80 WASHINGTON SQUARE EAST Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in what was Sudetengau, now the Czech Republic. He lived in India and Indonesia before moving with his family to Germany at age 10. In his early twenties, he left for West to further his studies in cinema, and spent most of his working life there. By the time of his death in 2014, he had directed over 120 films and installations. Laboring under the burden of Europe’s history in which the Holocaust loomed large, Farocki was a naturalist of loss. His work, often graceful in its observations, was never far from the injury of our world. “He was endlessly patient,” Antje Ehmann wrote, “with the strangeness, the beauty, the stupidity, and even the unbearable cruelness of our world.” He consistently chronicled that which has been intentionally repressed – genocide, the laborer, the American prison system, the trauma of war. Often his films register the effects that free markets, war, and their attendant technologies have on the individual, intimating that these forces are constant company. Coincident with major and incremental shifts in technology, the films in this program serve as an index of technological development from the beginning of the twentieth century to the first decade of the twenty-first.

Organized by Lucas Quigley and Robert Snowden. The project would not be possible without the support of Antje Ehmann, The Estate of Harun Farocki, Nicola Lees, Carol Greene, Jed Rapfogel, and Greene Naftali Gallery. We also wish to thank Jesse Bransford, Tammy Brown, Marina Molarsky–Beck, Leslie Dick, Matthias Rajmann, Chloe Truong– Jones, Andrew Weiner, and Audrey Wollen. Design by Lucas Quigley.

80 Washington Square East is a part of NYU, Steinhardt School, Department of Art and Art Professions Education Block 80 Washington Square E, New York, NY 10003 PROGRAM today. […] The plasticity of life and work positively using cynicism; that means, processes decreases everywhere. At the using phrases whose emptiness one not same time, more and more games are only perceives, but even takes into April 8 played which are intended to expose account. One could speak of a second what lies hidden within human beings. order cynicism, which entails being Videograms of a Revolution The rules by which we are supposed to cynical about one’s own cynicism and 1992, 106 min live are increasingly uncertain, and there gaining a language that communicates Farocki and Andrei Ujica’s film shows the are more and more games where life is that one only trusts it because one Romanian revolution of December 1989 trained, like a sport. Instruction manuals doesn’t trust it, and knows oneself in this in Bucharest in a new media-based form for life: in the commodity society, the mistrust to be of one mind with all one’s of historiography. Demonstrators occu- instruction manual is the only record of counterparts. One could be tempted to pied the television station and broadcast theory. extol this as a further case of the social, continuously for 120 hours, thereby (Harun Farocki) not entirely conscious refinement of establishing the television studio as a communication, if it were not clear how new historical site. Between December April 29 much it compels the participants into an 21, 1989 (the day of President Ceausescu’s infantilization, from which they see no last speech) and December 26, 1989 (the Bedtime Stories: Railways escape. first televised summary of his trial), the 1977, 3 min. (Dirk Baecker) cameras recorded events at the most important locations in Bucharest, almost Images of the World and the Inscription May 13 without exception. of War (Dietrich Leder) 1988, 75 min. Still Life The vanishing point of Images of the 1997, 56 min. April 15 World is the conceptual image of the According to Farocki, today’s photo- ‘blind spot’ of the evaluators of aerial graphers working in advertising are, Bedtime Stories: Ships footage of the IG Farben industrial plant in a way, continuing the tradition of 17th 1977, 3 min. taken by the Americans in 1944. Com- century Flemish painters in that they mentaries and notes on the photographs depict objects from everyday life – the As You See show that it was only decades later that “still life.” Farocki illustrates this intrigu- 1986, 72 min. the CIA noticed what the Allies hadn’t ing hypothesis with three documentary As You See is an action-filled feature film. wanted to see: that the Auschwitz sequences that show the photographers It reflects upon girls in porn magazines concentration camp is depicted next to at work creating a contemporary “still to whom names are ascribed and about the industrial bombing target. At one life”: a cheese-board, beer glasses, and the nameless dead in mass graves, upon point during this later investigation, the an expensive watch. machines that are so ugly that coverings image of an experimental wave pool – (Production note) have to be used to protect the workers’ already visible at the beginning of the eyes, upon engines that are too beautiful film – flashes across the screen, May 20 to be hidden under the hoods of cars, recognizably referring to the biding of upon labor techniques that either cling the gaze: for one’s gaze and thoughts are I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts to the notion of the and the brain not free when machines, in league with 2000, 23 min. working together or want to do away with science and the military, dictate what is Images from the maximum-security it. My film As You See is an essay film. to be investigated. prison in Corcoran, California. The The contemporary opinion industry is (Christa Blümlinger) surveillance camera shows a pie-shaped like a huge mouth, or maybe a paper segment: a concrete-paved yard where shredder. May 6 the prisoners, dressed in shorts and I compose a new text out of these mostly shirtless, are allowed to spend scraps and thus stage a paper-chase. Bedtime Stories 1–3: Cat Stories a half an hour a day. A convict attacks My film is made up of many details and 1977, 9 min. another, upon which those uninvolved creates a lot of image-image and lay themselves flat on the ground, their word-image and word-word relationships An Image over their heads. They know what among them. So there’s a lot to chew 1983, 25 min. comes now: the guard will call out a on. I searched for and found a form in Four days spent in a studio working on warning and the fire rubber bullets. If the which one can make a little money go a centerfold photo for Playboy magazine convicts do not stop fighting now, the a long way. provided the subject matter for my film. guard will shoot for real. The pictures (Harun Farocki) The magazine itself deals with culture, are silent, the trail of gun smoke drifts cars, a certain lifestyle. Maybe all those across the picture. The camera and the April 22 trappings are only there to cover up gun are right next to each other. The the naked woman. Maybe it’s like with field of vision and the gun viewfinder fall How to Live in the FRG a paper-doll. The naked woman in the together... 1990, 79 min. middle is a sun around which a system (Harun Farocki) In 1989, the production year, we filmed revolves: of culture, of business, of acted scenes in 46 locations. Scenes living! (It’s impossible to either look or The Silver and the Cross from psycho-dramas, socio-dramas, and film into the sun.) One can well imagine 2010, 17 min. other hypenated-science dramas. We that the people creating such a picture, This video, a diptych of two side-by-side filmed in schools, public administration the gravity of which is supposed to hold images, analyzes the towns, workers, offices, higher education institutions and all that, perform their task with as much and silver mines of Potosí, Perú, during clinics, when fragments of life were care, seriousness, and responsibility as the period of Spanish colonization. acted out. When life was acted to if they were splitting uranium. With a landscape painting by Gaspar demonstrate something, to instruct, to (Harun Farocki) Miguel de Berrío, Farocki discusses practice, to cope with something. [...] I the brutal process by which Spain filmed games, because games have rules A New Product colonized the Incan empire by enslaving and establish rules. There are all too few 2012, 37 min. its people, extracting its resources, and rules determining the speech and A New Product shows that organizations monopolizing its silver industry. As actions of people in documentary films have found ways and means to speak Farocki exclaims, “On the mountain the cross; in the mountain the silver ore. The Parallel I–IV a canvas, primed for painting. Flesh is Spanish colonists brought the cross and 2012–2014, 43 min. turned into something different, looking took away the silver.” Parallel opens up a history of styles in like marble. It seems as though life has computer graphics. The first games of to be frozen in order to achieve beauty; I Interface the 1980s consisted of only horizontal and reused some of this footage 15 years later 1995, 24 min. vertical lines. This abstraction was seen in Images of the World and the Inscription Throughout most of Interface Farocki sits as a failing, and today representations of War which deals with the relationship at a desk, watching two video monitors are oriented towards photo-realism. between preservation and destruction. while explaining his editing process in For over one hundred years photo- (Harun Farocki) a monotonous fashion: how to edit with graphy and film were the leading media. film, how to edit with video, how to pause From the start, they served not only to The Taste of Life and play and loop and repeat. He only inform and entertain, but were also media 1979, 29 min. faces the camera once and even then of scientific research and documentation. For years I’ve been looking for the does not look directly into the lens. [...] That’s also why these reproduction means to capture everyday life just as it “The image comments on the image,” techniques were associated with notions is perceived through a glance from the says Farocki, pointing at each of the of objectivity and contemporaneity – street. Twenty years ago, you could see television screens. The images on these whereas images created by drawing and young people standing with their screens come from film footage, though painting indicated subjectivity and the bicycles on street corners, in fact, if the rather than a series of operational transrational. bicycles where there, you could be sure images it is Farocki’s own work. [...] Apparently today computer animation to find the young people standing there By using his own films to illustrate his is taking the lead. Our subject is the talking. I would like to document these approach to editing, Farocki turns his art development and creation of digital kinds of events. On this occasion, I was into an instructional; these images are animation. If, for example, a forest has to presented with the opportunity to do so. treated as if they were operational. be covered in foliage, the basic genetic For two and a half weeks, I walked (Conor Bateman) growth program will be applied, so that around different parts of the city with my “trees with fresh foliage”, “a forest in camera and collected images for the May 27 which some trees bear four-week-old film. foliage, others six-week-old foliage” (Harun Farocki) In Comparison can be created. The more generative 2009, 61 min. algorithms are used, the more the image June 17 I wanted to make a film about concomit- detaches itself from the appearance as ance and about contemporary found and becomes an ideal-typical. The Expression of production on a range of different Using the example of trees and 1997, 30 min. technical levels. So I looked for an object bushes, water, fire and clouds we Historically, the cinema close-up was that had not changed too much in the compare the development of surfaces initially employed to convey emotions past few thousand years. This could have and colourings over the past thirty years through facial expressions. But soon been a shoe or a knife, but a brick in computer animation images. We want filmmakers also began focusing their becomes part of a building and therefore to document reality-effects such as attention on hands. Using film extracts, part of our environment. So the brick reflections, clouds, and smoke in their Farocki explores this visual language, its appears as something of a poetic object. evolutionary history. symbolism, Freudian slips, automatisms I follow its mode of creation and use in (Harun Farocki) and its music. Often, hands betray Africa, India, and Europe. The issue of an emotion which the face tries to labor and production is something I’ve June 10 dissimulate. They can also function as often pursued. In recent years