Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki
Interview 

I would not say that I always do film, I’d say I very often I do the opposite of directing films, things in which there isn’t a single commentary in which everything tries to be conveyed just by showing events, and very often I just comment some very few lines just to indicate where something takes place or just to bring out some conditions or to implement some ideas. So it is very rare that I really work with a long commentary, so probably the word essay makes sense in the cases in which one doesn’t have to deal with common knowledge, when it is not about topics in which somehow the knowledge is already there and elaborated, but you really have to construct an access to the topic, and in this case the word makes sense.

Yes, it has to do with a kind of theoretical background. First of all, it only makes sense if it has to do with a cinematographic approach as, let’s say, a kind of image about which one can elaborate something so, let’s say, in the last years when we doubt these machine-made images which are used in warfare industries; images that are not so much images for the human eye but more measurement tools with which one can identify or track objects. So when working on these kinds of images, the visual approach is one way to deal with them, it isn’t an approach to put it down and write a text about them… This is somehow the basis and, of course, it has to do with, if one finds a new access to certain topics that are somehow essential in this context.

In one case, the observation and aspect is stronger than in the other case; the reflective aspect is stronger. But sometimes an observation is also something very reflective. When one looks at a ?? (3:00 to 3:05) in a way when one uses the… Usually does not, but in general doses… That would be the definition of all these two terms…

To do it but that is somehow an aim of cinematographic work, not to do everything with words, but to be practical also with images which can mean that one image is used to comment another one, that are really double projections. Very often one image is next to another one in the frame so that you can compare two images which is somehow a critical message that is more based on the eyes and on the discourse. In this sense, every montage is somehow an approach or an attempt to work with images and not so much with words, pointing out that things are similar or that things are quite oppositional.

Many, many decades no longer avant-garde that has become a quite common tool. It is also used in narrative films, so I would say it once was the domain of the Russian avant-garde, but that is quite long ago, I would say.

A scientific tool in the beginning when it was invented, but cinematography, with very few exceptions, was not really needed scientifically; it was more a tool for entertainment, an exercise to think about the real world and all these aspects. This has all changed with image processing and with all these computers which are able to decipher images and make use of them. Certainly, images are no longer just a tool of education, perhaps even edification and entertainment, but they also have this more practical use.

I’m more exploring. In a city, I ask myself how does this city live, what it is the speciality of its production. I always have to learn that nowadays hardly any city has something special to produce (…) There are very, very few exceptions; it is usually cities that live by offering services. This is all very astonishing. Hardly anything to produce in bigger London and it’s still one of the richest, most productive regions in Europe. There is a new pattern of production. It is not so easy to understand so I am trying to explore then and when of certain productions.

Our society is not sure how or what or why of being a kind of organized violence and organized power, that is the basis of our social status, that we are linked to each other, obviously the background of our social being, but that is not really sorted out, therefore there are questions about it. It is astonishing if you look back only seventy years ago it was clear that social production would be spent on supplying armies, and nowadays people think they could avoid it or automatize it or exported to the third world, to the poor countries. So, there is really not much knowledge about this around, and this is something that has interested me from the beginning of my filmmaking career.

At the age of 20, I always saw consumption as something bad, you become passive and this idea of human autonomy is the opposite to the world of consumption or consumerism, as Pasolini always called it. And, nowadays, I am not so sure, consumerism or the history of consumption… it has totally different sources and elaborations and has to be studied more like a language and like any other social practice.

Images which are not made by me but reused somewhere, the interesting aspect is that they are not charged with my intention of meaning, so sometimes I have this hope or this feeling that I can read a meaning which is not very obvious or the intention of communication or information and then I can read them a little bit against the grain; so somehow it also forces you to discuss them in a way and not just to observe them in their pre-existing function, and that makes the process interesting.

That of course still exists. They are still producing material goods, too, of course, there is no doubt about it, but I also talk about percentage and a project does not only deals with material aspects, it also tries to explore new ways of production, represent codes symbolically and so on, so it is not only about the material aspect of production.

In the case of (…) that idea the greatest of his production of his three shows was to look at (…) as a social model for the present and that was for me a good (???) limited it very much to comparing this image or trying to read this image… That is part of the city that is still existing nowadays and to try to find social history in this huge tableau, and the case in comparison that was from the beginning a kind of a montage film saying that I should find the product which exists nearly in agriculture and that has been used for thousands of years, this could be of course also a spoon or sugar, those objects are not so much into public and they are not (????) a good object to deal with and then to see how certain object is produced and used under totally different social conditions.