Sara Ahmed on the perfomativity of disgust (from The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2004): “To name something as disgusting is to transfer the stickiness of the word ‘disgust’ to an object, which henceforth becomes generated as the very thing that is spoken. The relationship between the stickiness of the sign and the stickiness of the object is crucial to the performativity of disgust as well as the apparent resistance of disgust reactions to ‘newness’ in terms of the generation of different kinds of objects. The object that is generated as a disgusting (bad) object through the speech act comes to stick. It becomes sticky and acquires a fetish quality, which then engenders its own effects.”
November 7th, 2020, Tom
David Graeber (1961-2020) on What Would It Take (from his The Democracy Project. A History, a Crisis, a Movement, 2013, p. 193): “We have little idea what sort of organizations, or for that matter, technologies, would emerge if free people were unfettered to use their imagination to actually solve collective problems rather than to make them worse. But the primary question is: how do we even get there? What would it take to allow our political and economic systems to become a mode of collective problem solving rather than, as they are now, a mode of collective war?”
September 7th, 2020, TomT.J. Demos on why cultural practitioners should never surrender, via tranzit.sk: “For artists, writers, and curators, as art historians and teachers, the meaning-production of an artwork is never finished, never fully appropriated and coopted, in my view, and we should never surrender it; the battle over significance is ongoing. We see that battle rise up in relation to racist and colonial monuments these days in the US, the UK, and South Africa. While the destruction of such monuments results from and is enabling of radical politics, it’s still not enough until the larger institutions that support and maintain their existence as well as the continuation of the politics they represent are also torn down. This is urgent as well in the cultural sphere, including the arts institutions, universities, art markets, discursive sphere of magazines and journals, all in thrall to neoliberalism, where we must recognize that it’s ultimately inadequate to simply inject critical or radical content into these frameworks, which we know excel at incorporating those anti-extractivist expressions into further forms of cultural capital and wealth accumulation. What’s required is more of the building of nonprofit and community-based institutions, organizing radical political horizons and solidarity between social formations.”
August 21st, 2020, TomThe HaFI initiates its own projects as an institute together with its network as well as in cooperation with institutional and individual partners. Their starting point can be themes or concepts from Harun Farocki, but also issues relating to documentary practices, changes in seeing and visibility, the work of images, and the work with images in general. Embedded in medium and long-term research processes, the projects are articulated in events and screenings, in publications, exhibitions, and educational offers.
HaFI publications in Korean and Turkish
November 16th, 2020, Publication
A glimpse into the genesis of IMAGES OF THE WORLD AND THE INSCRIPTION OF WAR (1988).
To be released shortly, HaFI 013 can already be ordered at Motto Books.
Organized by the Berliner Gazette, the Winter School “Silent Works” investigates possibilities for re-inventing ‘the school’ along the lines of ‘the factory.’
The Open Call runs until September 25, 2020.
A panel discussion about Berlin vs. Amazon and the Berliner Gazette's Silent Works project, a partnership with HaFI.
HaFI participation with a panel dedicated to Farocki and his TV collaboration with the WDR.
How can, how should these images be looked at? And how do they unsettle the contemporary gaze?
A dossier consisting of documents and images on the "prison images" complex from the HaFI archive, compiled by HaFI.
The issue #109 Navigation Beyond Vision II of the e-flux journal is now online.
A small selection of texts written by the outstanding film critic and translator Frieda Grafe, complemented by a speech from Harun Farocki.
The screening is part of the #Forum 50 series of the Berlinale.
Screening of the three-part WDR program on the “Other Cinema” (1969) - with Harun Farocki among others.
The first presentation of the unfinished film HARD SELLING by Harun Farocki, which was recently found in the HaFI archive.
The Public Screening is now being continued with a curated program by Stefan Pethke.
The booklet is dedicated to the WDR editor Werner Dütsch (1939-2018), who produced numerous films from Harun Farocki.
New publication: Volume 4 of Farocki's Writings.
Premiere of the film and material unearthed in the archive of the Harun Farocki Institute will be shown beforehand.
The current issue 101 on “Navigation Beyond Vision” is now online.
The video documentation is now online.
May 27th, 2019, Event / ProjectsWhat can archives do for today’s society? How are historical realities translated into contemporary narratives? Can transformation be archived?
May 7th, 2019, Event / Projects
Wild's first longer film is set between the fronts of the 1980s revolution in the Philippines (...).
In 1977 Ingemo Engström and Gerhard Theuring embark on a journey through France. They trace the escape route of the German emigration in France 1940/41 (...).
HaFI is one of the participating institutions in Archive Außer Sich since 2017. A complete overview of our activities is now available on a dedicated website.
April 24th, 2019, Event / Projects
The meeting focuses on artistic/creative and political/ethical positions within global radical film cultures and video activism movements.
Texts and documents concerning the production context at "Westdeutscher Rundfunk", Cologne
Navigation begins where the map ends (...).
The film diverges from traditional ethnographic work and is instead a multi-layered media translation (...).
Radical Film Network Meeting, May 2-5, 2019, silent green, Berlin: OPEN CALL “What is Radical Film?”
