Daan Paans: Floating Signifiers

Panta Rhei is an old philosophical saying by Heraclitus that can be interpreted as “all that is observable flows continuously.” In the spirit of this reflection, Daan Paans (NL, b. 1985) attempts with Floating Signifiers to provide insight into the constant transformation that things and phenomena undergo under the influence of a complex set of factors. In a broader sense, he investigates how changeability is expressed in the visual culture of the past, present, and future.

Over the past ten years, Paans has analysed the genesis of a wide range of subjects that come together in this publication. This has resulted in case studies ranging from the extinct aurochs to the pre-human paradise, the future life of an oak tree, meteorites from sci-fi films, variations of the lion man, and the Golden Idol of Indiana Jones.

These case studies show how primal archetypes continue to shape our contemporary (visual) culture in their ‘transmuted’ forms. With the ambiguous nature of his work, Paans aims to point to our deeply cherished bond with ‘ecology’, but also to offer the insight that this ecology is subject to an evolutionary process of transformation.