tranzitdisplay (www.tranzitdisplay.cz), Prague, May 27 – August 30, 2009
The Harun Farocki exhibition in tranzitdisplay is small, but refreshing. Each of the tree rooms are used for the presentation of one work: Schnittstelle/Interface (1995), Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik/Workers Leaving the Factory (2006) and On the Construction of Griffith’s Films (2006). From this three works, Interface is the connection point between the two other works and probably for this reason it is also located in the central room of the exhibition space.
I first went to see Workers Leaving the Factory, a piece spread on 11 TV monitors. Yet after seeing Interface, the impact of the piece was much stronger, because Interface gave some context to Workers Leaving the Factory. One reason might have been the date of creation, where Interface is the departure point for Workers Leaving the Factory. But more generally, I think Interface is a wonderful piece in the sense, that it changes the way you see any other video work. It is a work about work. An edit about editing. The piece is about 20-30 minutes but if you watch the whole, it is worth it. It also features snippets of other Farocki’s works, like the above mentioned Workers Leaving the Factory, or Videograms of a revolution (which is not present in the exhibition but was shown on a separate screening in the Municipal Library).
Interface is a about editing video. It is about the technical process of constructing virtual (TV) reality. The uniqueness of Farocki is in his ability to balance the technical and ideological aspects of the medium he is researching and working with it at the same time. On the Construction of Griffin’s Films for example is a very analytical piece. It could as well take the form of a research paper published in a scholarly journal about motion pictures. It is very detached and descriptive. It deconstructs the subjects into parts, making their relationships visible. Workers Leaving the Factory is more politically charged. It is also descriptive, but in the selection of film samples it includes a political standpoint, analysing the relationship between film as a medium and people who participate both as objects of representation and agents of change. Interface shows the mutual connection between technology and society. In education or professional use, technology and its social impact are often separated. People learn how to use equipment ‘correctly’. Social impacts stay often unsaid, only implied as a possibility. Socially conscious and educated people on the other hand often have just a marginal understanding of actual technologies. They are trapped as ‘users’, not able to articulate their message through the new media without looking outdated.
In Farocki’s work the intersection between technology and ideology is the biggest contribution. I remember how refreshing it was to see Farocki’s piece on the Shanghai Biennale last year. Between many artworks which were hardly able to reflect their own medium they use, ending up as ‘pictures’. Farocki’s work stood out. It is sometimes quite simple (visually) and ‘old school’, but it has a clear standpoint, and it makes sense.