I’ve made a conduit (exchanging money) or witness a number of films about the immaterial Remember Tomorrow Is the First Day of to a form of competence (work). work we find in our own postindustrial the Rest of Your Life (Production note) countries. My work is also quite 1972, 10 min. immaterial. This ten minute short film is composed Workers Leaving the Factory (Harun Farocki) of shots of an AFN DJ at work and of a 1995, 36 min. car ride, whereby the camera points out Workers Leaving the Factory – such was June 3 of the car (through the windscreen or the the title of the first cinema film ever side windows) or it captures and tracks a shown in public. For 45 seconds, this On Construction of Griffith’s Films passing car. [...] The wheels of pop run still existant sequence depicts workers 2006, 9 min. idle in Heavy Rotation, or as Farocki puts at the photographic products factory in We picked a sequence from Griffith’s it, AFN doesn’t advertise anything and Lyon owned by the brothers Louis and Intolerance (1916). It shows a dialogue because of that it is a super-commercial Auguste Lumière hurrying, closely between a man and a woman, filmed station. It promotes the sound and the packed, out of the shadows of the and edited as shot and counter-shot. notion of being commercial. At the same factory gates and into the afternoon sun. We reproduced the shot on two monitors time, the constantly accelerating rotation Only here, in departing, are the workers to reveal its narrative character and also leads today’s music consumer to exper- visible as a social group. But where are because analysis requires us to dissect ience the present as a memory (these they going? To a meeting? To the something. The narrative form of shot / days eighties songs are already being barricades? Or simply home? counter-shot, which would later become treated as oldies). AFN permanently These questions have preoccupied the norm for depicting dialogue in film, repeats itself, transforms repetition into generations of documentary filmmakers. remains novel here. A few years earlier enjoyment and (for those who would have For the space before the factory gates Griffith had still used tracking shots to it) the present into eternity. has always been the scene of social tell his stories. In The Lonedale Operator (Gero Günther) conflicts. And furthermore, this (1911), cuts were made only when the sequence has become an icon of the scene changed; a cut in the movie’s story Make Up narrative medium in the history of the line. In Intolerance, cinematography had 1973, 29 min. cinema. already achieved such a level of indepen- The make-up artist Serge Lutens is In his documentary essay of the same dence that it was the camera that shown covering a model’s face with title, Harun Farocki explores this scene constituted a room with its detail. powder then working it into her face right through the history of film. [...] His (Harun Farocki) over several minutes. The face becomes film shows that the Lumière brothers’ sequence already carries within itself the Computer-Animation Landscape. The turn to VC companies and pay interest of germ of a foreseeable social simulated Afghan is based on 40%. At least. development: the eventual disappear- geographical data out of Afghanistan. We had filmed scenes at a wide range ance of this form of industrial labor. A street in the computer landscape runs of companies: VC companies discussing (Klaus Gronenborn) exactly as it would in the real projects; entrepreneurs seeking to give Afghanistan; the same holds for every shape to their ideas; consultants June 24 tree, the vegetation on the ground or the rehearsing their presentation. In the end mountain ranges. The instructor places we restricted ourselves to just one set of Prison Images explosive devices and sets insurgents out negotiations and used the material shot 2000, 60 min. in the area. A sniper shot the tank over two days. What tipped the balance A film composed of images from gunner, which we documented with the for me was hearing the lawyer for NCTE, prisons. Quotes from fiction films and camera. When the tank drives over the the company seeking capital say, “We are documentaries as well as footage from fallow it kicks up a dust tail. The more a little disappointed by the offer”. I felt surveillance cameras. A look at the new vegetation there is, the less dust. On the myself transported into a Coen Brothers control technologies, at personal asphalt street, no dust. Even with all this film. The protagonists in our story film identification devices, electronic ankle attention to detail, death in the computer are sharp-witted and filled with a desire bracelets, electronic tracking devices. game is still something different than the to present themselves. The cinema has always been attracted real one. They are negotiating the conditions to prisons. Today’s prisons are full of (Harun Farocki) for the loan of 750,000 Euros. After video surveillance cameras. These initially failing to reach an agreement, images are unedited and monotonous; as Serious Games II: Three Dead they sidestep to a general discussion neither time nor space is compressed, Again, in 29 Palms, we embarked on an about strategic issues. It emerges that they are particularly well-suited to exercise with around 300 extras who NCTE, a manufacturer of contactless conveying the state of inactivity into represented both the Afghan and Iraqi torque sensors, is already in negotiations which prisoners are placed as a punitive population. A few dozen Marines were on with a number of large companies. And measure. The surveillance cameras show guard and went out on patrol. The town this ignites imagination, the world is full the norm and reckon with deviations where the maneuver was carried out was of possibilities and weighing them up from it. Clips from films by Genet and on a slight rising in the desert and its becomes a joy. Bresson. Here the prison appears as a buildings were made from containers. It (Harun Farocki) site of sexual infraction, a site where looked as though we had modeled reality human beings must create themselves as on a computer animation. people and as a workers. (Harun Farocki) (Harun Farocki) Serious Games III: Immersion July 1 For the video installation Immersion Farocki visited a workshop organized by War at a Distance the Institute for Creative Technologies, a 2003, 58 min. research center for virtual reality and In 1991, when images of the Gulf War computer-simulations. One of their flooded the international media, it was projects concerns the development of a virtually impossible to distinguish therapy for war-veterans suffering from between real pictures and those Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Farocki generated on computer. This loss of is interested in the use of virtual realities bearings was to change forever our way and games in the recruting, training and of deciphering what we see. now also therapy for soldiers. Farocki The image is no longer used only as explores the connection between virtual testimony, but also as an indispensable reality and the military – how the fictional link in a process of production and scenarios of computer games are used destruction. This is the central premise both in the training of U.S. troops prior to of War at a Distance, which continues the their deployment in combat zones, and in deconstruction of claims to visual psychological care for troops suffering objectivity Harun Farocki developed in battlefield trauma upon their return. his earlier work. (Production note) With the help of archival and original material, Farocki sets out in effect to Serious Games IV: A Sun without define the relationship between military Shadow strategy and industrial production and This chapter considers the fact that the sheds light on how the technology of war pictures with which preparations were finds applications in everyday life. made for war are so very similar to the (Antje Ehmann) pictures with which war was evaluated afterward. But there is a difference: The July 8, 2 pm program for commemorating traumatic experiences is somewhat cheaper. Serious Games I–IV Nothing and no-one casts a shadow here. 2009–10, 44 min. (Harun Farocki)

Serious Games I: Watson is Down July 15, 2 pm In the autumn of 2009 we filmed a drill at the Marine Corps Base 29 Palms in Nothing Ventured California. Four Marines sitting in a class 2004, 50 min. represented the crew of a tank. They had What venture capital or VC for short laptops in front of them on which they actually means is explained in the film steered their own vehicle and watched itself. Banks only lend money against others in the unit being driven through a collateral. Those who have none have to WRITTEN TRAILERS 1966 semiotics, cybernetics, didactics and Harun Farocki This year I made my first film of three learning machines. Our programme: “to minutes duration for a Berlin television make film scientifically and make science channel. (Zwei Wege/Two Paths). Ursula politically.” 1944 Lefkes and I got married. I was admitted I should have been born in Berlin, in to the just-opened Berlin Film Academy, 1971–1977 the Virchow Hospital, but we left the the DFFB. I also got my driving licence. During the production of the second city because of the bombing. I was born part of Das Kapital – Eine Sache, die sich in Neutitschein, today Nový Jicín, at that 1967 versteht (15x) (Something Self time Sudentengau, today the Czech I was thrown out of film school with five Explanatory (15 x), 1971) – we Republic. We stayed there for only a few other students after an intermediate overreached ourselves completely. weeks; we spent less time there than I examination. This led to a big protest by Before our daily shoot, with very little have ever needed since then in order to the rest of the students. In the following money and a small team, we had to explain that I’m neither a Czech nor summer the protest movement swelled accomplish Herculean tasks; for example a Sudeten German. I have also spent enormously and in autumn we were collecting a donkey with a mini van and lots of time with the spelling of my readmitted for a trial year. That summer I pushing it up three steps, which was name, Harun El Usman Faroqhi, until I travelled through Venezuela and much easier than motivating it to climb simplified its spelling in 1969. Colombia for several months in order to down again. Once Hartmut had to push have a look at the revolution and the a dolly with one hand and hold a prop 1945–1953 guerrilla movement, but I didn’t find into the image with the other, while My father was Indian. He first trained as them. performing a voice over. Another time a pilot in Dessau; later he completed his we had to push a car up a steep ramp, first period of study with a Ph.D on 1968 and do so this very quickly because we The Hindu-Mohamedan Conflict from an For once in my life I was ahead of were filming secretly in the Academy, Economic Point of View in Gießen, and Godard: at the beginning of the year we where we were banned. then studied medicine in Berlin. My disrupted a festival of experimental film Out of stupidity or courage we mother was German and grew up in in Knokke, Belgium, fortunately not the sometimes gave an entire scene of some Berlin. After her training as a foreign films by Shirley Clarke and Michael Snow. minutes to an extra from the job centre. language correspondent, she worked for In May my daughters Annabel Lee and When the film was finished the a scientific society and then studied Larissa Lu were born. I was thrown out of comrades who belonged to political medicine for a few semesters. In 1947 film academy again, this time with around parties were bound to dislike it for the we moved to India, where my father 15 other students, because of political simple reason that their own party intended to settle down as a doctor. The activity. hadn’t commissioned it; the so-called civil war took us to different places. In undogmatic factions found it not 1949 we moved to Indonesia where my 1969 undogmatic enough: if anybody can be a sister Suraiya and I went to school. First My father Abdul Qudus Faroqhi, born 9 revolutionary, then anybody can be a in Sukabumi, later in Jakarta; the school March 1901, died on 21 January 1969. filmmaker. We had tried to protect language was Dutch. ourselves from this kind of criticism with I made a short film with a budget of some our scientific pretension. We had also 1953–1958 DM15,000. (Nicht Löschbares Feuer/ speculated that with our work we could We moved back to Germany and lived in Inextinguishable Fire, 1969). The producer at reach film people who were after Bad Godesberg, a little town near Bonn WDR, Reinhold W. Thiel, thought that innovation and that this would offer us a in which only five houses