Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki Of Farocki's oeuvre, which has influenced numerous avant-garde directors, artists and media theorists, tranzitdisplay, the Prague resource environment for contemporary art, presents his video installations for the first time in the Czech Republic. The pivotal theme of his works – which Farocki himself defined most concisely as 'film essays' or certain 'forms of intelligence' – is the creative process itself and the reproduction of images. Farocki combines archival film images with his own film materials and accompanies them with commentary in his own specific type of montage. This original method makes use of film materials as a means to explore both imagery and social structures.

Schnittstelle/Interface (1995) A key work by Harun Farocki in which he sheds light on and unveils his own working methods in his own singular way. In them, he reflects his documentary work and the fact that he favours working with already-existing images over creating further-new images. He deals with the creation of moving images while accenting the principles according to which they emerge and are arranged in the editing room. He thus investigates the act of re-reading them, giving them back their lost distance and displaying additional hidden facets.

Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik/Workers Leaving the Factory (2006) The inspiration for this work lies in the eponymous Lumière brothers film considered to be the first film in the history of cinematography. The motif of the workers leaving their factory can be seen in the films of the Lumière brothers, Fritz Lang, Charlie Chaplin, Michelangelo Antonioni, Lars von Trier and others. Farocki incorporates the motif into a new, more complex whole in which he reflects on history and the possibilities offered up by cinematography as well as on the industrial world and the value of human labour.

On the Construction of Griffith's Films (2006) This video installation for two monitors is based on selected sequences from D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916). In it, Farocki explores the possibilities for the construction of film dialogue.

Harun Farocki
Kuratoren: Vjera Borozan mit Antje Ehmann und Harun Farocki
Ort: tranzitdisplay.cz