Compte rendu

Ouvrage recensé :

Harun Farocki, One Image Doesn't Take the Place of the Previous One, Leonard and Bina
Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal. October 19 - December 1, 2007

par Cheryl Simon

Ciel variable : art, photo, médias, culture, n° 78, 2008, p. 53.

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Harun Farocki
One Image Doesn't Takethe Place of the Previous One
Leonard and Bina EllenArt Gallery, Montreal
October 19- December 1,2007
Harun Farocki : One Image Doesn't Take the
PlaceofthePreviousOne,at Concordia Uni-
versity's Leonard and Bina EllenArt Gallery
last fall, brought theGerman artist to Mon-
trealfor the first time.Although hehas
madeover ninety film andvideo works,
Farocki isnotwell known here,or in North
America,for that matter. The linchpin ina
cluster of linked activities surveying
Farocki's forty-year career, includinganin-
ternational conference andafilm retro-
spective,this exhibition,curated bygallery
director MichèleThériault, may do much to
change that.'
OneImageDoesn'tTakethePlaceof the Pre-
viousOnetakes itstitle from a statement
that theartist madeabout the useof multi-
ple channels in hisinstallation work. "It's a
matter of'soft montage,'" Farockiex-
plained, referringto the simultaneity of
multiple projections."One image doesn't
takethe placeofthe previousone,butsup-
plements it, reevaluates it,balances it." 2
Thisstatement alsodescribes the organiza-
tional logic ofthe artist's linear, time-based
film work.Thedualand multiple screen
presentations develop logically thedialecti-
calprinciples andconstellation-like schema
>,lupingwhat, for the most part, hasbeena
"found footage" film practice.Single-mind-
edlyconcerned with the socialand political
functioning of"the image," Farocki typically
groups visual materialfromdiverse sources
andof different, moreand lessobviously re-
lated phenomena to analyzethe practical
effects and ideological operations of the
contemporary imageworld.Envisioned in
the artist'swork through what heterms
"operational" imagery,thisworld of pic-
tures tends to shapethe sphereof everyday
lifeobliquely, butwith clearly definedin-
strumental purposes andcertain alienating
effects : surveillance cameras,industrial ro-
botics,computer simulations,and sensing
systems,pictures moreandless directly
connected to theworld of things : opera-
tional pictureswithout operators.
Although not aretrospective inthetradi-
tional sense, Thériault's selection of works
offers ahistoricalandthematic range that
sketches acomprehensive account of the
artist's oeuvre. In addition to the four re-
cent installation works that aremake up
the bulk of theexhibition,the show in-
cludes Inextinguishable Fire (1969), anexam-
pleof Farocki's early "agitprop"film work,
andSection(Schnittstelle) (1995), atransi-
tionaltwo-channelvideo"self-portrait" that
featurestheartistdiscussingthe different
representationalandorganizationalconsid-
erations inhisfilmandvideopractices.
Farocki never approaches hissubjectdi-
rectly but arrives morecircuitously, laying
out hiscriticalthemes inclusters arounda
central,often absent, point of concern. The
third inaseriesofworks addressingopera-
tional imagery,thedual-projection installa-
tion Eye/MachineI I I (2003) weaves found
imagery taken from flight simulators, mili-
tary guidance systems,andvarious robotic
sensingdevicestogether with instructional
films and commercials to factor theex-
treme alienation effected bythe represen-
tational operations of post-industrial
technologies.Though the imagingsystems
arethe overt subject,the evacuation ofhu-
manity,ofsubjectivity itself, from represen-
tational practice isthe absent but defining
term ofthe work.
HarunFarocki
Counter-Music, 2004, colorvideo, audio
double-projectioninstalation.
Photo :Richard-Max Tremblay.
Section, 1995, colorvideo, audio
installation with two monitors.
Photo ! Paul Smith. Both images courtesy of the
Leonard 8c Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal.
gallery door. Shorter andsimpler than most
of Farocki'swork, Dubbingloopsthe infa-
mousclipfrom Martin Scorsese's TaxiDriver
(1980) inwhich Travis Bickle issocaught
up inthe fiction ofthe image that hecan't
recognize himself anymore. Eachloopdubs
the legendary lines inanother language :
"Who you lookingat?There's noone here
Counter-Music (2004) groups corresponding but me" - andthis loopof dubs is looped
imagery around asimilar theme. Pictures and looped again,to spinonendlessly.Si-
from surveillance cameras trained on labo- multaneously familiar and strange, much
ratory subjects,city streets,and subway like the identificatory processwithin which
platforms,archivalfootage of mid-twenti- Bickle iscaught, recognition and misrecog-
eth-century factory workers at their tna- nition represent two sidesofthe samecoin
of subject formation.
Farocki's concern with the alienation ef-
fect of representation tout courtshould not
bedismissed asmere nostalgia for the loss
of human agency.Instead,it should serve
asacaution to takeall representation seri-
ously ; not merely asthe meansto anyspe-
cific representational end, but moreasa
cultural artefact,the primary tool and
product ofapolitical economy geared to-
ward the removalof human consciousness
for the sakeof efficiency.
1 The Goethe-Institut Montréal hosteda film
seriesof works from 1986 to 2004 and the
CanadianCentreforGermanandEuropean Stud-
iesatthe UniversitédeMontréal organizedthe
Internationalcolloquium.RembertHuser,"Nine
Minutesinthe Yard : AConversationwithHarun
Farocki,"inThomasElsaesser (éd.), Harun Farocki .
Workingonthe Sight-Lines(Amsterdam : Amsterdam
UniversityPress, 2004), p. 302.
chines,and more recent documentary
footage of surveillance control rooms with
technicians at their postsarelaced with
clipsfrom DzigaVertov's and Walter
Ruttmann's City Symphony films andele-
ments oftext."ForVertov the day begins
with the production of images.Forusit is
their reproduction." Evacuation from any
direct relation to production is suffered
equally bytheworker andthe artist, here
conceived asacultural worker.
Thériault's exhibition unfolds inlike fash-
ion. Referencingthe absent term that links Cheryl Simon isan artist, academic, and cura-
eachofthe other installations,Workers tor whose current art and research interests in-
Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades (2005) clude explorations of time in media arts and
liesatthe physicalandconceptual heart of collecting and archival practices in contempo-
the exhibition.Composed of arowof rary art. She teaches studio arts at Concordia
twelve monitors,each playingafilm clip University and cinema + communications at
from oneoftheelevendecadesofcinema, Dawson College.
the series beginswith the Lumière broth-
ers'film referredto inthework's title and
concludes with aclipfrom LarsvonTrier's
DancerintheDark (2000) ; eachdecade in
between offers asupplementation andre-
evaluation ofthis modern trope of collec-
tivity. Linkingtheworld ofcinematothat of
theoperational image,thework mixes doc-
umentary with fiction film ; the selection in-
cludes suchdiverse materialasCharlie
Chaplin's ModernTimes (1936) and
Michealangelo Antonioni's Red Desert
(1964), ananonymous documentary film
from the Moscow National Film Archive
(1912), andaclipfromJean-Marie Straub
and Daniele Huillet's proto-documentary
film TooEarly,TooLate (1981).
That such imagery hasoperational effects
isillustrated brilliantly inDubbing (2006),
thework that meetsthe spectator at the
ACTUALITÉ/CURRENT 53