had been the actors’ way of speaking and acting niche in the cultural industry. This bombed, where I attended a Jesuit was not stylised enough, or stylised in calculation didn’t add up. For the next School which was full of the sons of the the wrong way and proposed that all the few years we could almost only get economic and political elite. I saw my actors should be dubbed by two voices. casual jobs to make a living. To me it first Westerns and gangster films in the Night after night I edited the working looked as if we were being punished. We Burglichtspiele cinema. Other cultural prints into synchronised loops, which had tried to exploit the guilty conscience experiences: 1958 in , the big turned out to be far too long, as I realised of those who had called for Picasso exhibition; in Bonn at a school when I did the sound recording in a youth ‘revolutionary film’ or had nodded in theatre, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. film studio where I could work for free. agreement, but they now didn’t want to When the film had its premiere in be reminded of their guilty conscience 1958–1962 and I saw it for the first time or their nodding. My father set up a doctor’s surgery in on screen, I realised you could see my It wasn’t easy to do anything political Hamburg. We moved into a terraced cameraman’s girlfriend with her blonde in television, firstly because I didn’t want house and had a Mercedes. I saw the curly who was taking a joyride in the to understand politics as simply content world premiere of Brecht’s Saint Joan of aeroplane we hired to fly over or discourse. I was looking for an the Stockyards. Things didn’t go well at that stood in for a cropduster on a advanced political practice as promoted school. I went to a disreputable bar every mission to drop pesticides over Vietnam. by the Groupe Dziga Vertov or Tel Quel. day, and this helped me to rebel against Critics blamed me for technical For example I was against intercuts or my father. I ran away from home several sloppiness and overcalculation. In those shot-countershots. times and wanted to be a writer. days things were changing quickly and a For a while I tried an alliance with few months later the film was not the proletariat in the TV industry, with 1962–1966 regarded as awkward or cold any more; it the female editors and cameramen (in I ran away once and for all, moved to actually gained a certain recognition, those days the former were exclusively West Berlin and, following the beatniks’ also beyond the anti-Vietnam War female and the others male). I talked to example, I scraped a living with casual movement. editors and published our conversations jobs and lived in various cheap flats. I in the journal Filmkritik. We discussed also went to evening classes and finally 1970 worker participation and how it should took my A’levels. Occasionally I Hartmut Bitomsky and I planned to film affect the quality of production. If such succeeded in getting a proposed review Das Kapital by Karl Marx; the first part, Die partici-pation had been seriously accepted for radio or a newspaper, less Teilung aller Tage (The Division of all Days), attempted or actually achieved, it would occasionally, a short literary text. was completed in this year. We read Marx certainly not have improved my and Marx commentaries and texts on production possibilities. 2 In the early 1970s the WDR television Zwischen Zwei Kriegen (Between Two Wars) was Single. Eine Schallplatte wird produziert channel instigated a series called was completed in the summer of 1978, (Single. A Record is Being Produced, Glashaus, which included TV criticism. I and working off its production costs 1979), and then later on also Stilleben (Still contributed the feature Der Ärger mit den lasted until late 1979. But by then I had Life, 1997). In almost all of these cases Bildern. Eine Telekritik von Harun Farocki learned how to earn money. Meaning that we were keen to profit from the glamour (The Trouble with Images. A Critique of I learnt how to make use of the big of the studios in which we were filming, Television, 1973) in which I examined the television apparatus. Later on I read that in many cases from their expensive word-image relations in daily broadcasts. the 1970s were the Golden Age of West lighting. It wasn’t difficult to demonstrate that Germany, and I only learned at the end of television images didn’t show what the the decade how to skim off some of the 1984 commentary inferred from them. profits. I probably only had the courage I received DM80,000 from the Hamburg That language is the key medium and to make productions which didn’t fit into film subsidy for a film about Socially Useful that images are only nominally supposed any programme because I was Products. In the workers’ movement to depict what the commentary surrounded by such wealth and energy. criticism of products was mostly addresses. My critique triggered agitated From 1979 until 2000 I was able to make postponed until after the revolution. But debates in the television industry. At that one production every year with television in the 19th century there had already time, public-sector television had no finance, sometimes two or three. been a counter-movement, often competition and a yearly growth rate that anarchically inspired, which insisted that was almost equal to that of the overall 1980–1982 workers should fight not only for their economy. It employed a host of For Etwas wird Sichtbar/Before your Eyes salary and proper working conditions but functionaries who dealt with the Vietnam (1982) I received around also for producing something useful. I requirements of the political parties, the DM300,000 from ZDF. Two weeks before read a lot of books, brochures and church and other lobbyists. They also the shoot in 1980 I realised what I hadn’t pamphlets about the so-called fielded the demands of the new political admitted to myself for a long time: that I conversion movement, which wanted to left, which was calling for new and had sided with the Vietcong without turn the armaments industry – which had different treatments of issues. But it was dealing with the politics of the victorious become obsolete before the end of the unable to deal with a critique of communist regime and without Cold War – into something new. I also television’s overall daily practice. And mentioning the boat people or the read Hannah Arendt’s Vita Activa and many people who were covering new detention camps. I canceled, and wrote a other works of hers. issues (women’s liberation, reform of the new script. A year later we began to During my research it became clear education system) found my criticism shoot. We filmed on 35mm and had 50 that it wouldn’t be possible to work in the unhelpful. days on location. mode of an observational documentary film. Instead I had a kind of draft film or 1977–1979 1983 project film in mind, like Pasolini’s For many years I tried unsuccessfully to We had a few days shooting in a studio Appunti per una Orestiade Africana (Notes find the means for a film which would belonging to the magazine Playboy in Towards an African Oresteia, 1969). Over show that it was the contradiction Munich, documenting how the centrefold many years I had collected material (for between the productive forces and the with the nude girl was produced. (Ein Bild/ my last two films Between Two Wars and relations of production that drove An Image, 1983) Some 10 years before I Before your Eyes Vietnam), which then went German industry into crisis and to Hitler. had watched a make-up artist painting a into a script with a kind of plot and As Alfred Sohn-Rethel pointed out, they bad injury onto an actor’s body. She characters who kind of carried the plot. put Hitler into the saddle while they rolled some synthetic material into a This seemed an unnecessary detour to themselves were the horse. In autumn small strand thinner than a tooth pick, me now. I found a way in which I could 1977 I started shooting with around glued it on in tiny curved portions, and make texts become an issue without the DM30,000, which I had earned from other this looked as if the skin had been broken detour of an action. Wie man sieht (As productions. Everyone in front of the open by a blow from a blunt item and as You See, 1986) is also the only film of camera received DM100 per day, everyone if the injured parts had swollen up – even mine that is not sober, but has a some- behind the camera DM50. Sometimes we before she painted on the blood. I what drunken feel. Over the years I had worked in comparatively luxurious thought it would be more appropriate to cultivated a way of talking and drinking circumstances: while the lighting was show how a wound is painted than to amongst friends in which you produce being prepared I rehearsed with the show a fight that results in a wound. nonsense in a productive way. I practised actors in Ursula’s flat, where the For a long time I had planned to relate this almost as an art, but in my work I wardrobe was also located. But in the the alienation effect not only to Brecht was always seriously austere. evenings I had to schlep heavy objects, but also to pop art. I had the idea of In 1984 the last issue of Filmkritik convince an actress about our project documenting cultural-industrial appeared, a magazine to which I – for four or five evenings, in the end production processes both at a distance contributed as an author and editor for successfully. and right down to the last detail with my more than 10 years. During its final years camera. I came back to this again and we had succeeded in organising a few Shortly after completing the shoot, the again. The first of this series is Make-Up television productions in order to earn body of the murdered Hans-Martin (1973). It shows in detail how a make-up money for the increased printing costs. Schleyer was found. I had a gun in my artist paints a model’s face. Using a Once we realised that we would have a flat which we had used as a prop, and in technique that was often practised in the yearly deficit of DM20,000, we had to quit. those days the police always came to a silent-film era, he covers a woman’s face few hundred suspicious flats after a with masses of powder, which he then 1985 sensational event – they had also called rubs deeply into the skin. Through the I had dismissed decorating a political on me a few times. In panic I got rid of addition of black or red tones he issue with a kind of story, but I still the gun – but the police didn’t come. produces a strong effect of plasticity. He wanted to do a proper story film. 10 years After 10 years they finally knew who was transforms flesh into marble, he before, I had read a short newspaper using guns for artistic purposes. fossilises female beauty – later on I used item about a man who in the heat of the parts of this production in Bilder der Welt moment had killed his wife and was now After the filming was done I first had to und Inschrift des Krieges (Images of the living with the sister of the dead woman. do the work for which I had already been World and the Inscription of War, 1988). She pretended to be her dead sister, and paid; and I hadn’t kept in mind that you Unfortunately I also staged a few things there were also two children around. I also spend money while you’re earning it. in Make-Up. The next title in this series worked on this theme again and again 3 over the years, and now the production some floodlights coloured with pink, read after decades – that is a strong money came together, almost a million blue, green, purple and yellow foils. metaphor. So strong that for a long time DM. It was only while casting that I In those days there were only three it was very hard for me to find space for realised I couldn’t conceive of the actress television channels in West Germany, other things. The phrase ‘helpless I was looking for as a real person. And and when the film was broadcast on a anti-fascist’ still applied to me. In order when the film was finished I realised that Thursday at 8.15 pm the other channels to avoid being a ‘helpless anti-fascist’ this newspaper item had only interested were only showing church issues and you have to contextualise fascism me because it didn’t go into how the political debates, with the result that Die properly. You can only prevent fascism living woman was a substitute for the Schulung (Indoctrination, 1986) reached occurring in the future, or at least know desired dead one. almost a third of the television audience. how to fight it, if you are acquainted with I had to take more criticism and I also got a lot of letters, mainly from its roots. In Between Two Wars I had scorn for this film than for any other one, outraged PR agencies and consultants, depicted the crisis in heavy industry especially