Harun Farocki
Recognition and Tracking
2 July–21 August 2011
Opening:
Saturday, 2 July, 6 pm
Opening preceded by an introduction by Seamus Kealy, and a talk between Harun Farocki and Diedrich Diederichsen, 5 pm
The Model
The Mall
Sligo, Ireland
(071) 914 1405
info [at] themodel.ie
Opening Hours:
Wed–Sat: 11 am–5.30pm
Sun: 12pm–5pm
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
This project features four film/video installations in The Model galleries, a selection of videos for personal screenings, and a weekly programme of Farocki’s films from the 1960s to today. Farocki will also work with local refugees in Sligo on a film project at The Model during his stay.
“Farocki’s films urge us to see the world differently. Their images, which pull urgent topics into close focus, infect our minds like a virus. We see the stage setting of our social conditions about us. There, we see the enforced and repeated rules and codes of behavior that are reflected in architecture, film, the control of crowds, administrative apparatuses and military technology. As an artist, Farocki is, in the words of Thomas Elsaesser, “willing to name the forces that hollow out democracy from within,” namely, the commodification of public spaces, the creation of simulated worlds, the evolution of war technology, but more than this, he takes on the eye of these mechanical gazes and makes us look through that lens, often at ourselves.”
Seamus Kealy, Director/Curator, The Model
The Model acknowledges the support of the Arts Council, Sligo Local Authorities and Goethe Institut Irland
About The Artist
Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Nový Jičín in, a part of Czechoslovakia annexed by Germany at the time. Since 1966, he has produced more than 100 productions for television or cinema: children’s television, documentaries, essay films, story films. Since 1996, he has held numerous group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, including in 2007 at Documenta 12. Since 2004, Farocki has been professor of Film at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
For further information, contact Emer McGarry at emermcgarry@themodel.ie or visit www.themodel.ie
Further information:
Film Installations:
Deep Play is a multi-projection installation with various perspectives on the final match of the 2006 World Cup, including the artist’s own footage of the game, official FIFA footage, charts of player stats, real-time 2D and 3D animation sequences, and stadium surveillance. The various views expose the visual, informational, and technological design of these grand cultural spectacles. Though visually bombarding at points, the network of images and data stages a reprocessed disarticulation of spectacle, aptly pointing out the present conditions of visuality and its overwhelming influence on representation and subjectivity.
Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades is a horizontal suite of twelve monitors that offers a view on how ‘workers’ have been represented in every decade since the invention of cinema, and consists of excerpts from works by directors from the Lumiere Brothers and Charlie Chaplin to Antonioni and Lars von Trier. This installation is as much about cinema and its evolution as it is a reminder of the medium’s dialogue with a reality inextricable from its own representation.
Serious Games I-IV explores the use of computer animation and video game technology to train soldiers. This training allows soldiers to experience simulated combat situations in realistic settings based on actual landscape coordinates and satellite data. It also acts as a tool for therapeutic treatment by allowing soldiers to re-enact previous combat trauma by virtually reliving the events.
The Eye / Machine film installation is a trilogy examining “intelligent” image processing techniques such as electronic surveillance, mapping and object recognition, in order to take a closer look at the relationship between man, machine, and modern warfare.
Harun Farocki
(b. 1944)
Harun Farocki is a groundbreaking artist, writer and filmmaker. Over a career spanning 50 years, Farocki has made over 100 films, many of which question the production and perception of images. Farocki employs a range of filmic techniques, from agitprop, montage, archival appropriation, surveillance and military footage, video game footage, and documentation to produce films ranging from experimental documentaries for cinema and television to large-scale installations in a gallery context. His films and videos examine technical, socio-political, and cultural meaning in the world of images and in our contemporary world, and investigate how audiovisual culture relates to and affects politics, culture, technology and war.
Diedrich Diederichsen
(b. 1957)
Diedrich Diederichsen is one of Germany′s most renowned intellectual writers at the crossroads of the arts, politics, and pop culture. Since the 1970s, Diederichsen has been editor of the magazine German Sounds as well as the influential subculture magazine Spex. After teaching at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart for several years, he became Professor for Theory, Practice and Communication of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2006. Diederichsen remains a prolific writer whose articles and texts are printed in a variety of periodicals and publications including Artscribe, Artforum, and Frieze.
