Technical Control. Harun Farocki and the Labor of Images. Francesco Marchini MA Documentary Photography University of South Wales - A.Y. 2018/2019 francesco.marchini@icloud.com
Abstract In this essay I explore the relationship between images, labor and control within the practice of the German filmmaker Harun Farocki (1944 – 2014). While integrating politics and aesthetics and conceiving of the image as a means of technical control, in his works Farocki sets out to a critique of representation as our dominant image paradigm. Drawing upon the cinematographic medium and the histories of cinema to reflect on the historical trajectories of aesthetic practices in the twentieth Century, Farocki analyses the world of labor and representations and how our visual culture is built upon technical images – that is, images that work. In the world of industrialized images, moreover, images and control proceed along the same way towards a restructuring of our vision and sight. This dimension becomes most evident in Farocki’s last piece of work, the series Parallel I-IV (2012-2014), which addresses the aforementioned relationships in the virtual world of computer images.
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