Dear Friends of the HaFI,

We had a productive summer, in which we worked on the structure, the infrastructure and the program of the Institut. On Monday October 24, we will present our first event on Peter Weiss und Harun Farocki with Carles Guerra, Julia Lazarus und Bert Rebhandl at silent green Kulturquartier in Berlin.

Our next publication HaFI 003 on the production history of Harun Farocki’s film On Display: Peter Weiss will be released in November. In December, we will welcome Kevin B. Lee in Berlin, the first guest of the Harun Farocki Residency.

Some of Harun Farocki’s works are currently on view in group exhibitions amongst others at the Hamburger Bahnhof and at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Also, his works will be discussed at an international conference that accompanies the Turin Film Festival at the end of November. Allow us to give a further program annoucement from our partner silent green Kulturquartier.

See you next week.

the Harun Farocki Institut
1. Peter Weiss and Harun Farocki

An event organized by the Harun Farocki Institut (HaFI) on October 24, 2016
in silent green Kulturquartier

3:30 to 5:00 pm: A guided tour of real and imaginary places and locations from The Aesthetics of Resistance in Red Wedding from and with Julia Lazarus/Undisciplinary Learning
Meeting point: at the “Tanz auf dem Vulkan” fountain on Nettelbeckplatz in Berlin-Wedding
For the guided tour (in German) please register under: info@harun-farocki-institut.org

The extended environs of the silent green Kulturquartier in Wedding, where the Harun Farocki Institut is also located, plays a significant role as a setting in Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance. Not only do the protagonists in Berlin featured in volume 1 of the trilogy move between the Oranienburger Vorstadt and Wedding districts, for Weiss Barricades in Wedding, Klaus Neukrantz’s “little agitational book” about the so-called Blood May of 1929 (published in 1931) represents a form of complementary novel to Kafka’s The Castle. “The search and the defensive struggle were two sides of one and the same act of taking up positions.” Julia Lazarus’s guided tour will address this and other aspects of the topography of The Aesthetics of Resistance.

7:30 to 9:30 pm: Harun Farocki and Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss on Peter Weiss and The Aesthetics of Resistance
Video interviews with Carles Guerra from 2011 (screening) followed by a talk with Carles Guerra and Bert Rebhandl (in English)
silent green Kulturquartier
Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin

In the context of the research conducted for his exhibition 1979, a Monument to Radical Moments at the Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona, the curator and artist Carles Guerra conducted interviews with Harun Farocki and Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss in 2011 which were recorded on video. Guerra’s exhibition, centred around 1979, addressed a political aesthetic from different perspectives and was essentially organised around motifs from The Aesthetics of Resistance, and in particular, the question of a documentary visual praxis under conditions of biopolitics and neoliberalism. Via Peter Weiss and the problem of the historical memory of acts and gestures of both political and aesthetic radicalism, Farocki and Guerra entered into an intensive dialog, which also continued after Farocki’s death. Together with Antje Ehmann, Guerra curated exhibitions on Harun Farocki in Valencia and Barcelona in 2015 and 2016, which, in 2017, will be followed by a further exhibition at the Neuen Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) within the context of the planned Harun Farocki retrospective in Berlin.

The guided tour and the event are free of charge.
2. HaFI 003
Harun Farocki: On Display: Peter Weiss
A Production Dossier

Release: November 2016

Impressed by Weiss’ The Aesthetics of Resistance, whose first volume had been published in 1975, Farocki planned to conduct a long TV interview about the novel for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). Bringing the idea to fruition, not the least due to an illness of Weiss’, took longer than hoped. On June 17 and 18, the meeting finally took place in Weiss’ studio. On Display: Peter Weiss, the result of two days of shooting, was broadcast on October 19, 1979.

Through the correspondence between Weiss, Farocki and the editorial department of the WDR, as well as some additional documents, this bilingual publication retraces the production history of On Display: Peter Weiss.

