The influential German filmmaker talks to Edmund Lee about Immersion, the potential of film in the art space, and his own place in the visual culture discourse.
 

Writer, filmmaker, installation artist, and philosopher of the image. Film essayist, video artist, cultural theorist, and witness of contemporary world history. There are as many ways to label Harun Farocki as there are cinema and television productions – now over 100 – under his name. One of the seminal figures in German film history, the 66-year-old has been a pioneer in visual culture since the 1960s, counting 1969’s Inextinguishable Fire (in which Farocki stubbed out a cigarette on his arm to contemplate the physical damages of napalm burns) and 1989’s Images of the World and the Inscription of War (the representative title in Farocki’s long-term contemplation on media, information and technology) among his most iconic works.

Farocki has crossed over into the visual art world since the 1990s, and his 2009 two-channel video installation, Immersion, continues the filmmaker’s concern with the interaction between humans and computer images in the technological warfare context. In the video, the viewers are shown the proceedings of therapy sessions in a US military centre, where soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress relive their wartime experiences in Iraq through virtual reality and computer animations.

How did you first learn about the California workshop shown in Immersion?
From a German newspaper we had learned that computer animations are used [in] exercises for war, and that at the same time such images are used for therapeutic purposes. We would – for ethical reasons – never film real patients. So we looked for [a] situation in which therapists are instructed by role games.

The work painted a very horrific picture of the Iraq War. Was it difficult to persuade the military to let you document the facility?
It was not easy to get access. The military is a huge bureaucracy and we are not working for a big news channel. But the military wants the public to know that they care about their veterans. That was their interest to give us access.

It’s interesting how you reveal, towards the end of the video, that the traumatised soldier was indeed only an actor making up false memories in a demonstration session. Why did you decide to leave that part in?
The man’s [performance] is so good that you believe him even if you know beforehand that he is only playing a role. He wants to prove that the device they want to sell to the military works. By the revelation at the end we’ve perhaps learnt or remembered that something staged can also have its truth.

As demonstrated in Immersion, virtual reality games have now ended up playing an essential role in the reconstruction of real-life experience. You’ve always been very much aware of how reproduced images are shaping our historical memory; that said, are you nonetheless surprised by these latest developments in visual culture?
The use of these images in therapy makes clear that these images have a magical meaning. By creating an artificial landscape of Iraq or Afghanistan on the basis of real geographical data you master the respective countries in an attempted symbolical mastery. It shows that the interactive images are based on a highly complex knowledge. When it comes to the psyche of soldiers the most simplistic behaviourism is at work.

Much of your oeuvre constitutes a remarkable chronicle of the evolving ways of image production and reproduction. Why are you so fascinated with this subject matter?
Probably I am reflecting my means, because the images are the only field of expertise I have.

How do you usually choose your subjects?
Mostly I don’t start with a general idea. For pragmatic reasons I have to start with production means – a budget. In this case my collaborator Matthias [Rajmann] sent me a news clip; and although I thought I had dealt sufficiently with ‘war-based images’ in previous works, I was attracted by a project in which you can show how images are used to prepare for war and to work through war.

You started out as an avant-garde filmmaker, and your works were conveniently considered ‘essay films’ alongside those of Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard. Did you agree with that categorisation?
[I’ve] nothing against the term ‘avant-garde’! The work we are talking about is not an essay film because it does not have a commentary. But I hope it has an implicit commentary. But ‘essay’ is probably just a genre, like observational film or direct cinema. And Godard is for 50 years my idol and teacher. I want to learn from him but I avoid copying him.

You once wrote that “My films are made against the cinema and against television.” Now that you’re working increasingly away from those media, do you still see it that way?
Well, this is long ago. I no longer coin slogans. A film or film installation has to transcend the space in which it is shown. I try to make films which are not time-based visual art but introduce the potential of film into the art space.

How do you feel about this transition into the contemporary art world, which now regularly sees your video installations in gallery and museum spaces?
In the art world every event has to be a special event. Working for – or against – TV means to be in a factory or an office. TV is too unceremonial; the art world is on a continuous holiday.

Due to the distinctiveness of your work, you’ve been a terribly difficult figure for scholars and cultural critics alike to pin down and categorise. How would you yourself describe Harun Farocki?
I say: “A filmmaker.” Then people ask: “Which kind of films?” And the dilemma starts.

Harun Farocki’s video installation Immersion is presented as part of Culture(s) of Copy, a group exhibition jointly presented by Goethe-Institut Hongkong and Germany’s Edith Russ Site for Media Art in Oldenburg, at Goethe-Gallery (until July 31) and Hong Kong Film Archive’s Exhibition Hall (until July 19).