infant›. The destructive power of a gunshot therefore becomes more than just liberation from a hostile world; it is a regeneration that gives a narrative form to the seemingly shapeless shout.» (Giuseppe Di Salvatore, Filmexplorer, 6.2.2019)

Fr, 13. Dezember, 20.15 Uhr: Filmgespräch mit Joke Lanz und Marcel Derek Ramsay.