Published with Motto Books: www.mottodistribution.com

Also available at Motto Books:
HaFI 002
Harun Farocki: What Ought to Be Done. Document, Commentary, Material
http://www.mottodistribution.com/shop/harun-farocki-what-ought-to-be-done-was-getan-werden-soll.html
3. Residency

Kevin B. Lee will be the first guest of the Harun Farocki residency from the middle of December onwards.

Kevin B. Lee (*1975) is one of the most well known and productive protagonists in the field now known as “Videographic Film Studies”, or more generally, the “Video Essay” genre.

Over the last ten years Lee has produced more than 300 short, analytical videos in which film reflects on film, sounds and images comment on, analyse and criticise other sounds and images. Furthermore, he is also one of the few people who knows the history of this form and is familiar with the forerunners of this genre such as Harun Farocki or Helmut Färber. In Interface 2.0. (2012), Lee extends Farocki’s reciprocal reflection on film and video (Schnittstelle / Interface) with the digital interface of Final Cut and considers how word and image relate to each other under the changed conditions.

Since 2013, within the context of two Master programmes at the Art Institute (Chicago), Lee has moved beyond the film-critical framework in the narrow sense to explore a further field. A much respected result of this work is Transformers. The Premake, a 24 minute Internet video which arranges a wealth of material available online (fan videos, Wikipedia entries, Tweets etc.) into a “desktop documentary” which, two weeks before the premiere of Michael Bay’s film, presents a critical production history of the film.
Here, as in his other work, Lee demonstrates - in addition to his technical accomplishment and astounding productivity – a consciousness for the forms of circulation, the economics and politics of every (including his own) image production.

The Harun Farocki residency has been made possible through the financing of the Goethe Institut.
4. Exhibitions (Selection)

The following works from Harun Farocki can currently be seen in group exhibitions:

Until October 30, 2016: Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film based on Franz Kafka's "America" in: Putting Rehearsals to the test (curators: Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer, Constanze Ruhm) Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, VOX - Centre de l’image contemporaine Montreal, Canada www.centrevox.ca

Until November 06, 2016: The Creators of the Shopping Worlds in: Capital: Debt – Territory – Utopia (curators: Eugen Blume, Catherine Nichols) Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Deutschland www.smb.museum/museen-und-einrichtungen/hamburger-bahnhof

Until January 08, 2017: Eye / Machine I - III in: + ultra knowledge & gestaltung (organizer: Bild Wissen Gestaltung. Ein interdisziplinäres Labor. HU Berlin) Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Deutschland www.berlinerfestspiele.de/de/aktuell/festivals/gropiusbau/

Until January 08, 2017: Serious Games in: In Search of the Presence (curator: Päivi Talasmaa) EMMA, Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Tapiola, Finland www.emma.museum

Until January 29, 2017: Serious Games IV in: Grenzenlos grausam? Bilder der Gewalt in der Antiken Welt (Curator: Ella van der Mejden) Skulpturhalle Basel, Switzerland www.skulpturhalle.ch
5. Conference and focus of the Turin Film Festival

From November 20 until 22, 2016: THINKING WITH THE EYES The politics of images in the work of Harun Farocki (Organizers: Giaime Alonge, Giulia Carluccio, Luisella Farinotti, Barbara Grespi, Federica Villa)

With lectures and presentations by Christa Blümlinger, Antje Ehmann, Thomas Elsaesser, Carles Guerra, Rembert Hüser, Pietro Montani, Volker Pantenburg and Antonio Somaini.
https://cineconsulta.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/presentazione_hf_low.pdf
6. Further program announcement

On October 23, 2016 silent green will present Between Fences, an artist talk with Avi Mograbi. Doors: 5.30 pm, Start: 6 pm (Admission: 8 €)
https://www.silent-green.net/en/programme/singleview/cal/event/detail/2016/10/23/film_feld_forschung_werkstattgespraech_mit_avi_mograbi.html