at its premiere in Hof. It felt as asking what they were supposed to think around 1930. The crisis came into if the West German film business was about what they had seen – the film had existence due to technical innovation taking revenge for all the impudence that no commentary. It was a surprise to me – the development of the productive my friends and I had produced over more that I could gain more attention with a forces as Marx puts it – that undermined than a decade in Filmkritik. We didn’t think film that had been shot in only five days production relations. Company owners much of Fassbinder, Herzog and Reitz, and edited in about four weeks than with had to look beyond the limits of their and only approved of the early Wenders. other more labour-intensive productions. own property but were not able to do so. Today I don’t want to see or show This film was also a great help with They welcomed fascism in order to Betrogen (Betrayed, 1985). Some of it getting better funding from television. institute a command economy, in which is really silly. The film pretends that But what is more important was that they wouldn’t lose their investments. And it has been shot in 1958, under the these multiple production opportunities because they expected Hitler to expand restrictions of the studio system. In allowed me not to be restricted to only the market with armed force. My film those days I thought that in some one approach and type of film, like so doesn’t deal with the Jews and what was minor works of film history – in plot many other marginal filmmakers are, or done to them. The only person I show as and acting, quite unspectacular – there have to be. I made shorter and longer a victim of the Nazi terror is a worker who would be something that was essentially films one after another or at the same has gained insight into historical cinematographic, and that this could time – direct cinema as well as films with processes. become a starting point for completely an image-text construction. The left was often unable to speak different works. This was why Godard about the Jews when they tried to prove appreciated Hollywood and even John I made an application to the North something – the same with me. My Ford appealed to Straub. I probably never Rhine-Westphalian Film Fund with a starting point now was the impending got rid of this belief entirely. Aiming paper in which I questioned the current mass destruction through nuclear for this core idea is very presumptuous status of film and photography, quoting a weapons. Hardly anyone responded to and needs a different kind of practical lot of Vilém Flusser, whose work, which this attempt to relate Auschwitz to the experience. had just been published in Germany, I current armaments situation. I worked on Before I made Betrayed, the film As You admired a lot. I got the money and also both versions (Bilderkrieg/Images-War, See hadn’t been finished entirely. It came further funding from WDR for this 1987; Images of the World and the Inscription out in spring 1986. The film was rejected project, a 45-minute-long film. I was now of War, 1988) for about two years, mostly by the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum and in the very rare situation of having funds at the editing table. My working day was the Parisian Festival Cinéma du réel only for a project whose specific mode had very long – and around 11 pm I usually showed it in a side series. It was shown not yet been settled. I also had a lot of went for an endurance run. Often a word at the Duisburger Filmwoche and later I freedom in the choice of subject matter. or a montage idea would come into my was able to sell it to television. Because I By chance I read a text by Günter Anders mind – though I didn’t know what I was worked for two years on these two films – in which he called on people to blockade looking for. It often happened that I for Betrayed I had to defer my fee – I didn’t access to nuclear weapons of mass couldn’t find what I needed and I first have time to earn any money, so I was destruction. When it became known in had to put all my books into alphabetical initially very much in debt. Britain and the US during the Second order before I could go back to the World War that the Germans were editing table. 1987 murdering millions of people, there was a During the late 60s I had heard about a demand to destroy the railway lines that 1989 training film that showed managers how lead to the camps. According to Anders I begrudged Michael Klier his idea of to cope with their employees. For this didn’t happen but should have making a film entirely out of surveillance example, they were supposed to happened; and if we were serious about camera imagery. (Der Riese/The Giant, demonstrate how to screw someone up protesting against the impending 1983). My idea was to depict life in West and how to praise somebody else. I destruction of the world, today we would Germany through role play – from birth couldn’t find this film and asked myself if have to blockade access to the missile to death. This idea can be communicated it had existed at all. I now proposed to a silos. in one sentence; so first I didn’t want to TV producer the idea of making a film During my research I found out that in write it down and preferred to talk about about management seminars. It was 1944 American bombers had taken aerial it with the commissioning editors at ZDF unbelievably difficult to find such photographs, which also showed Kleines Fernsehspiel. It had to be uttered seminars. I started to doubt whether they Auschwitz, while they were attacking like a magic spell. But then I did have even existed, but then I found a coach factories in Poland from Italy. In these to write it down – and got funds from who wanted to be filmed at all costs and images you could see a train entering the ZDF and arte. We were producing for forced his students to agree to grounds, a group of inmates queuing up about nine months. Michael Trabitzsch participate by telling them that if they in front of the registry and another group found an institution – let’s say, a group weren’t prepared to be filmed, their on its way to the gas chambers. The which was holding a breastfeeding managerial skills couldn’t be up to much. photographs were only discovered in course. I went along to have a look. Then We installed our video equipment, 1977. Two CIA employees, who had seen I had to convince the group to give me several cameras and microphones in a the television series Holocaust, found permission to film them. Sometimes hotel in Bad Harzburg. I became anxious them during off-duty research. That there was a single person who didn’t when the meeting room began to look images from the camps had been taken want to be filmed. Sometimes the group more and more like a TV studio, so I had unknowingly and that they could only be agreed, but when it came to shooting 4 there was suddenly someone who hadn’t haywain, the carter was asleep. In that since 1992 hardly any cinema in attended the meeting before and didn’t Bucharest we were able to use a room in Germany has shown my films. Leben BRD want to be filmed – so the shoot had the Ministry of Culture as an office. We (How to Live in the FRG) did go on to be cancelled. Or meanwhile most of got an office in the building of the art release in around 30 cinemas in 1990, the women had already given birth and administration in which piles of oil when Germany was almost reunited. But the course didn’t exist any more. There paintings of the Ceaucescu’s were when Videogramme einer Revolution was a huge vacant hospital in Berlin- stored. We began researching images (Videograms of a Revolution, 1992) had Wilmersdorf which had been given to that had been made in the days of the its premiere in two cinemas in Berlin in self-help groups by the senate – groups revolution. It was not difficult to gain an 1993 there were only two people in the for women whose husbands were overview of the given material. First of all, audience – in both cinemas. foreigners, groups for anorexic or bulimic nearly everybody who had been filming people, groups for relatives of addicts. in those days knew each other: staff of 1993 The pleasure of organising a political the Centre for Documentary Film, Before we started the production of group had obviously been taken over by television people, students. A year Videograms of a Revolution I had already the necessity of learning or managing before, television producers from received the commission for a film to be something. After around 10 months we Britain, the US and France had compiled entirely from commercial clips. had found what we were looking for – and catalogued the material. Private people I wanted to make something like an even more: a car one could turn around and student organisations had set up iconographic study, for example to show like a suckling pig on a spit, in order to small collections. how a piece of soap comes into contact practice how to get out of a car that had But it was difficult to get hold of the with the body. It became apparent that overturned. Or a military exercise by the best-quality material. Television had although there were many such shots, Federal Armed Forces, where the trainer many hours of material, broadcast by they were too different to edit them tells his soldiers to be more excited when Studio 4 during the revolution, which simply one after another. In a commercial reporting a tank approaching: “NATO hadn’t been taped by themselves. In for the soap Cleopatra, for example, we has been expecting this moment for 30 some cases they had copies viewers had see a Queen Cleopatra, followed by a years now.” made with VHS recorders – aware of the huge entourage, entering a bath of white During the making of this film the specialness of the historical moment. liquid that is perhaps supposed to be Wall came down. With the end of East When we were working in the television ass’s milk, accompanied by a brass band Germany the welfare state of West building at night, soldiers would hang playing music by Verdi. She places a Germany – as marked in the film – also around with their submachine guns, as if piece of Cleopatra soap in a little wooden came to an end. When I later presented the old regime were still a threat. After ship, puts it in the water and gives it a the film in the US people knew what the we had again and again seen images push. The bath perhaps alludes to the film was about. But this didn’t seem to be showing tens or even hundreds of one in which Cleopatra had asked Caesar the case in Portugal, France or Spain. I thousands of people coming together in to make her Queen of Egypt; the ship of thought perhaps that in Catholic order to achieve the overthrow of the old the Egyptian fleet she secretly mobilised countries people learn enough from their regime it seemed absurd to call this a against the Romans. So the clip also families and don’t need to have a training television revolution. We dismissed our says: the use of this soap transforms a course for everything. initial idea of a filmed analysis and woman into Cleopatra. Verdi – decided to reconstruct the five days of a Shakespeare – George Bernard Shaw 1990 revolution, from 21 to 25 December 1989, – Elizabeth Taylor. You can’t undo such a My mother Lili Faroqhi, née Draugelattis, from various sources of material, as continuum with cuts. So I tried to do it born 9 March 1910, died 31 July 1990. comprehensively as possible. We with movement cuts: Cleopatra puts the started the offline editing with UMatic little ship into the water and gives it a 1991–1992 low-band equipment in my flat in Berlin push – from this impulse a sledge with I saw images of the shootings in in summer 1991. Andrei Ujica was based vodka whooshes across the polar ice. I Rumania and heard about 60,000 dead in and joined me each time had to reduce myself to transitions and bodies. I also watched a report about the for a week. It wasn’t easy to figure out give the clips an order. I wanted to tell cemetery for the poor in Timisoara, the day and the time the scenes had the story of one day, from early morning where mutilated corpses had been found been filmed – it was important to us that to night, as Vertov or Ruttmann had – torture victims of the Securitate it was each shot of our montage would appear done, but here with material from four said. Later this turned out to be wrong; in strict chronological order. In order to decades. It often turned out that the the bodies had been autopsied in a find more material we were again in material we were given for the offline hospital nearby. Baudrillard therefore Bucharest in autumn 1991. The research montage was totally different from what came to the conclusion that there had took five weeks in total. The outline