Events

Harun Farocki: Pictures of the world signed from war

12. March 2004, 20:00
presentation

Shock and Awe - Images of War between Documentation and Ideology

Harun Farocki: Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges, 1988, 75'
with commentary by Hito Steyerl

Aerial photographs from 1944 show the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Spotters from the American airforce coincidentally photographed it while collecting data for the bombing of the IG-Farben plant in Monowitz. Decades later and with the knowledge of the post-war years, the commentary on the photos clarifies what the allies either could not or did not want to see: The gas chambers, the death wall and hundreds of people. The appropriation of the world through images and the disappropriation of human senses as well as the ability to describe these processes is the central subject of the film. In a transfer of historical and current strategies of war images their medial stereotypes and their »inscription of war« is uncovered.

Born in 1944 in Nový Jicin (Neutitschein), 1966-68 education at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB). After teaching in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Manila, Munich and Stuttgart he was a visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkley from 1993-1999. Farocki has made over 90 films including feature films, essays and documentaries. Numerous publications since 1966 and exhibitions since 1990. 1974-1984 editor and writer for the magazine Filmkritik (Munich).

"So the images show the truth - but not the 'whole' truth. They prove to be a Janus head construction, in which 'moments of truth' can be articulated."

Hito Steyerl, Dokumentarismus als Politik der Wahrheit, 2003.

The last works by the author Hito Steyerl were dedicated to the philosophical notion of the truth and described its meaning in the context of the current popularity of documentary strategies.

Steyerl lives in Berlin and studied feature and documentary film at the College of Visual Arts in Tokyo and at the Munich Academy for Television and Film in Munich. Steyerl has published filmic and written essays centered around questions of globalization, racism and postcolonial critique.