Contributions from individuals and communities both inside and outside academia, from artists, activists, filmmakers, researchers, scientists and others are welcome.
The film portrays the four wives of a marabout in Niger, enclosed in the eponymous courtyard of a building complex. They manage to develop micro-economic strategies to form relationships with the exterior world.
The presentation "Harun Farocki As A Method" revisits films and artworks from Egypt and the context of the Arab world.
October 25th, 2018, 2018 / Event / Residency
A screening with Ali Hussein Al Adawy, the third Harun Farocki residency scholarship holder.
A cooperation event with HaFI.
October 23rd, 2018, Event / Projects
see German post
Godard stopped traveling to foreign countries, his camera must not even drive around much by car.
The film combines enacted scenes and historical material and is about the past and present of Levantkade in Amsterdam’s old harbor (...)
See German post.
A discovery from Farocki’s estate will be shown on this occasion.
July 2nd, 2018, Event / Projects
A film about the legal process against the ‚Plowshares Eight‘, eight members of the Christian peace movement in US, who hammered a nuclear warhead to pieces at a weapon’s factory.
Jürgen Ebert will present and talk about the last unpublished issue of the magazine, Filmkritik No. 335-336, Nov-Dec 1984, now released on the occasion of "Edit Film Culture!".
June 30th, 2018, Event / Projects
With a delay of over 33 years the last unpublished issue of the magazine, Filmkritik No. 335-336, Nov-Dec 1984, will now appear. This edition is dedicated to the filmmaker Emile de Antonio.
Nightshift explored the work of women in relation to politics, film, desire, and society.
A reprint of the yearly indexes from 1975 to 1983, supplemented by the the index for 1984 which was still missing.
The titles of Norman's films all hint at the struggle to assert an Afro-American identity in a world shaped by whites.
Logik des Gefühls: What happens? Nothing much. […] Where is it set? In an in-between space, between lost love and a coming love. Winter. Berlin. 1981.
See German post.
In the framework of the "Farocki Now" Academy, the UdK (University of the Arts) Berlin organises a LARP. Roles are still available upon registration.
October 17th, 2017, Event / Projects
A forum for workshops, presentations, and debates which explore the contemporary relevance of Harun Farocki’s work and thought, placing it in new contexts and activating its productive potential
See German post.
Tonight: Opening of the retrospective of Harun Farocki's work for cinema and television at Kino Arsenal.
From “A for Adorno” to “Z for Zidane” – an ABCs of the Essay Film accompanied by a short text Farocki wrote in 1987.
A selection of materials pertaining to the film "Before Yor Eyes - Vietnam" introduced by a commentary penned by the Harun Farocki Institut.
Political commitment, thirst for research and stamina. A film by Ogawa Productions.
Factories and families as places of exploitation, which don’t just have to be interpreted but also changed.
Documentary filmmaker Gerhard Benedikt Friedl describes Helmut Färber's method of teaching film history.
Helmut Färber’s 80th anniversary was celebrated by some (German language) texts in the media
April 26th, 2017, Projects / Research
A mythological road movie, a squatter and hacker story.
See German post.
The talk will include the screening of "Ronny und Harun spielen Theater" which is a short documentary of a staged scene from “Etwas wird sichtbar” (“Before Your Eyes Vietnam”), 1982.
February 16th, 2017, Event / Projects
Harun Farocki saw the film in 1971 at the Hamburger Filmschau. In the succeeding years, he worked closely with Engström.
See German post.
November 30th, 2016, Projects / ResearchArchitecture, Instructional Technology, and the Social Production of Pedagogical Space Around 1970
November 30th, 2016, Projects / Research
Letters exchanged between Harun Farocki, Peter Weiss and Westdeutscher Runfunk (WDR): A glimpse at the production history of "On Display: Peter Weiss".
For the Harun Farocki Institut, Peter Weiss’ 100th birthday on November 8, 2016 meant an opportunity to take a closer look at Farocki’s WDR program “On display: Peter Weiss”.
November 8th, 2016, Projects / ResearchA guided tour followed by a screening and a talk with Carles Guerra and Bert Rebhandl.
November 1st, 2016, Event / ProjectsSee German post.
October 25th, 2016, Projects / ResearchWe were isolated individuals and simultaneously subsumed into a totality*
October 12th, 2016, Event / ProjectsSee German post.
September 15th, 2016, Projects / Research‘What is navigation?’ inquires the curatorial seminar 2016/17 of the CCC Research-Based Master Programms / Visual Arts Department of HEAD – Geneva.
September 5th, 2016, Projects / ResearchExpropriating Television.
September 1st, 2016, Projects / ResearchThe Harun Farocki Institut organizes Farocki Now - A Temporary Academy as a component of the “Harun Farocki Retrospective”.
August 30th, 2016, Event / Projects
A working paper by Farocki (1975/76), a commentary by Tom Holert, Doreen Mende and Volker Pantenburg followed by a letter by Peter Nestler.
The Institut's first public appearance at Berlinale 2016. A graffiti by Harun Farocki.
Material to investigate the present, the future past. Impressions from the archive of the Farocki Institut.