FEATURING HARUN FAROCKI
The Centre for Media and Culture in Education (CMCE) at OISE/UT
is honored to present an illustrated lecture byHarun Farocki
"Bombs Which Take Pictures"Monday, April 14, 2003
2:00 pm
Innis College, University of Toronto
Town Hall Auditorium
Free admission, no tickets requiredIMAGES AND INSCRIPTIONS: THE WORK OF HARUN FAROCKI
"I make films about the industrialization of thought." - Harun Farocki
German documentary filmmaker Harun Farocki has created one of the most distinctive, critical, and valuable bodies of work in contemporary cinema. He has insistently explored the political dimensions of images, their relationships with the realities they represent, and their circulation and interpretation. In the process, he has come to focus his attention on a number of fields that are generally ignored or repressed in the commercial media: systems of training and indoctrination; the proliferation of image-making devices and their alliance with power; and the "professionalization" of daily life. Farocki's films, videos and installations have become indispensable tools to aid in the understanding of the "developed" world we now inhabit.
Harun Farocki has consistently challenged the boundaries of his genre. Since 1965, he has made over ninety films, spanning a wide range of contemporary concerns. "Bombs Which Take Pictures" will focus on the importance of identifying "smart weapons" in our visual surroundings and how to do so. He will show a stream of recent film footage, which he has been working on, and he will comment on these images.
Farocki's work includes investigations of such concerns as the role of the allies in World War II, the Vietnam War, the working class and the German "guerilla" war of the 1960s and the Romanian Revolution. His current work continues to explore the convergence between war, technology and images within the space of society. In the recent work, I Thought I Saw Prisoners (2001), Farocki uses shots of security cameras of one of the maximum security prisons in America. We see how he examines the hidden social deployment of images. He allows one to sense the unimaginable quantities and qualities of their recording and storage, and their relationship to unaccountable sites of power. Farocki's films sketch an audiovisual history of post industrial civilization and its techniques, in which deviant evolutions are particularly analyzed.
His films can be likened to visual essays. He assembles drawings, photos, paintings, etc. to build works that are critically capacious. His approach is strongly educational, both rational and reflective, critical and poetic. He often uses voice-over commentary in his work, analyzing and dismembering the visual and acoustic image, so as to usher the audience into a mental space between the elements of the film space. He assembles existing images from surveillance systems, war machines, espionage departments, amateurish shots of handheld cameras, etc. such that his films also construct a critical view of the history of technology. He offers audiences a new critical view on existing, so-called neutral images.
In Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges Farocki performs an exemplary retracing of images which get exposed via the reconnaissance photography, via the CIA's revisualization, via the "specialists'" close analysis with the aid of machines for close viewing --micrological viewing (the last discover e.g. the panzer under the bush camoflage at the Nazi war installation). This film thematizes the invisibility of wartime factories to aerial reconnaissance (Aufklärung); they are painted to simulate houses or other dwellings. This example reveals one aspect of technology, the various facets of which Farocki continues to explore: prosthetic simulation of organs/body parts, air-craft assisted systems, autonomous robots and intelligent weapons. But Farocki's films add another element - call it the political - where he examines the close relationship between human vision and vision machines, and the kinds of productivity they engender.
His work represents a form of pedagogical exchange and intimate challenge, that articulates how with the advent of cinema, the world has become visible in a radically new way, with far-reaching consequences for many spheres of life, from the world of warfare and strategic planning, to our conception of democracy and community, as well as for interpersonal relations and emotional bonds. Farocki offers a timely presentation through the Centre for Media and Culture in Education (OISE/UT), which will explore his current analyses of images, performed by the equally advanced technologies of war and cinema.
Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Neutitschein, the part of Czechoslovakia annexed by the Germans at that time. After teaching posts in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Manila, Munich and Stuttgart, Farocki took up a visiting professorship at the University of California, Berkeley from 1993-2001. Harun Farocki was recently a Professor of Media Studies at Hochschule der Kunste, Berlin. He has made over 90 films, including three feature films, essay films and documentaries. In 1976 he staged The Battle of the Tractor by Heiner Muller in Basel. He has written extensively about films, war media, technology, narration, editing and the construction of images. Some of his recent books, such as Imprints (Lukas & Sternberg, Verlag Vorwerk 8, 2001) brings together a selection of writings produced by Harun Farocki over the past three decades. They provide an insight into Farocki's filmic work and his underlying querying of the status, production and perception of images conveyed technically and through media. With Speaking about Godard, Harun Farocki and Kaja Silverman address this gab in a lively set of conversations about Godard and his major films, from My Life to Live to New Wave (New York University Press, 1998). From 1974-1984 he was the editor and author of the periodical Filmkritik in Munich. Thomas Elsaesser is currently editing a book on Harun Farocki (Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming.
This lecture is a public event presented by CMCE and generously supported by The Images Festival and Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes.
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Other Screenings, Panels and Talks
The Images Festival and Goethe Institut Inter Nationes also co-present the following screenings and talks with Harun Farocki:
Admittance to screenings restricted to those 18 years or older.
Images of the World and the Inscription of War
Harun Farocki, Germany (75 min. 16mm 1988)
Friday, April 11, 7:00 pm, Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave. at St. George)
Admission: $8 / $5 Images members & students
For some, Images of the World has become one of the most important films made in the post-World War II era - a film which reflects on that war, and more specifically on the way that images of the Nazi death factories were made and understood during and after the war. Filmmaker present.Repeat Screening: Thursday, April 17, 7:30 pm, Goethe Institut, Kinowelt Hall (163 King St. West; info: 416.593.5257; Admission: $5)
Parameters of the Image Between Art and Terror
(Panel discussion with Harun Farocki & David Rokeby, moderated by John Greyson)
Presented in cooperation with Public Access
Sunday, April 13, 3:00 pm, Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave. at St. George)
Admission: $5
Part of a day-long symposium and two related screenings on "Urban Space, Media and Technology," exploring urban space in the age of instantaneous telecommunications, intensive technological development and simultaneous urban decay. Farocki and Rokeby focus on the proliferation of surveillance, imaging and tracking technologies in contemporary environments.
How to Live in the German Federal Republic
Harun Farocki, Germany (83 min. 16mm 1990)
Sunday, April 13, 9:15 pm, Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave. at St. George)
Admission: $8 / $5 Images members & students
"The FRG as a training camp in which techniques for living are practiced by the professionally living" (Farocki). From birthing classes and job training sessions to consumer testing and strip-club rehearsals, this film finds German citizens in preparation for everyday life. Filmmaker present.
Bombs Which Take Pictures
(Illustrated talk by Harun Farocki)
Presented in cooperation with the Centre for Media and Culture in Education, OISE/UT
Monday, April 14, 2:00 pm, Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave. at St. George)
Admission: free
Farocki's talk will focus on the importance of identifying "smart weapons" in our visual surroundings, and how to do so. He will screen and discuss footage from his current work-in-progress.
Videograms of a Revolution
Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujica, Germany (106 min. 16mm 1992)
Saturday, April 19, 3:00 pm, Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Ave. at St. George)
Admission: $8 / $5 Images members & students
An unprecedented and absolutely compelling work of forensic reconstruction, Videograms of a Revolution recreates an historical event of the immediate past - the Romanian revolution of 1989 - primarily using amateur videos made by ordinary citizens, as well as news broadcasts and other materials.Other Exhibitions:
I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts
Harun Farocki, video installation, 2000
Presented by the Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas St. West; info: www.ago.net)
Opening Night Reception, Wednesday, April 9, 6:00-8:00 pm.
Exhibit runs to July 6
I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts examines methods undertaken by a California penitentiary to observe and control inmate behaviour. This powerful work considers the motives of prison authorities and draws parallels to the invisible controls that we unwittingly submit to everyday. I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts is the 25th installation in the AGO's Present Tense series. Curated by Ben Portis.
Eye/Machine
From March 27 to June 21, a tape of the single-channel version of Eye/Machine by Harun Farocki will be available for viewing at the Goethe Institut Inter Nationes Gallery and Library (163 King St. West, info: 416.593.5257).
FINAL PANELFurther info:
Images Festival
401 Richmond Street W, Suite 448
Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
Festival Hotline: 416.969.0543
www.imagesfestival.comImages is produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, Telefilm Canada, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.