Search
    About

    Between Eye and Hand

    Video still of a close up shot of hands touching a black surface with engraved letters. The surface is polished and the reflection of some people's faces can be seen.

    Harun Farocki, Transmission, 2007 (video still)

    20.07 — 20.09.2012
    Art Space Pythagorion, Pythagorion, Samos

    Artist

    Harun Farocki

    Curator

    Antje Ehmann

    The first exhibition at Art Space Pythagorion showcased work by the acclaimed video artist and film essayist Harun Farocki. The exhibition centred on the four-part series Serious Games (2009/10). For these new video installations, Farocki made recordings in US military bases and combined his own sequences with excerpts from computer simulations. These game-like programs are used by soldiers as training exercises for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and potential crisis areas. A further variant is shown in Immersion (part of the Serious Games series), which deals with the re-staging of soldiers’ combat traumas using this kind of simulation technology, here for therapeutic purposes.

    The relation between technology and war already played a decisive role in Farocki‘s earlier works. In Eye/Machine III (2003), the artist relates it to conditions of economic production. He compares surveillance mechanisms during armed conflict with the use of cameras in civilian life, as for registering movements in public places or monitoring processes in highly mechanised industrial plants. He sees the human eye as increasingly replaced by the computer in war and industry alike, the natural function of the eye being taken over by machines in both situations.

    In his double-channel-installation Comparison via a Third (2007) the concrete depiction of the techniques by means of which bricks are manufactured, makes you see a global system of inequalities and continuities, defining the modern world. After many years of working with video Farocki had again the opportunity to film with 16mm on construction sites in India, Africa and Europe.

    The exhibition presented also Farocki’s first film made without a camera. In-Formation (2005) assembles scanned pictograms from schoolbooks, magazines and newspapers. Farocki took examples of diagrams and used them to reconstruct the history of migration in the Federal Republic of Germany. What Farocki is seeking therefore, is a conceptual critique of the ways in which migration is presented, pursuing the icons and symbols back to their origins and examining them with regard to contents they themselves are unaware of.

    EXHIBITION GUIDES

      • Yannis Arvanitisexhibition guide
      • Dennis Bugdollexhibition guide
      • Iasson Kontovrakisexhibition guide
      • Katharina Schildgenexhibition guide
      • Arthur Summerederexhibition guide
      • Apostolos Vasilopoulosexhibition guide

    Press

    Exhibition Brochure

    • Between Eye and Hand Booklet

    Credits

    • Initiated and donated by Chiona Xanthopoulou-Schwarz and Dr. Kurt Schwarz, Curator: Antje Ehmann, Organization Consultant: Alexandros J. Stanas
    • All works are courtesy: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg; All images: © Harun Farocki Filmproduktion, Berlin

    Related Initiatives

    The Schwarz Foundation is a private non-profit foundation whose mission is to promote the exchange between various cultures.AboutArt Space PythagorionSamos Young Artists FestivalSamos Music RoomsGet in contactSupport
    • Instagram
    • Facebook
    El/En
    Privacy Policy