Harun Farocki 1944-2014

RIP Harun Farocki, a filmmaker who has been a great inspiration to me and to many people I admire. Still surprised at the loss nearly a month later, and with gratitude for his prolific, insightful, and inscrutable work that is not without humor, I am sharing a PDF of the review I wrote of his exhibition at MoMA, (June 2011-January 2012) for Millennium Film Journal’s Structures and Spaces: Cine-Installation issue: The Territory of Images: Harun Farocki, Images of War (at a Distance).

Re-reading the review, I am struck by how relevant Farocki’s recent installation work is in relation to the shooting of Michael Brown and the apparent militarization of the police force in Ferguson, revealed during the protests that followed. Particularly, Farocki’s highlighting of ideologically inscribed practice simulations that soldiers are trained with speaks to the ways in which pre-conceived notions of race and urban space have been playing out through social media and how, in online video of the protests, the police officers, with all their gifted military equipment, appear to be play-acting in a war-themed video game. Farocki’s I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts feels like an evergreen critique of institutionalized authority. In Ferguson, curfews, armed police and tear gas maintain the town as a space of discipline and containment.