of we got for the on-line postproduction; been no revolution in Rumania, or at the the film and the offline-montage took there were many versions of one clip and most, a fake television revolution. In 1990 around nine months, the postproduction not every version was still available. A I read a book about the fall of Ceau escu, three months. Nobody had expected cut from the Cleopatra ship to the vodka edited by Hubertus von Amelunxen and such a quick and non-violent collapse of sledge was not possible any more Andrei Ujica. I had the idea for a film in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. I because either the one or the other shot which a handful of people who under- would never have thought that a film was missing. stand something about politics and about a revolution would simply fall into The producer of this TV production images would analyze in detail a series my lap. All the more a film about a was Ebbo Demant. He had established of images from those December days in revolution that would not establish, but something special at SWR Baden-Baden: 1989. To make a film like a seminar. I abolish socialism. a time slot for documentary films in visited the book’s two editors. Andrei public- sector broadcasting. And he had Ujica suggested that we make the film Twice during the editing I was invited by built up a pool of regular contributors. He together, and in summer 1991 we went the Goethe Institut to present and tried to give a group of about 40 to 50 to Bucharest. Despite many socialist discuss my films in the local institutes, people the repeated possibility of buildings (school centres, factories, film clubs, film archives and universities producing something for television. He housing estates) the journey through in the US and Canada. Since then the organised a meeting every other year Hungary was often like a tour into Goethe Institut has invited me to travel where films were viewed and discussed. pre-war times. But in the countryside in to more than 15 countries. For me these He was also the one who made it Rumania we felt as if we were back in the various encounters and experiences possible for Peter Nestler to produce 19th century. Two horses were pulling a have been a compensation for the fact something for television after some 20 5 years. I only liked a few of the works of tremendous misery, compared to which 1997–1999 these regulars, although I did like more ours seems pathetic, although her In the early 1990s Kaja Silverman and I films than I had expected. suffering probably ennobles us if we feel had had a conversation about Godard’s for her. Passion (1982), which was published in 1994–1995 the magazine Discourse. We now planned I thought about a kind of remake Over many years, even decades, I had to write a book about eight Godard films. of Retraining; I wanted to show how avoided dealing explicitly with the First we watched each film we had managers from the East were being content of films. When I was around agreed on in the cinema. In the case of connected to the West. It turned out 20-years old I read closely or repeatedly Le gai savoir (1969) we rented a 16mm that the same man who had been the many critics influenced by Kracauer, reduction print from a distributor in New protagonist in Retraining seven years whose method of interpretation I had York that delivered prints to colleges. ago was now going to train the adopted. The film A shows a person B The print was almost 30 years old and employees of two construction comp- who acts in a C way. Accordingly the apart from red, every colour was almost anies from Saxony that had been bought film expresses that the B-person always completely bleached out. Kaja had a up by a company from Stuttgart, in a acts like C, but actually this is bad, so-called ‘analytical projector’ in mountain hotel in . The because there are also B-persons who Berkeley with which you could control first days were completely useless. The act in a D way. Or better, who should the projection speed and jog backwards seminar was held in an Alpine wood- act in a D way. But when I came to the and forwards like you do at an editing paneled room which was far too small Film Academy and the protest movement table. We organised VHS tapes from for the more than 40 men and women arose, when there were thousands or France, Germany and the US. We always taking part. And they were not very even hundreds of thousands of people began with a conversation, which we talkative. If a man or a woman did answer who thought they knew how a film should taped. Kaja then did a transcription, a question from the seminar facilitator depict the world – I looked for another made a text out of it and marked the – then it was quite short. Before one of field of activity. I refined Kracauer’s passages I should work on. First I wrote the two camera- men found the person method in as much as I said: film A in German and then I roughly translated speaking, who was often also half shows how B acts in a C way, but doesn’t it. Kaja revised it and I corrected it hidden, and before the soundman had know that it tells it exactly as if B would – again in German – and so on and so placed the boom – the comment was act like D. As if the story of a female forth. Kaja had the major part in our already over. Only within the last two worker were told like that of a princess. production, not only because the book days a useful situation came up; they In order to avoid the call for films having was produced in English, but because were performing role-plays in which to give an example, I then tried to Kaja was more experienced in writing. the building employees had to play the completely ignore the plot. That went so The book was first published in the US. commissioner or the representative far that I sometimes only paid attention We also found a publisher in Germany of the construction firm. The seminar to the space between the protagonists and Roger M. Buerghel did the facilitator often gave harsh criticism and not at all to what they were saying translation. I worked with him on the that was mostly received with shame or doing – which is mostly also saying. German version in Berlin, in and and only seldom contradicted. Most But then I realised I had to give up in California and also rewrote some of the participants had a background this stance of strict denial. It only now passages. Kaja and I did book as workers or craftspeople and they became clear that I had stuck to it longer presentations on both continents. We obviously found it dishonourable to than to communism or revolution. each read our parts, either in German or speak like management. But they didn’t in English – although not everything express this and the facilitator certainly 1994 was a bad year for us. Ursula attributed to me was always written by didn’t understand what was going on became seriously ill and had to have an me. Kaja had sometimes arranged her with them. operation. It was hard for me to work argumentation as a dialogue between us. When I made a 45-minute-long film under these circumstances. I watched The cinematheque in Toronto had from this material I never even had to every scene that might be useful for the screened all eight Godard films before make a painful choice between two Workers Leaving the Factory project several we gave our public reading. We gave a scenes. On the contrary I had to take times – more often than I usually would presentation with video-beamed excerpts every scene that was merely suitable. have done, because I couldn’t see how from Nouvelle Vague (1989) at the Berliner I felt like someone who couldn’t do they were relevant. According to which Ensemble’s rehearsal stage. The anything but repeat his old ideas, and criteria should I arrange the scenes, and invitation to this theatre reminded me the repetition is even worse than the what should the order reveal? During a that I had seen Brecht productions here original. montage process there usually always some decades before. In those days I comes the moment in which I recognise would have never dared to dream of an In the same year I talked to Werner the basic principle of a project, and this appearance at the Berliner Ensemble Dütsch from WDR about a film I wanted is the key to every necessary decision. myself. The auditorium was packed, but to make for the 100th anniversary of But during this project this moment to my disappointment we only sold seven cinema. A film that would deal with the never occurred, so obviously I looked signed books. Our publisher Rainald first motif of the first film that was ever for it afterwards. First I wrote a few Gussmann said that this was not such a publicly presented: La Sortie de l’usine newspaper articles about Workers Leaving bad result. Lumiére à Lyon (Workers Leaving the the Factory. I presented the film several Sometimes friends complained that Factory, 1895). I watched feature films, times together with additional material, for five years now, since Videograms of a documentary films, industrial films and which I hadn’t or had only partly used, Revolution, I hadn’t made a longer film. also corporate videos. You can see and commented on it. I gave one of these Neither a feature-length film nor one that thousands of workers leaving the Ford presentations in Cologne and it was could be compared to a book, but merely factory in Detroit in a documentary from transcribed and published. A year later short films like newspaper articles. the 1920s. In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) Workers Leaving the Factory became the Christian Petzold thought that my writing the worker-slaves wear uniforms, they starting point for an entire conference, and teaching was responsible for this trudge along in synchronised movements about which an entire book was made. – between 1992 and 1999 I taught every with bowed heads. other semester in Berkeley, mostly In Lang’s Clash by Night (1952) 1996 together with Kaja Silverman. My reply of Marilyn Monroe leaves a fish factory. Ursula Lefkes, born 14 October 1935, died course was that major works only This makes you think about fairytales in 31 July 1996. counted from a career-driven point of which princesses suffer – they suffer a view; that it would be entirely 6 anti-modern to accuse an artist of only carrots in their adverts than there in Germany that they have to earn from making drawings and no large oil actually are in the cans of soup. We producing, because later they will earn paintings any more. In fact there are only agreed on several dates for shoots, hardly anything from distribution. A a few filmmakers who make a short film which we had to postpone all the time; production contract with a TV channel for television, cinema or other forms of most of them were cancelled in the end. includes a licence for broadcasting and distribution after having made a feature- When our cameraman Ingo Kratisch therefore entails a future share. But due length film. And if they do so it is seen finally arrived – after his flight had been to the fact that the last payment is made as something of a comedown. I now postponed constantly – we only had two when the film is finished, you get the realised that I preferred the small format days left to shoot, and we could only use impression that the film won’t have a because I had nothing big to say. The a few minutes from the material. When future. In the 1990s, with some sales and thing I wanted to contribute to, the social we gave back our equipment we found retrospectives, the situation improved for revolution, had been forcibly cancelled out that the camera distributor, the only a short time, and for a few years it looked after all. 1989 was the counter-year of one left in San Francisco specialising in as if there was an increasing demand for 1917. 16mm, was to close down the next day documentary films. With the end of the Of course it was still conceivable to because there was no longer a market decade this was all over – at least for me. make a feature-length film, a film that any more for this format. It was also very would have nothing to do with 1917. How difficult to set a date for a shoot in . 