19 November 2009 to 7 February 2010
This is the first UK exhibition of the two-screen and multi-screen works of revered German filmmaker Harun Farocki. The survey comprises nine video installations, from his first two-screen project Interface in 1995 to Immersion, 2009, about the use of virtual reality in the treatment of traumatised US soldiers following the occupation of Iraq.
Since the sixties, Farocki (born in 1944, living in Berlin) has reinvented what can be described as the film essay. Beginning as an argument (often about the effects on the individual of capitalism, consumerism, technology or war) his films digress associatively and poetically, becoming open-ended rather than polemical. Farocki's films also reflect on the way in which our culture constructs photographic and moving images, and the uses to which these images are put.
In the mid-nineties, Farocki began making films for two, and occasionally more, screens. Above all, this enabled him to use images to comment on images. These films address the critical engagement of viewers at large in an art gallery.
The exhibition is curated by Alex Sainsbury. It is linked to 'Harun Farocki. 22 Films 1968–2009', a season of Farocki's single-screen films and events at Tate Modern, 13 November–6 December 2009, curated by Stuart Comer, Antje Ehmann and the Otolith Group.
A monograph Harun Farocki. Against What? Against Whom? has been commissioned by Raven Row. It is edited by Antje Ehmann and Kodwo Eshun, and published by Koenig Books.
Related news & events
Wednesday 27 January, 7pm
To coincide with the launch of the new monograph Harun Farocki. Against What? Against Whom?, commissioned by Raven Row and published by Koenig Books, Raven Row presents a discussion event and a chance to hear Harun Farocki read from his new text 'Written Trailers'. The discussion between Antje Ehmann and Kodwo Eshun, the book's editors, Bert Rebhandl, Berlin-based writer and contributor to the book, and Alex Sainsbury, curator of the exhibition at Raven Row, will focus on the themes of the book and Farocki's transition into making films for more than one screen.
Thursday 28 January, 7pm
Raven Row will show Klaus Wildenhahn's masterpiece of Direct Cinema, Heiligabend auf St. Pauli (Christmas Eve at St. Pauli), 1967/68, as selected by Harun Farocki.
Supported by the Goethe-Institut