Inscription/Counter-inscription: On Harun Farocki

Berlin-based Harun Farocki is perhaps one of the most important independent filmmakers active today. Having risen to prominence in Germany during the tumultuous 1960s, his work continues to provoke us to think critically about the pervasiveness of the image. In this, Farocki can be situated within a rich, specifically German, tradition of reflecting on the political ramifications of technology in the modern period from Nietzsche and Marx through Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and the Frankfurt School. Farocki addresses the fate of political action through an examination of the constellation of institutions that comprise the disciplinary matrix of our present: the shopping mall, the prison, and the military. Observational and disciplinary techniques are deployed in these institutions in such a way as to not only establish limits to political action in the world but also, perhaps more insidiously, to establish or frame the parameters