2000–2003 to Live in the FRG already had hardly Photographers are used to constant Because I spent half the year in the anything to do with 1917. But that there postponements because commissioning US I wanted to make films there too. A were only two people at the premiere of agencies or companies are not able to curator of a museum in New York asked Videograms of a Revolution had shown me decide what they want. All this meant me to produce something. I proposed an that cinema didn’t even have a symbolic that my film wasn’t ready for the opening examination of the depiction of prisons presence any more. of the documenta. The film Still Life (1997) in film and video, a study like Workers actually had its premiere 50 days later. Leaving the Factory. The first meeting took In 1995 Regis Durand invited me to When I gave my apologies to Catherine place in SoHo, where I had the most contribute something to an exhibition in David, she said: “But we aren’t in Cannes expensive lunch of my life. I never heard Villeneuve d’Asq (Lille), asking me to here!” from the man who paid for it again. make a video commenting on my own There is no other democratic work. I wanted to work with two sound- In 1997 I met Doris Heinze – at a station country in the world where such a image channels. I had been waiting for or a film reception – with whom I had high percentage of the population is in this opportunity since seeing Godard’s been on a jury 10 years before. She prison. The amount of prisoners even Numéro Deux (1975). It was the first time in said that she was now working for the increases if the crime rate sinks – as a long while that I had had to write a TV channel NDR, which produced in recent years. I once travelled to a script again; we filmed it in two days in documentary films that could cost up prison construction site in Oregon with my flat. A script was necessary because to DM300,000. This was almost three an architect who was employed by an in those days I didn’t edit with a times more than I usually got for a office with several thousand architects. computer programme but with S-VHS 45- to 60-minute film. We agreed on a He told me about a certain Bentham and equipment, and you couldn’t have an documentary about the so-called his ideas about the panopticon which offline montage of two parallel channels. ‘industrial TV’, the production of were being applied to this building. I guess I was anxious that the production talk- and game-shows, (Worte und He had never heard about Foucault or of a two-channel video wasn’t artistic Spiele/Words and Games 1998). I was about all the subsequent discourses in enough, so I asked my assistant Jan somewhat astonished when the first which Bentham’s idea had been read Ralske to look for some old blackboards. broadcast was scheduled for half past symptomatically and not as a practical He found some on the street in Berlin- midnight. In the previous years I had proposal. I travelled from California Mitte, where a school building was being often produced my films in collaboration to Camden, near Philadelphia. The cleared out. We had them sent to France with other European TV channels in main road was totally ruinous, the only by courier. I then chalked some Belgium, France, the Netherlands and functional building was the prison quotations from my work on to them. Austria. Sometimes it was also possible complex. A director gave me a tour. He When the installation travelled to another to sell a film to other foreign countries or showed me the inmates, who could be art space in Nice the blackboards to resell a film whose licence had expired seen in orange overalls behind glass remained in Lille – and since then I have to a German TV channel. Before this I panels. He pointed to a device on the done without any additional items in my had been only able to earn money from ceiling. These were the ends of gas installation works. When Schnittstelle production, but never from distribution. pipes; there had been plans to sedate (Interface, 1995) was presented in the Basis Film, who had distributed all my the inmates at the touch of a button exhibition Face á L’Histoire in Paris I films sinceBetween Two Wars, scarcely in the case of an uprising, but then it realised that more than 10,000 people made any profits and paid me – when turned out that the chemicals would visited the Pompidou every day, and if things went well – a few hundred DM per decompose after a few months. He also only 10 people per day would see my work year. said that the inmates used to be allowed during the 100 days of the exhibition it Along with the crisis that hit the to have barbecues with their families would still mean thousands more than I independent cinemas in the 1990s the in the courtyard. But he had stopped could reach in cinemateques or film distribution sales also narrowed; some of this because he wanted to avoid the clubs. my films weren’t distributed at all within a possibility of the inmates becoming role year. I made a little more profit abroad: a models for their children – above all for In 1996 Catherine David invited me to retrospective brought in several thousand their sons. make a film for documenta X. First we did DM. But the costs for foreign-language They had told me that I would be some research in San Francisco at the versions, for handling and shipping, were allowed to film in Camden, but then I studios of stills photographers. One pretty high. In the mid 90s I put all my wasn’t allowed to bring the equipment woman was specialised in food photos prints in storage – which of course meant into the building. A few weeks later I and we watched her having someone a further narrowing down of income. again flew to Oregon, to a prison I was count what was swimming in a can of Nowadays films like mine are only shown only able to enter under the condition soup: how many pieces of meat and in film museums and archives; other that I wouldn’t bring a camera with me. carrots, how many peas? In the US there venues abroad – also museums – are The first thing the guard who gave me are many lawyers who specialise in suing only prepared to present videos or even a tour asked me was where my camera companies who show more pieces of DVDs. It’s almost a rule for producers was, so I fetched it from the car. He 7 also allowed me to copy a range of I had to deliver an outline and called it makers want to take the initiative archive material. We got in touch with Ich glaubte Gefangene zu sehen, because themselves: they are less interested in a civil-rights organisation which had I had just read the English edition of contributing to something that already organised material from Corcoran in Deleuze’s Unterhandlungen (Negotiations) exists than to set the stage for something California. In this high-security prison, where he quotes Ingrid Bergmann from new. As curators they also want to be guards had shot at inmates 2,000 times Europa 51, saying: “I thought I was seeing authors. So I started to collect ideas and during one decade. Five inmates had convicts.” In the German version she to wait for opportunities. been killed. A wedge-shaped, concrete said something different and something and treeless prison courtyard; men different again in the original Italian 2004 in sportswear who start a fight, other version. For me this was just a working The project about war and image- inmates throw themselves to the ground; title, but Roger and Ruth had already processing was still in the doldrums. a cloud of smoke crosses the image – a sent it to the printers, so they asked me Because of the secrecy rules in the guard has opened fire. A single person to keep it. Later several museums and army and the defence industry it took us remains on the ground and is carried collections wanted to buy the work, but I weeks and months until we were allowed away on a stretcher. A human-rights had signed a contract saying that it was to have a look at anything. When we organisation got hold of these images a unique work. I still don’t read contracts finally got permission to film or copy from a surveillance camera thanks to that closely, but I always make sure that images, the material was re-examined the Freedom of Information Act; I was every work for art spaces has an edition afterwards – in some cases it was a allowed to copy and quote the material. of three, with two or three additional series of images of less than a minute. I artist copies. This installation has was therefore eager to make something At the same time I was researching often been rented out to museums and quickly now, and with a surplus of for a film about shopping malls. I had galleries, around 40 times up to now, and material. So I planned a direct-cinema been reading articles and books about each time the curator Sabine Breitwieser film about venture capital. During this the history of retail architecture. I has insisted that the installation can only project we often had to take the train at learned about astonishing experiments, be shown at a single venue at any one 4 am from Berlin to Aachen or Munich for example about a studio in which time. I had now already made two works the very next day in order to observe the they had tried to find out which floor with double sound-image channels and negotiations between venture-capital coverings would accelerate the pace of I was looking for a subject that invited applicants and possible investors. Since the consumer and which ones would you to set two images in comparison. I we didn’t know the participants and slow it down. I had the idea that I could thought about image processing, where couldn’t foresee anything, we sometimes make a film in which the all-too-familiar it often happens that a video image is filmed four hours in a row. Even on our subject of the shopping mall would translated into a computer image. The way back we often knew that we wouldn’t unfold entirely differently. I visited the war of the allied forces against Iraq use the material, because the invention first mall ever built, by Victor Gruen in in 1991 came into my mind. In those at stake was an operating application, Minneapolis, and the then biggest mall days a new kind of image appeared on for example, for which the negotiations in the world in Edmonton. But after television: filmed from the head of a had been held in a technical language. several months of research we still hadn’t projectile flying towards its aim – when After around 14 of such shoots we came organised a single shoot. Neither the it hit its target, transmission ceased. It across an ideal situation: for a couple architectural offices nor the real-estate was said that these were images from of days two applicants persistently scouts, neither the interior decoration intelligent weapons. 10 years later both negotiated with two venture capitalists companies nor the eye-tracking images and weapons had hardly been about a loan and its price in an office specialists – nobody wanted to let us in. examined. During the following three near Munich. All four were rhetorically Only after a while did I figure out that the years I was concerned with these issues skilled and well able to present mall industry wasn’t rejecting us because and made three installations; Auge/ themselves, and each of them clearly had it wanted to hide its secrets. On the Maschine I (Eye/Machine I, 2001); Auge/ a different role – in their negotiations contrary, the rejection was because there Maschine II (Eye/Machine II, 2002) and it became immediately obvious what weren’t any secrets, and this shouldn’t Auge/Maschine III (Eye/ Machine III, 2003). the money was for and under which become public. And it wasn’t so very Apart from that I also completed the film conditions it would be invested. Only different in Germany and Austria, where Erkennen und Verfolgen (War at a Distance, when the film was finished did I realise most of the scenes of the film were finally 2003). For the film I received funding from that I had never seen extended financial shot. (Die Schöpfer der Einkaufs- welten/ the television producer Inge Classen negotiations in a documentary film The Creators of Shopping Worlds, 2001). (3sat), for the installation I was funded before. The producer of this film was After the film was broadcast on public- by art institutions. This funding alone Werner Dütsch from WDR, Cologne. I sector television the producer Gudrun would not have been enough to carry had made Inextinguishable Fire, my first film Handke-El Ghomri told me that a future out complicated research and to film or after leaving the film academy, for this TV project with her would not be possible. copy the necessary material. The money channel, and I had worked with Werner My film had a viewing figure of only 5%. for Eye/Machine I came from media-art Dütsch since 1979. The producers in the Doris Heinze from NDR had already institute ZKM, Karlsruhe, because Tom film department at WDR had initiated a signalled through her behaviour during Levin invited me to participate in his programme like those in cinematheques. production meetings that I wouldn’t be exhibition Ctrl/Space. The money for The films of Griffith or Eisenstein, getting anything more from her in future. the second part came from Bruges, the American film noir, Sternberg or which was European Capital of Culture Western-series were broadcast here In autumn 1999 Roger M. Buergel called at the time, and for part III I got some long before you could see them in