In 1966 Harun Farocki was a student at the Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie in Berlin. Alongside him was the filmmaker Holger Meins. Farocki went on to make protest films like 'Inextinguishable Fire' and 'Videogramme of a Revolution', whilst Meins made 'How to make a Molotov Cocktail'. Faroki is one of the most prolific and respected filmmakers of his generation, the subject a major retrospective at the Tate this month. Meins joined the Red Army Faction and died whilst on hunger strike in prison. The link, and the divergence between these two filmmakers. The theorist and the terrorist, it where the fascination with Farocki's work comes from. The fine line that he treads so effectively in his work, and which is often so hard to negotiate as a politically engaged writer or artist.
I am fascinated by Farocki's work. I discovered him last year when I was studying video art for my masters, and I was blown away. His video essays, created in a similar vein to those of Godard or Marker, spoke to me in ways that I'd never been spoken to before; they used new modes of expression, new forms of montage, new lines - and curves - and folds - of argument. Anyway, it looks like everyone else has been reading the same books as me. He's big news at the moment, what with the retrospective at the Tate, and the opening of 'Against What? Against whom?' at Raven Row. What is it that we all love about Farocki?
In some ways, I think that its got to do with the war (yes, we are at war), and to do with our desire to be simultaneously involved, and absolved. Farocki deconstructs the images of war, and at the same time he deconstructs his own deconstructions of the images of war. It's all jolly clever, and it might be seen as a bit of a cop out, if his films weren't so darn effective. Watching them makes me want to do stuff. To act (well, at least to video). And I suppose that's the catch, and part of the question that his art makes us ask: what does it mean to watch this stuff. When so much of warfare has become virtual, when - as in 2009's 'Immersion'- treatment for post-traumatic stress takes the form of a virtual-reality video game, are Farocki's video essays acts of aggression in themselves?
An element that might useful to think about is the close relationship between image and body, art and activism in his films. Even though his career has been dedicated to the creation of screen works: films and works of art that have no real presence in the bodily world, Farocki's activism is not just a metaphysical concept. This is due to the literal presence of the body in many of his films. The primary example of this occurs in 'Inextinguishable Fire' Faroki's 1969 film about napalm. In the film, Farocki stubbs out a lit cigarette on his arm whilst talking about the effects of napalm. The body of the filmmaker, the manipulator of images, is physically scarred by the events he is talking about. By this insignificant action he is inserting himself - his physical body - into the ecomomy of warfare. The cigarette acts as a cipher for two things. Firstly, it represents a tiny fraction of the heat at which napalm burns. Secondly, it demonstrates the language of association and metaphor in which activists are forced to talk in order to confront people with the realities of chemical warfare.
Anyway, rather than listening to me rhapsodising forever about video art (I can you know...) why don't you jog off to the exhibitions and have a go at inserting yourselves in the economy of warfare. The screenings at Tate are ongoing every weekend until the 6th December, and the Raven Row show is open near Liverpool Street until the beginning of next February. For more information click here or go to www.ravenrow.org
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