Don Juan: Two Plus Two Equals Four or Lust is the Only Deception that I Wish Permanence

This study of Don Giovanni, alias Don Juan, includes work from 15 contemporary artists working in video, including Tracey Moffatt, Ugo Rondinone, Erwin Wurm and Sam Taylor-Wood. As E. T. A. Hoffmann would have it, Mozart's Don Giovanni is the "opera of operas"--but who is the Don, and what contemporary relevance does his breathtaking lifestyle have? Sometimes an unscrupulous hedonist, and then again a weak man overwhelmed by desire and despair, he generates a dazzling variety of roles and identities. In the end, everything, even feeling, is exposed as a masquerade, but still he says, "Lust is the only deception that I wish permanence." Images are accompanied by Elfriede Jelinek's radio play Jackie and by interviews with filmmaker Michael Haneke and composer Olga Neuwirth, all in accordance with the motto "Seduce and be seduced, view and be viewed."