West me. He was curating an exhibition at the money from the ICA in London. All Germany’s major cinemas. They were Generali Foundation Vienna with Ruth of these were chance connections. also given critical introductions. Films by Noack. Would I like to contribute a film? I Before beginning the project I had Jean Rouch could be seen, sometimes told him about the project with the prison tried to raise money systematically and for the first time. The department also images, which wasn’t progressing at asked the curator Anselm Franke to produced documentary films, by Hartmut that point in time. During a few months apply for money from around a dozen Bitomsky, Claude Lanzmann or Marcel I completed a two-channel production. art institutions; each would contribute Ophüls. In the 1990s the budget for these Because there wasn’t enough money a small amount, for which they would activities was gradually reduced. I think in the exhibition budget we made an then have the opportunity of showing all this short boom in the documentary film agreement that the work would later be three works in the end. This didn’t work occurred because the producers realised purchased for the Generali collection. out, because I assume most exhibition that they could make a documentary for 8 a tenth of the amount took for a feature For this project we also filmed twice in projects, doing research, making plans film. It needed a few years before they India, and in France, Austria, Switzer- and organising shoots. Suddenly our noticed that it was even cheaper not land and Germany. The Viennese art place turned into a proper production to produce documentary films either. space MUMOK offered me a solo show, company. Commercial television asserted itself in for which I made a double-channel During the preparations for the Germany and throughout Europe during installation from this material. (Vergleich exhibition Roger M. Buerghel and Ruth the 1990s. The public-sector channels über ein Drittes/Comparison via a Third, Noack invited me to produce something adjusted themselves to their competitors. 2007). The people shown producing and for documenta 12. It was supposed to Nicht ohne Risiko (Nothing Ventured, 2004) building bricks are heard in various be something about the World Cup. For was the last film I made with Werner languages that are not translated. There years Roger had wanted me to make Dütsch as producer, who was now going is neither a commentary nor intertitles. something about football; he mentioned into retirement; the other producers The work was projected by two Bayern Munich and money from BMW. left shortly before or afterwards. There synchronised 16-mm projectors. 16-mm For the documenta I had the idea of was only one successor for all of them. projectors are not produced anymore, but presenting the Cup Final on 20 screens, Nowadays the WDR has no producers there is a small company in Canada that half of them showing the game from for literature, theatre or ballet. Now there specialises in synchronised multiple different camera positions: a single are only animal documentaries and films projection. player, different players; the goalkeepers with the actor Heinz Rühmann against would each be tracked by a camera over which the WDR had always fought, no Sabine Breitwieser invited Antje Ehmann the entire game. The other half of the matter whether they were from before and myself to curate an exhibition at screens would display various analytical or after 1945. But there must have been the Generali Foundation in Vienna. We methods, the paths of a single player or at least one reasonable person left planned to show works that in a narrower all the players, for example. I decided to there, otherwise the huge administration or broader sense examine film. Works in use already existing analytical systems buildings of the channel would have different media – photography, painting, and to commission new ones. Roger told collapsed long ago. sculpture – that give an insight into what me at our first meeting in autumn 2005 film is or can be. We wanted in every way that the National Museum in Oslo and 2005–2007 to avoid showing films that were made for MACBA in Barcelona would support If you apply for film funding you have to the cinema or cinema-like situations, and the project. A few weeks later I wrote submit a lot of paperwork, even if it’s to focus the awareness on the difference to Roger that we had calculated the about a documentary film for which you between cinema and non-cinema. During costs for the project and that some can’t know where you will shoot and with the preceding years Antje had worked for 500,000 Euro would be needed. He wrote whom. This is not expected from an an exhibition about the phenomenon of back that he would pass on the figures. artist. To receive money from museums shrinking cities. She watched hundreds, Then I heard nothing from him for a or other art institutions you only need to maybe thousands of films which dealt long time. In February 2006 we were submit a few pages of text. I received with urban decay or were set against finally in a position to speak to two funding from the Kulturstiftung des the backdrop of rundown cities. She representatives of FIFA, the international Bundes (German Federal Cultural made a double projection where on football association, in Switzerland. Foundation) on the basis of a single the left image you could see people – Their bosses had decided to allow us page, and the juror thanked me explicitly individuals, couples, groups, sometimes to use the material from the cup final for the brevity with which I had explained also humanoids or animals, taken from for our installation. This generosity was that I would like to make a film and an all sorts of different films with different lessened a bit by the license fee of 20,000 installation about bricks: how they were production values – moving from right Euro that we would have to pay; for FIFA produced and laid. We spent a week in to left; on the right image you could this is a mere tip. The FIFA people only Gando, a village in Burkina Faso. It is see individuals, couples, groups and got back to us a short time before the situated in the African savannah, where the same humanoid moving from left to Cup Final – and we only got six instead of the roots of the trees reach the ground right. (Wege/Paths, 2006). I was stunned the promised 26 image tracks. I still had water, so the trees are green, but the by how strong an analytical effect could no budget after the Cup Final was over. earth – when it is not raining – is utterly be achieved from a montage according Then we succeeded in getting 260,000 stark. We were there in the dry season to motif and direction of movement. I Euro from a cultural foundation. That – only then do the inhabitants have time realised that I had always wanted to was half of what we had calculated, so for a collective work. We watched how make simple montages like this and that we cut down the number of image tracks hundreds of people erected a little clay I had refrained from doing so because from 20 to 12 and we also dispensed with building that would serve as a clinic. And of producing for television. I had also commissioning animations. For over a we observed them working on a school not yet made full use of the newly gained year I hadn’t known if we would get the annex, a brick building with three freedom in my work for art spaces. For original material or the money. You could classrooms and an arched roof. I have her installations Antje again watched say that Roger Buergel’s way of doing never watched people whose life was so hundreds or thousands of films in things was a bit nonchalant. Even though different from mine in such proximity and search of motifs like the woman-on-the- he managed to realise a great many for such a long time. An anthropologist telephone or the man-looking-into-the- projects for the documenta, also ones would need weeks or months to get into mirror. Whatever project I was working that were not earmarked in the budget. a position like this. Our informant was on – writing, editing or organising – I Francis Kéré, who comes from the village could always hear the sound of all these Since The Creators of Shopping of Gando and took his matura in Berlin, film scenes from the next room, where Worlds, Matthias Rajmann had been where he also studied architecture. He Antje was digitising them, trying to my assistant, contributing to every organises the finances in Europe, include them in her montages, or most of production, first as a researcher only, including donations, and designs the the time dismissing them. It was planned then also dealing with production buildings. The school building with three that the exhibition Cinema like never before issues and acting as soundman. He classrooms costs 30,000 Euro. It has a (Vienna 2006, Berlin 2007) should include always takes a lot of initiative and makes roof that keeps away the heat and under works by Antje, by myself and some that suggestions following from his research, which air circulates. Only local materials we wanted to do together. We did a lot and I often make use of them. For this are used for the construction; not even of additional research to find suitable documenta production he had more electricity is needed. Apart from this the works by other authors or artists, some to do than ever before. For example, buildings designed by Kéré and put up by of whom we also commissioned. At the it took more than three months until a the village community are very beautiful. same time I was also busy with other Russian software company in Nizhny 9 Novgorod had adapted its software men, women and children are getting and we realised that you have to consider in the way we needed for particular on a train that will take them to Bergen- that all their belongings will be taken image tracks. In this period Matthias Belsen, Theresienstadt or Auschwitz. away by the Nazis as soon as they arrive corresponded with Russia several hours This material was shot in Westerbork in in Auschwitz. Taking this into account, a day. He looked all over the world for 1944. Westerbork, situated in the north the bundles, parcels and blankets being companies and research institutes of the Netherlands, was at first a camp dragged along – which usually indicate a specialising in football. He persuaded for Jewish refugees from Germany. After compulsory change of location – turn the ones we selected to collaborate the Netherlands’ occupation by the Nazi into tragic signs. with us, and he also coordinated Germans it came under the control of their contributions to our project. He the security forces and was renamed I read more about Westerbork during the coordinated the production in Berlin and Polizeiliches Judendurchgangslager following months, an extensive diary for Munich, our editing room, the company Westerbork (Westerbork Police Transit example, written in the camp by the for the installation technique and the Camp for Jews). Around 100,000 people, inmate Philip Mechanicus. He doesn’t graphic designers. This project was most of them Jews – according to the mention the film shootings, but he very conceptual and certainly modern, Nazi’s concept of race – and also a few reports that in 1944 many of the inmates but it annoyed me that I basically had to hundred Roma and Sinti were brought were afraid that the camp would soon be supervise and make decisions and could here and then transported to other closed down. He also thinks that the SS hardly contribute anything practically. camps. Only a few thousand survived. wanted to maintain the camp in order I therefore edited a track on my laptop, Westerbork was a special camp, in which not to be sent to the Eastern Front. So it even when I was travelling, in trains, in many inmates wore civilian clothes and is also possible that Gemmeker wanted hotels, on a cold Easter day in Jerusalem where the SS was hardly visible. There the camp to be filmed to prove its or in Jeonju, a small town in South Korea were no beatings or murders; food was usefulness for the war economy. In the with a festival, Jeonju International Film scarce, but nobody starved to death. images of the deportation from Festival (JIFF), where many independent And there was a hospital, a laundry, Westerbork to Auschwitz – and here we films were presented. I had to go there a kindergarten; there were religious see the film’s only close-up – we can see in April because the festival had given services and cultural events, concerts a girl wearing a headscarf and looking me some money for a film (Aufschub/ and cabarets. The camp administration timidly or anxiously into the camera. Respite, 2007). The three films was carried out by inmates: inmates This image has been reproduced commissioned