STEFAN RAMSTEDT / Farocki: Traces of the Future

Despite that Harun Farocki as early as in Inextinguishable Fire (Nicht lschbares Feuer, 1969) expressed his
skepticism towards cinemas capacity and its adequacy to depict, to represent, and despite the fact that a
large amount of the literature on Farocki treats his essay films and installations (based on archival material),
his filmography largely consists of documentaries with many things in common with the tradition of direct
cinema. In an interview in Camera Obscura, Farocki himself seems almost forced to call attention to this
fact when saying: I have made many films that could be counted as belonging to the genre direct
cinema[1].

A certain cautiousness regarding the division of archival and direct would nonetheless be appropriate, partly
because the themes that are broached are adjacent, but also because Farocki continues by saying: But even
for them I am primarily looking for preexisting (sic!) scenarios[2]. The perhaps most obvious example of
such a pre-existing scenario is found in The Interview (Die Bewerbungen, 1996), in which Farocki follows a
number of meetings, exercises, rehearsals, conversations and evaluations of an employment office. The
exercises are carried out in the form of role play, in which the un-employed are put through the ordeal of
a job interview, to later on with the aid of video technology make an evaluation of everything from
postures, gestures, pronunciations, and that which the person in questions says. Farocki had already touched
upon a similar theme in Indoctrination(Die Schulung, 1987), about a course in leadership.
What is distinguishing about these two films, among many other films of Farocki, is the central position the
video camera has in the depicted scenarios. Video technology is used to capture and instantaneously show
the behaviours of the subjects of the film. The dichotomy between archive and direct is already at this stage
a bit confused. With the proof shown by the video camera, the job applicants and the participants of the
course in leadership are discussing each others performances. Whereas the moving image in works based on
archival footage functions as traces of the past (borrowing Malin Wahlbergs term), the moving image in
these two films functions as a trace of the future, in the way they try to shape certain future behaviours,
gestures, enunciations[3]. The film by Farocki which deals with, and problematizes, this theme most
thoroughly is How to Live in the German Federal Republic (Leben BRD, 1990), where we see a number of
situations the selling of life insurances, police interferences, childbirths being rehearsed, repeated,
visualized, modelled. By inserting images of wear and tear tests of furniture, car doors, etc., Farocki reminds
us that this is not simply about teaching, but that this concerns different ways of deciding the egression of
future events before they take place, and also of the role of the individual in capitalist society.

These sketches and calculations return in an even more concrete form in Farockis films about
architecture. The Creators of Shopping Worlds (Die Schpfer der Einkaufswelten, 2001), depicts the
construction of a shopping centre, where everything from the placement of the exotic restaurant to that of the
bread on the shelf in the food store needs rigorous consideration. Video technology is used in this context as
well, in the shape of capturing or sketching the customers patterns of moving and looking.The Creators of
Shopping Worlds bears certain similarities with Ein neues Produkt (2012), an investigation of one of
Vodafones offices. Here, an improvement of working conditions is used as pretext of questionable
ameliorations such as the initiation of internal competitions and enquiries into the private lives of the
employees. Gyms and rest rooms, with the purpose of maximizing the output of the workers bodies are also
under construction, at the same time as the office is rebuilt so that it becomes spatially flexible.
Sauerbruch Hutton Architecten (2013) touches upon similar themes as The Creators of Shopping
Worlds and Ein nueues Produkt, but the film becomes more complex since the criticism and irony is not as

obvious, which we must assume depends on the fact that the building itself is not as ideologically tied to
consumerism and capitalism as the buildings in the other films. Sauerbruch Hutton Architecten was filmed
during 3 months, and consists of images of the staff of the architect office Sauerbruch Hutton during the
work on a Virtual Reality centre in Laval, France. Farocki is, as in the previously discussed films, focusing
on the process rather than the final result.
Sauerbruch Hutton Architecten becomes a documentation on gestures, which is a re-current theme for
Farocki, a theme which we see as early as in Inextinguishable Fire and which is most strongly expressed
in The Gestures of Hands (Der Ausdruck der Hnde, 1997), an essay film based on a variety of different
archival material in which hands occupy a central part. The film could be seen as a catalogue of the role of
hands and gestures in the history of cinema, but unlike a film like Volker Schreiners Pair of (2011), which
is a strict cataloguing of hands, The Gestures of Hands puts these in a historical context, by, for example,
being discussed in terms of sign language and in regards to a 1927 book by Dyk Rudenski called Gestologie
und Filmspielerei. Gestures are also recurrent in The Image (Ein Bild, 1983), a film depicting a photo shoot
for a mens magazine. The Image shows us the process in its entirety, from the construction of the set until
the dismantling of it, and the film brings to mind the comprehensive investigations of Fredrick Wiseman.
Gestures are also highly present in Farockis films based on archival material: in Workers Leaving the
Factory (Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik, 1995) Farocki observes how one of the workers upon exiting the
Lumire factory pulls the skirt of another worker; in I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts (Ich glaubte
Gefangene zu sehen, 2000) we see how interns perform what an intertitle describes a Gestures of Love
with their visiting partners. It is not a coincidence that Farocki, during the last years, picked up an interest in
video games, which in a way includes both already existing images and live gestures.
A number of Farockis films deal with how society controls and shapes movement and gestures, and
especially how the moving image is used as a tool to encourage certain movements and gestures, and to
prevent or to prohibit others. Farocki noted, one time, that the surveillance cameras show the norm and
anticipate deviations from it[4]. The difference between the films he himself (or a photographer)
photographed (films that Farocki himself categorizes under the label of direct cinema) and those that are
based on archival material becomes clear when we modify the order of the words in that phrase. The material
in the later category anticipates the norm and shows (in order to eliminate) deviations from it. What we see is
that which Gerhard Richter describes as an inscription of the futurity of the event into the reassuring bounds
of the known and of the already experienced[5]. Through his films, Farocki shows how power writes its
own scenarios, how an archive of the future is established, and how every gesture is sketched and rehearsed
so that, in the future, they may be performed in a non-deviating and controllable fashion.

Stefan Ramstedt

[1]Randall Halle, History is not a Matter of Generations: An Interview with Harun Farocki, Camera Obscura no. 46
(2001), 56.
[2]Ibid, 56.
[3]Malin Wahlberg, Inscription and re-framing: at the editing table of Harun Farocki, Konsthistorisk tidskrift no. 73
(2004), 16
[4]As quoted in Wahlberg, 22.
[5]Gerhard Richter, Miniatures: Harun Farocki and the Cinematic Non-Event, Journal of Visual Culture 3 (2004),
367.