With this exhibition, Young Projects presents a filmmaker and artist whose work has left an indelible mark on the history of both, the political film and experimental video art. Harun Farocki, who sadly passed away earlier this year, created a rich body of work that spans over 100 films and four decades. During that time the Berlin-based artist created feature-length narratives, essay films, documentaries, and numerous art installations that more often than not, focused on the ideology of the image and how that related to economics, advertising, the military/industrial complex, and global culture at large. For this exhibition

 

Young Projects will focus on one genre that not only relates to Farocki’s overall career, but a common question that reappears time and again in the history of experimental filmmaking: how does a city relate to representation? For Farocki, the genre of the “City Symphony” was always fertile ground for interrogating and exploring the possibility (and marginalization) of human labor, industry and the image itself. To this end, two films will be presented: Sauerbrach Hutton Architects (2013), which is the last completed work before the filmmaker died, and Interface (1995), arguably the artist’s most personal film ever made.Regarding Sauerbrach Hutton Architects, Farocki said: “Three months in an architects’ firm in Berlin. From the architecture down to the tiniest door handle, a questioning of matter and the verb.” Indeed, for this film Farocki focused his camera on a German architecture team that is gaining considerable recognition for their use of color and form. Yet rather than “invest in a query of scale” as Madeleine Molyneaux writes, or investigate ‘the miniature versus the mechanics’, he zeros in on the workers themselves—the Sauerbrach Hutton team—as they formulate a very complex idea for a new virtual reality center in Laval. By doing so Farcoki is able to explore that slippery place between concept and practicality; the text and materiality; the image and the public.

 

Schnittstelle/Interface is considered a key work by Harun Farocki in that it deals directly with the artist himself and his working methods. The film was initially commissioned by the Lille Museum of Modern Art, who asked Farocki to produce a video “about his work.” In the process the artist created a focused meditation on both, his own unique approach to filmmaking, and the idea that “found” images tend to be richer in meaning than “created” ones. The tile plays on the double meaning of "Schnitt", referring both to Farocki's workplace, the editing table, as well as the "human-machine interface", where a person operates a computer using a keyboard and a mouse. Here the filmmaker/artist continually questions how and why images are used and arranged in the way that they are, while at the same time the film can be seen as a personal essay, or diary, about image making itself.

 

Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Neutitschein (located in the part of Czechoslovakia that was annexed by Germany at the time). He studied at the Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin between 1966 and 1968 and spent the majority of his career in Berlin. Farocki lectured in Hamburg, Munich, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Vienna, Berlin, and Berkeley among other cities, and was both the editor and author of the magazine Filmkritik starting in 9174. Sadly, Mr Farocki passed away at age 70 earlier this year. Since the mid-nineties his works have increasingly been the subject of solo exhibitions at international art institutions such as the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2001), the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst Gent (2002), the Institute of Contemporary Arts London (2003), the ZKM Karlsruhe (2004), Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation Stockholm (2006), and the Museum Moderner Kunst Wien (2007).

 

Credits

Title:

Sauerbruch Hutton ArchitectsOriginal / Sauerbruch Hutton Architekten

Language versions: German-English version with German subtitles;

German-English version with English subtitles, German-English version with French subtitles

Country: GermanyYear: 2013/14

Length: 73 min

Director: Harun Farocki

Screenplay: Harun Farocki

Cinematography: Harun Farocki

Editing: Ingo Kratisch

Sound: Matthias Rajmann

Featuring: Louisa Hutton, Mattias Sauerbruch Production: Matthis Rajmann

Festivals: Duisburger Dokumentarfilmwoche

 

Title:

Schnittstelle/Interface (1995)

Director, scriptwriter, commentary: Harun Farocki

Cinematographer: Ingo Kratisch Second

cinematographer: Leo Borchard Editor: Max Reimann

Sound: Klaus Klingler

Assistant: Jan Ralske

Cast/narrator: Harun Farocki

Production: Musee Moderne d'art de Villeneuve d' Ascq; Harun Farocki Filmproduktion, Berlin

Producer: Harun Farocki Length: 23 min.

Format: video - BetaSp, col., 1:1,37

German premiere: 08.11.1995, Duisburg (Duisburger Filmwoche)

First broadcast: 25.06.1995, 3Sat note: single channel version