by JIFF – apart from mine, registered the newcomers, served frequently. In 1992 the Dutch journalist one was by Pedro Costa, another by in different camp police groups and Aad Wageaar successfully identified her Eugène Green – had been presented at drew up the weekly deportation lists after a year’s research: 10-year old the Locarno Inter-national Film Festival in – although the leader of the camp, SS Settela Steinbach, a Sinti. In one of the August 2007. We won a Silver Leopard. I man Albert Konrad Gemmeker, had the film’s sequences he discovered an was surprised by that, and also by Michel last word. Gemmeker commissioned inscription of a name and date of birth Piccoli, who was in my row and from the photographer Rudolf Breslauer, a on the suitcase of a woman who was whom I managed to get an autograph, Jewish refugee from Germany, to shoot being brought to the train in an invalid- and when I ran onto the stage of the sequences with two cameras for a film chair. From the deportation lists he was open-air cinema in the Piazza Grande, I about the camp. Some pages of the able to work out the date of the shoot. praised the Jeonju Festival for making script have survived: He also discovered the number 74 independent productions possible. written in chalk on a wagon, and that Close-up: the commander in uniform, this number had been crossed out and 2007–2009 at his desk reading the certificate. corrected to 75 when the train left – so a Whenever I taught film I insisted on Behind him on the wall, the Führer’s further person must have been assigned watching the material in great detail; first image. The commander stands up, to this wagon. at the editing table, then with the help of presses a bell button. video, today with DVD. Sometimes we I repeatedly discussed what I was watched a film – sequence for sequence Cross-fades: the junior squad leader reading in the seminar in Vienna. We – for four days, scrolling backwards and enters the room, approaches the looked again and again at some details forwards again and again. This method commander, helps him into his coat, of the images and tried to understand is not at all common in film schools or gives him his leather belt, cap and the motivation behind certain scenes film-theoretical seminars. In fields of gloves. with the help of our background study where everything is about words, it knowledge. is also not the usual practice to read and Cross-fades: the command building, discuss a text line by line, as I learnt in from the front. The commander leaves I decided to make a film in the spirit 2005 when Antje and me met with some the building, approaches the camera of such studies, a film that would also friends once a week in order to read and on the middle path. depict the process of examining the discuss texts together. Everybody in images. The raw material was silent, so our group – with the exception of myself These scenes were never realised or did I kept it like this and only added – had studied either literature and/ not survive. Gemmeker told the court some intertitles. I wanted the images or philosophy and everybody had only after the war that he had intended to themselves to speak. (Respite, 2007). experienced this kind of reading in self- make a film about the camp for its Television doesn’t show any silent films. organised groups outside university. visitors – a kind of record of achievement Music, sound or a voiceover are always Amongst other texts we were also for his superiors. added because of the anxiety that the reading Giorgio Agamben’s Was von First I ordered a DVD with viewers might immediately think that Auschwitz bleibt. (Remnants of Auschwitz: documentary footage shot by Breslauer there was something wrong with the The Witness and the Archive). Addition- from the Westerbork memorial. When we transmission or their television set. So ally we also re-read other texts about the first watched this material in my seminar, I didn’t even try to find television money camps and watched films about them, we all had a hard time reading these for this project. But the TV channel which I also showed and discussed in my images. One student pointed out a man 3sat did actually show the film without class in Vienna, at the Academy of Fine in the camp’s railway station who was sound in 2009, although at a very late Arts. A particular scene in Erwin Leiser’s helping a policemen to close the sliding hour – this might have evaded the Den Blodiga tiden (Mein Kampf, 1959) and door of the wagon in which he himself attention of the programmers higher Alain Resnais’ Nuit et brouillard (Night was being deported. Almost everybody up. Inge Classen, who programmed it, and Fog, 1955) caught my attention: getting on the train was carrying luggage, told me that she had only once shown a 10 film without sound, Un chant d’amour (A the city of Zurich, and municipal workers degree of fantasy and tension – so we Song of Love, 1950) by Jean Genet. had destroyed it. It took a few weeks until could only use very short sequences they found a way to repair the damage. from them. Most of the military therapists In 2007 I finished quite a few projects I In January 2009 we had a two-day chewed gum as if they were just ordinary had been working on for years, including shoot in the military base of Fort Lewis, soldiers. Übertragung/Transmission. When we were near Seattle, Washington. Fort Lewis is in Washington in 2003 to do some archive 40 square kilometres in size and has up Then something really extraordinary research for Eye/Machine and War at a to 40,000 inhabitants. We were in only happened. One of the civilian therapists Distance, we saw that almost everybody one building with some seminar rooms who was playing a patient described who visited the Vietnam War Memorial next to a canteen. We were filming a a patrol walk through Baghdad. It was touched either the stone or the names of workshop in which civilian therapists his first mission and he had been the more than 50,000 dead engraved explained to army therapists how to work assigned to a certain Jones. They had there. It was Antje’s idea to make a film with Virtual Iraq, which is used in the been ordered to clean the streets, which or installation about the behaviour of treatment of soldiers and ex-soldiers basically meant pulling down propaganda these and other visitors to memorials all who had been traumatised in the war. posters. Jones suggested separating and over the world. The opportunity to realise Immersion Therapy lets the traumatised that each of them should see to one side this project came about a little later, patient repeat his or her crucial of the street. This was against orders, when Christoph Schenker of the Zurich experience, retell it and re-experience but they did it. When he went into a Academy of the Arts invited us to make it. Virtual Iraq, or VI, is a computer- courtyard, he heard an explosion. He ran a work to be presented in a public space. animation programme which is supposed over – at this point the patient faltered During the following years we were to make the immersion, the diving into and began to ramble. The therapist always on the look-out for places where the source of the trauma, easier or more playing the therapist interrupted him: people would touch a stone or a powerful. what had he seen? sculpture. The visitors to St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome probably touch the The civilian therapists who work for the Soldier: “When I went around the of the Petrus sculpture in order to companies and institutions that develop corner, I heard this explosion. I gain some of its holiness. But in the and distribute the VI system, and who are thought to myself: Shit! No! I Jesuit Church in Munich they pat the also in charge of the supervision, were immediately turned around to look for of the bust of Father Rupert – who dressed like lawyers or business people Jones, but I couldn’t see him was an anti-Nazi – because they want to – most of them were women. The military anywhere. Damn! I immediately ran to pay respect or to console him for his therapists – the majority were men – wore the other side ... I can’t see him any sufferings; so here they want to give and camouflage uniforms. They kept their more ... I ran over to see what had not to gain. We filmed many types of jackets on, which was advisable since happened. There was smoke magical touchings, efforts to transmit the heating system hardly worked. The everywhere ...” something invisible. rooms were carelessly furnished, the ceiling lighting – as we learnt – hadn’t Therapist: “You’re doing great! What The work was installed in a tram station functioned for years. There are hardly any did you see there?” in Zurich. A flat screen was fitted next to private companies that would hold their a WC. When I came to this place shortly seminars in run-down rooms like these. Soldier: “When I arrived, I saw ... that before the official opening, I saw that Such austerity – I also saw this in the there was nothing left above his there was a bench in front of the screen Bundeswehr – stands in bizarre contrast knee.” with two homeless people sitting on it. to the usual waste of the military. We They already seemed to know the film were alloted three go-betweens, one At this point he broke down. In the very well and predicted what was coming person for each member of our crew. following session he repeatedly asked to next. But many people waiting for the A PR woman was flown in from the stop, insisting that he couldn’t bear it any tram didn’t give it a second glance. When Pentagon in order to monitor/advise us. more. The therapist insisted on the bar tables with snacks and aperitifs The civilian therapists first gave continuing. He hesitated, stuttered and had been set up, I spoke to a technician rather half-hearted talks with image got caught up several times in self about how to enhance the quality of the examples. Afterwards role-playing. The reproach and attempts to explain what he sound. Then there was a honk behind therapist sits at a computer, wearing was thinking back then. His acting was me: a cleaning vehicle was approaching a headset. The patient sits or stands so convincing that friends of mine, to the station. Two men began cleaning next to him, wearing data-specs. These whom I had explained our film Immersion( , the concrete floor with a high-pressure show the Virtual Iraq imagery. There 2009) nevertheless believed that they device. A bystander took photos of this, are two locations: one is a desert road, were watching someone recounting a whereupon a cleaning man threatened to which is driven through by a Humvee. real experience. The press officer who punch him. This must have intimidated The other is a city with a market place, a had given us permission to shoot also me, because when one of the men also mosque, large squares, narrow alleyways thought that it was real. begun to clean the wall where my screen and houses you can walk through. The was embedded, I was struck by the patient chooses his path, the therapist The images that were made to provoke thought that the tram station had already selects incidents. The therapist can lead a recollection of the trauma are very been spotlessly clean even before they the patient into virtual ambushes or make similar to the ones with which US started to clean it. The next moment the him witness terrible assassinations. soldiers are now being trained and screen faded out. When the technician He can choose between accompanying prepared for the battlefields. I would like took a look at it, water poured out of our sounds of helicopters, muezzins and to deal with this in my next work. installation. So there was no ceremonial explosions of all kinds. opening. We went to a dinner where I was introduced to Mr and Mrs Schwyzer- During the role-plays everybody was Written for the publication: Antje Ehmann, Winiker, whose foundation contributed cooperative. You might think that a Kodwo Eshun (eds.): Harun Farocki. Against What? Against Whom? Berlin / London 2009. Translated a lot of money to the project Kunst patient would say that these two from the German by Antje Ehmann and Michael Öffentlichkeit Zürich. Usually you have scenarios with only a few choices would Turbull. to explain a film in order to get money for have nothing to do with the cause of his it; here politeness required me to explain trauma. But it became apparent that the my film after I had spent the money on role-plays which were attended by it. The equipment had been paid for by military therapists alone, lacked a certain 11 Screenings from June 17 – July 15 are on Sundays, 2 pm at King Juan Carlos 1 of Spain Theater, 53 Washington Square South, New York, NY.

Early Harun Farocki as part of the film series “1968 on Screen” at Anthology Film Archives: