Harun Farocki

Synopsis:
With this film, Farocki has attempted to capture everyday life as it is seen on the street.Read More »

Quote:
Harun Farocki was born in Novi Jicín in 1944 in what is today the Czech Republic. He studied at the German Cinematic and Television Academy (DFFB) in Berlin, from which he was expelled in 1968 for political reasons. In addition to writing theoretical texts, he has scripted numerous films and television productions. His work has been shown in international retrospectives and has received many awards.Read More »

Google translated description from the Harun Farocki’s site:
Harun Farocki’s film Something Becomes Visible does not want to explain why a war in such a distant country could for a moment spill over to the whole western world. It’s about distances, relationships between. Nor does he explain, he just reminds us that never before has a war been so massively covered. But it would be too much to say that the pictures helped determine its course. It shows the aftermath, the effects of the war. He combines a historical motif with a romantic one. Vietnam and a couple in love.Read More »

“In the summer of 1996, we filmed application training courses in which one learns how to apply for a job. School drop-outs, university graduates, people who have been retained, the long-term unemployed, recovered drug addicts, and mid-level managers – all of them are supposed to learn how to market and sell themselves, a skill to which the term ‘self management’ is applied. The self is perhaps nothing more than a metaphysical hook from which to hand a social identity. It was Kafka who likened being accepted to a job to entering the Kingdom of Heaven; the paths leading to both are completely uncertain. Today one speaks of getting a job with the greatest obsequiousness, but without any grand expectations.” Harun FarockiRead More »

According to Harun Farocki, today’s photographers working in advertising are, in a way, continuing the tradition of 17th century Flemish painters in that they depict objects from everyday life – the “still life”. The filmmaker illustrates this intriguing hypothesis with three documentary sequences which show the photographers at work creating a contemporary “still life”: a cheese-board, beer glasses and an expensive watch.Read More »

Quote:
Images of the World and Inscription in War is an essay whose central motif is the aerial photograph of the camp at Auschwitz taken on April 4, 1944 by an American reconnaissance plane. On this photo, analysts identified the surrounding factories but not the concentration and extermination camp. Dialectic montage and a distanced commentary compose this film which analyses the conditions under which an image becomes readable. The gap from “seeing” to “knowing”, interlacing the polysemy of words and photographs.Read More »

Quote:
The head of a Berlin advertising agency explains his proposed strategy to his potential client, a Danish optical company. The communication strategy that we ultimately came up with as a basis or any creative act or means of communication has three headings.

The first is ‘relevant, not arrogant’; the second, ‘varied, not uniform’; and the third is, ‘creative, not pushy’. These are essentially translations, strategic translations of your basic requirements and your analysis of the market, as well.Read More »

La Fraction Armée Rouge (RAF), organisation terroriste d’extrême gauche, également surnommée « la bande à Baader » ou « groupe Baader-Meinhof », opère en Allemagne dans les années 70. Ses membres, qui croient en la force de l’image, expriment pourtant d’abord leur militantisme dans des actions artistiques, médiatiques et cinématographiques. Mais devant l’échec de leur portée, ils se radicalisent dans une lutte armée, jusqu’à commettre des attentats meurtriers qui contribueront au climat de violence sociale et politique durant « les années de plomb ».Read More »

The installation THE SILVER AND THE CROSS by media artist Harun Farocki examines the 1758 painting “Depiction of the Cerro Rico and the Imperial City of Potosí” by Gaspar Miguel des Berrío (in the Museo Colonial Charcas de la Universidad San Francisco Xavier, Sucre, Bolivia). Farocki uses the medium of video to dissect the painting and its historical layers. In addition to artistic aspects, Farocki also looks at historical context and colonialism.Read More »