Harun Farocki | Peter Weiss On Display (The Aesthetics of Resistance)

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  We were visiting Peter Weiss in Stockholm on 17th and 18th June 1979. We talked about his work on the book The Aesthetics of Resistance. Two volumes have already been published and P.W. is currently on the third. He has been working on it for over ten years and not one sentence is unfounded. Weiss has performed an unbelievable amount of research, studied the lives of people serving as models down to the tiniest detail, and attaches great importance to visiting the scenes of the action. The film gives an impression of his work. Harun Farocki, 1979     Harun Farocki:…

Esther Leslie | Fear Eats the Soul: Walter Benjamin & Baader Meinhof

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Neither of the figures in my title – Walter Benjamin and The Baader Meinhof Group – are in any direct way associated with 1968 – indeed each brackets it in time. The one, Benjamin, was long dead by the time of the student and worker revolts, that would undoubtedly have thrilled him, even if they did not thrill his old friend Adorno, who called in the police on his revolting students. Benjamin’s adult thought emerges in the years of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and it reaches its final formulation in the dark days of Nazi rule, his death occurring…

Farocki / Godard: Film as Theory; by Volker Pantenburg

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Farocki / Godard | Film as Theory  PDF  Volker Pantenburg   There is a tension between the requirements of theoretical abstraction and the capacities of the film medium, where everything that we see on screen is concrete: A train arriving at a station, a tree, bodies, faces. Since the complex theories of montage in Soviet cinema, however, there have continuously been attempts to express theoretical issues by combining shots, thus creating a visual form of thinking. This book brings together two major filmmakers-French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard and German avant-gardist Harun Farocki to explore the fundamental tension between theoretical abstraction…

riots and/or poetics [01/2019]

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Since the 17th of November, from the smallest rural village to the largest city, we have risen up against this deeply violent, unjust and unbearable society. We will not let this continue! We rebel against the excessive cost of living, precariousness and misery. We want our loved ones, our families and our children, to live in dignity. 26 billionaires own as much as half of humanity; this is unacceptable. Let’s share the wealth and not the misery! Let’s finish with social inequalities! We demand the immediate increase of wages, social assistance, allowances and pensions, the unconditional right to housing and…

HERE & ELSEWHERE / HIER UND ANDERSWO

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[…] Before she too is slaughtered by the Bourgeois (the mob of order), Rosa Luxemburg writes about Bacchanalia, which the bourgeoisie regularly holds upon its victims. From the perverse happiness of the tormentors: the whispering of the pariahs in secret. Gaps of ghastly proportions. Maintained by continuous police work, by the breeding of greenhouse roses, laws & border installations. The liquidation of the poetic word. Chalk circles one makes around a pair of shoes, a bicycle, a pool of blood [the stigmata of capitalism].

Harun Farocki / Kaja Silverman | Speaking about Godard

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Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki Speaking about Godard Full book / PDF   “Probably the most prominent living filmmaker, and one of the foremost directors of the postwar era, Jean Luc-Godard has received astonishingly little critical attention in the United States. With Speaking about Godard, leading film theorist Kaja Silverman and filmmaker Harun Farocki have made one of the most significant contributions to film studies in recent memory: a lively set of conversations about Godard and his major films, from Contempt to Passion. Combining the insights of a feminist film theorist with those of an avant-garde filmmaker, these eight dialogues–each representing…

Jacques Rancière; The Unforgettable

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    1 In front of the camera lens It is an image from turn-of-the-century Saint Petersburg, both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. The imperial family is passing by, surrounded by an escort of officers and dignitaries. The crowd gathered there, at the side of the road, is addressed by an officer with an imperious gesture: when the Tsar passes, the thing to do is to remove your hat. The commentator’s voice is heard: I don’t want this image to be forgotten. What is Chris Marker trying to tell us by placing this image at the opening of…

Best books of 2017

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Nanni Balestrini; Blackout / Commune Editions Heriberto Yépez; Transnational Battle Field / Commune Editions Attila József; Liste freier Ideen / roughbooks Ursula Andkjaer Olsen; Third-Millennium Heart / Action Books / Broken Dimanche Press Sean Bonney; Ghosts / Materials Georges Didi-Huberman; Die Namenlosen zwischen Licht und Schatten / Fink Pierre Guyotat; In der Tiefe / diaphanes Aimé Césaire; The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire / Wesleyan University Press The Invisible Committee; Now / Semiotext(e) Mark Fisher; The Weird and the Eerie / Repeater François Dosse; Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari / Turia + Kant Harun Farocki; Zehn, zwanzig, dreißig, vierzig. Fragment einer Autobiografie /…