HOW 严肃游戏 | 哈伦·法罗基：战争总有出路（下）

严肃游戏

展期：2019年8月2日-11月2日

艺术家：阿莱克斯·马伊思(Alexis Mailles)、冯晨、哈伦·法罗基(Harun Farocki)、乔恩·拉夫曼(Jon Rafman)、肯特·希里(Kent Sheely)、陆浩明、陆明龙、马修·切拉比尼(Matthieu Cherubini)、佩恩恩、彼得·尼尔森(Peter Nelson)、吴其育

策展人：付了了

地址：昊美术馆（上海）三楼展厅6、7

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昊美术馆（上海）最新群展“严肃游戏”于8月2日正式开幕。展览同时呈现一系列艺术家关于游戏的写作和创作手记，希望借此激发对电子游戏及相关议题的进一步思考和讨论。接昨天的内容，今天介绍的是艺术家哈伦·法罗基(Harun Farocki)此次参展作品《严肃游戏 III:沉浸》《严肃游戏 IV:无影的太阳》及其文章《战争总有出路》（下）。

《严肃游戏 III:沉浸》

&

《严肃游戏 IV:无影的太阳》

严肃游戏 III:沉浸，2009

哈伦·法罗基

视频(双投影)，彩色，有声，20’(循环)

致谢哈伦·法罗基协会（柏林）

为创作录像装置《沉浸》，法罗基参观了由创新科技研究所（ICT）组织的研讨会，这是一个针对虚拟现实和计算机模拟的研究中心。他们的一个项目是为患有创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）的退伍军人开发一种治疗方法。法罗基对招募、训练和为士兵提供治疗的虚拟现实和游戏应用感兴趣。法罗基探讨了虚拟现实与军队之间的联系——计算机游戏的虚构场景如何同时用于美军在部署战区之前的训练，以及为遭受战场创伤的士兵做心理护理。

严肃游戏 IV:无影的太阳，2010

哈伦·法罗基

视频(双投影)，彩色，有声，8’(循环)

致谢哈伦·法罗基协会（柏林）

本章考虑的事实是，为战争做准备的图像与战后评估的图像非常相似。但是有一点不同：纪念创伤经历的程序要便宜一些——没有预算为这些图像中的物体和人制作影子。

战争总有出路（下）

哈伦·法罗基

2009

从我的首个讨论该话题的作品（《眼睛/机器》，2001）开始，我就把这些不以娱乐或提供信息为目的的图像称为“操作图像”。这些图像的产生并不是为了复制，而是作为操作的一部分。这个词可以追溯到罗兰 · 巴特（Roland Barthes）。在《神话学》理论性很强的后记中，他写道：“我们必须回归到‘对象语言’和‘元语言’的区分。如果我是一个伐木者，去命名那些我在砍伐的树木，不论我的句子形式是什么，我都是在‘说树’，而不是说关于树的话。但如果我不是一个伐木者，我就不能‘说树’，只能说有关树的话。” 对于巴特来说，这段文字是一种对于他自己实践的确认。他希望自己属于革命的左翼，巴特代表的此类符号学理论在莫斯科受到了憎恨和压迫，因为它唯一能追溯到的外来因素就是形式主义，这一在当时被严重排斥的俄罗斯前卫理论。

如今，我们不再被迫去做激进的唯物主义者，或是去解释在语言或思维构建中的唯物主义准则。如果我们对作为操作的一部分的图像产生了兴趣，这种兴趣更可能从大量的“非操作图像”和枯燥的元语言而来。厌烦于每天将日常生活再神话化，厌烦于数量繁多的各种来源的图像，这确认了一个无聊透顶的事情：这个世界就是他本来的样子。

眼睛/机器 II，2001

哈伦·法罗基

视频(双投影)，彩色和黑白，15’(循环)

致谢哈伦·法罗基协会（柏林）

监控摄像头产生的图像按规定来说是不会被人眼过目的。它们被记录只是为了调查一个过程。这些画面的重要性如此之低以致于不会被保存下来，记录的媒介也会被抹除然后重新使用，只有在非常特殊的情况下这些画面才会被观看和存档。这样的图像对艺术家来说是一种挑衅，因为它们并不带有意图性或著作性，却拥有一种未经计划的特别的美感。在1991年，当美方军队领导层决定把监控画面用作主要的展示素材来报道战争时，他们胜过了在艺术中任何类似于“无意识可见”画面的展示。

当今的唯物主义者是像海蒂和阿尔文 · 托夫勒（Heidi and Alvin Toffler）这样的作者。他们并不属于巴黎的知识分子圈，而是属于华盛顿五角大楼的智囊团。在他们面向大众并被广泛阅读的著作《第三次浪潮》（纽约，1980）和《战争与反战争》（纽约，1993）中，他们设想，生产的技术和毁灭的技术之间存在着必要的一致性，而商品制造业和战争之间也存在着一致性。别人如何把农业和工业去做对比，他们就如何把战争和工业做对比。从这样一个不证自明的角度来看人类的进程，战争只是一个和其他任何领域一样的活动领域。

（左）《第三次浪潮》，1980，阿尔文 · 托夫勒，图片源自维基百科；（右）《战争与反战争》，1993，阿尔文&海蒂 · 托夫勒，图片源自亚马逊

我们收到了瑞士军火制造公司奥丽康-比尔（Oelikon-Bührle）寄来的一段电脑生成的简短的宣传录像片，画面中是蓝色天空中两架战斗飞机飞过一片沙漠。其中一架发射出了一枚橘色的巡航导弹，被深绿色的雷达探测到之后，被高射炮击中并坠毁。画面里没有一个人。人工合成的沙漠地貌是想象一场纯粹的战争发生的最佳地点。在其中，每一件武器都被一件“反击武器“对抗，继而又被“反-反击武器”对抗。这一连串新产品淘汰旧产品的更迭成为了一种文化模式。在长达四十年的冷战中，火箭、坦克、飞机和军舰很有可能在没被使用之前就被”报废“了——有时候它们甚至在被造出来之前，就在道德层面上过时了。

IT产品的寿命实际上比战争设备更长。但为了不让市场滞怠，旧产品被宣传为过时的，才有可能被新产品取代。越来越趋于无形的信息类商品生产的重要性逐渐增加，被认为是苏联突然解体的原因。对手失败了，但不仅是因为它变弱了。它被消解了，因为它不再被需要了。在IT行业中，就算是为了驱动产品更新换代而产生的竞争关系也不再需要了。

另一方面，军火工业近来很难证明制造新产品的正当性。它缺少足够的敌人去生产“反击武器”，继而再生产必要的“反-反击武器”。向后来变成敌国的盟友国（例如阿富汗和伊拉克的情况）运送多余的武器的行为也很难实现系统化。我说的这些是从一个战争的幻像角度出发，一种被想象出来的战争主体性。贝托尔特 · 布莱希特（Bertolt Brecht）在《勇气妈妈》中写道: "战争总会找到出路。" 芭芭拉 · 埃伦赖希（Barbara Ehrenreich）把这句话理解为，当战争本身的存在与否受到威胁时，它总能用难以想象的创造力继续存在下去。[1]即使人类不再需要它了，它仍然会试图变成一个荒废战场上的自动化战争。在富裕的国家，大多数人不想要战争发生。战争就像货币的金本位一样变得没有必要。

《勇气妈妈》(戏剧排练)，1939

芭芭拉 · 埃伦赖希

图片源自维基百科

有点像是在乘孩子们睡觉时复活的玩具，在荒废的战场上进行的战争让我们想起了空荡的制造业设施。例如在汽车行业，我们只能看到人们在容纳不下任何机器人的地方工作。关于生产和破坏，这个类比似乎适用: 富裕国家的工厂不再依靠人力，而在贫穷国家，越来越多的人在从事机械的体力劳动。而战争也是越来越多地在贫穷国家发生。

1991年海湾战争中的操作图像没有显示任何人类的踪影，这些图像不仅仅是为宣传，尽管严格的审查意在隐瞒战争中20万人的死亡。这源自战争乌托邦概念，这种概念不考虑人民，只会将他们视为已核实的、或甚至未经核实的受害者。1991年，一名军事发言人在被问及伊拉克方的受害者时说：“我们不做伤亡人数统计。”这可以解释为：“我们不是掘墓人，这项肮脏的工作必须由其他人来完成。”以善意的态度来看，这也可以解释为富裕国家不希望对敌人的死亡幸灾乐祸，并希望避免本国人受害。贫穷国家只能寄希望于富裕国家的战利品在一点点再流向他们！

让人对战场留下干净印象的操作图像，肯定比展示肮脏战争的反面图像（如展现数百名平民在巴格达的地堡中被撕成碎片的图像）更有说服力。当普通的电视观众能看到那些本只应该被战争技术人员看到的航拍镜头的时候，他们也变成了战争技术人员，他们注定也会对战争的技术产生共鸣。但我们仍然还是带有政治属性的人，我们彼此交谈、批评图像，也确实能够区分科威特遭到伊拉克攻击并被吞并的第一次伊拉克战争和第二次伊拉克战争。

在2003年的第二次伊拉克战争中，从导弹头部拍摄的图像几乎没有被展示。我们也再没有听说任何关于"智能武器"的事，只有关于精确制导武器的部分。由于保密原则，就算一切都指向这一点，也很难完全证明第一次或第二次海湾战争中没有用到“智能武器”，即能够自行识别并击中目标的武器。“智能武器”的概念至少没有比其他欺骗敌人的典型策略受到更多的反驳。此举的目的是把“有眼睛的”炸弹这个概念变得非常普遍，以至于它们可以被订购、开发、盈利而不受到批评性的质疑。

不针对人眼的图像是极少的，正如“智能武器”曾经也很少一样。计算机确实可以处理图像，但它不需要真实的图像来确定所显示内容的正确或错误。对于计算机来说，数字化呈现就足够了。罗兰 · 巴特的伐木者的斧头也不是纯粹具体化工具理性，而是一个不仅和物质对话，也和人类感官对话的工具。然而，我们可以在不同程度上区别“对象语言”的图像和“元语言”的图像，正如机器美学可以区别于商品美学一样。如果一个程序在一系列图像中只能引入它所寻找的东西——不管是作为航拍地貌标记的彩色线条，还是在研究所大厅里用于自动机器人定向的基板——那么我们所看到的其实是对这些正在标记的内容的否定。这些线条宣告了在这个画面中只有被标记的东西才可以被看到。与任何的否定一样，这种否定也会产生强烈的逆向反应。

世界的图像及战争铭文，1988

哈伦·法罗基

16mm电影，彩色，黑白，1：1，37，75’

致谢哈伦·法罗基协会（柏林）

我对第一次海湾战争中航拍画面的兴趣可以追溯到我的电影《世界的图像及战争铭文》(1988)。电影的核心是关于1944年从美国侦察机上拍摄到的奥斯威辛集中营的航拍照片。这些图片实际上本意是为了探测附近的目标地点和生产合成燃料和橡胶的工厂，但是他们也拍摄到了相近的集中营。直到1977年人们才发现，从图像中可以分辨出一群被拘押的人走在去毒气室的路上，还有另一群人正排队等待登记。司令官的房子也可以被辨认出来，射击墙，甚至还有毒气室屋顶上的缝隙，齐克隆B（毒气）就是通过这些缝隙被释放进去的。当时，对我来说，这些画面是一种可以恰当地展示集中营的方式，因为它们与受害者保持了一定的距离。它们似乎比那些展示着斜坡上的骷髅骨架、营房里饥饿的囚犯和被推土机挖掘的尸堆的近景照片看上去更妥当一些。这些画面是一种对受害者们象征性的施暴，即使是怀着好意的人也还是如此使用它们。在这些集中营的航拍照片中，每个人看上去只有一个小点这么大，对此我的评论是: "这些照片的颗粒感，为画面中人们的人性提供了一些保护。"

如今，很明显，这些从远处拍摄的图像也无助于让死者免受更多的羞辱。我们几乎不能找到任何足够好的理由去看那些残废的受害者照片。的确，从本质上来说，远距离拍摄的可怕的事件的图像也暗指着距离的缺失，即便用与他们相反的方式来呈现。不可避免的事情是，在对仁慈的尝试中，野蛮发生了。

不灭的火焰，1969

哈伦·法罗基

16mm电影，黑白，1：1，37，25’

致谢Harun Farocki Filmproduktion，Artlink Magazine

早在1969年，我拍摄的关于凝固汽油弹和越南的电影《不灭的火焰》中，我不想制造出任何糟糕可怕却无法被反驳的画面。至少我想要做一些有象征性的前进努力。所以我做了一个简短的介绍性发言，在发言中我引用了一份关于一个越南人被凝固汽油弹击中的报告。在发言的最后，我在手背上灭了一支香烟，然后我说：“香烟的燃烧温度是400度，而凝固汽油的燃烧温度是3000度。”我的这个行动是关于当下的。越南很远，我与高温的直接接触是为了试图将越南拉近。这个小动作是为了干扰影像中的画面，是为了对抗摄影设备，并且作为一个未经剪辑的连续镜头，它的确肯定了电影影像的证明力。

在佛罗里达州的一个偏远档案馆里，我们偶然发现了德州仪器公司的一部宣传片。在画面中，一枚枚炸弹在慢动作中从B-52轰炸机的滑道中落下。与操作图像正好相反，这些画面的目的就是为了灌输恐惧和娱乐，最好两者兼得。画面还配有女武神的音乐，暗指电影导演弗朗西斯· 科波拉，也无意中影射了纳粹的战争新闻短片。这则商业广告从经济学角度论证了投放计算机制导炸弹非常便宜，使用激光制导精准导弹也很便宜。这是一个有成效的误读：很少有炸弹的销售量会发生难以弥补的下滑。如果生产和摧毁之间存在着某种联系的话，那么并没有很多硬件设备需要被销毁，因为它的核心是市场控制和目标选择。但是，出售更多的控制权精确地取决于区分朋友和敌人。经济，至少是武器制造商们的经济，要求为人道主义而开战。

1991年海湾战争中的操作图像没有显示任何人类的踪影，这些图像不仅仅是为宣传，而且意在隐瞒战争中20万人的死亡。这源自战争乌托邦概念，这种概念不考虑人民，只会将他们视为已核实的、或甚至未经核实的受害者。1991年，一名军事发言人在被问及伊拉克方的受害者时说：“我们不做伤亡人数统计。”这可以解释为：“我们不是掘墓人，这项肮脏的工作必须由其他人来完成。”以善意的态度来看，这也可以解释为富裕国家不希望对敌人的死亡幸灾乐祸，并希望避免本国人受害。贫穷国家只能寄希望于富裕国家的战利品在一点点再流向他们！

原德文由丹尼尔·亨德里克森翻译并发表于GAGARIN 杂志

注释

[1]  Barbara Ehrenreich, 《血腥仪式：战争激情的起源和历史》，纽约，1997年

关于艺术家

哈伦·法罗基

1944年1月9日出生于苏台德区新伊钦（今捷克共和国）。

1966 - 1968年在柏林初创的德国电影学院学习。

1966年与Ursula Lefkes结婚。

1968年女儿Annabel Lee和Larissa Lu诞生。

1974年至1984年任慕尼黑《电影评论》杂志的作者和编辑。

1998 - 1999年与Kaja Silverman合著《谈论高达》，纽约/柏林。

1993 - 1999年任加州大学伯克利分校客座教授。

2001年与Antje Ehmann结婚。

自1966年以来，创作逾百部电视、电影，包括儿童电视、纪录片、散文电影与故事片。

自1996年以来，在博物馆和画廊多次举办个展及参与群展。

2007年，作品《深度游戏》参展第十二届卡塞尔文献展。

自2004年以来，任维也纳艺术学院客座教授，2006 - 2011年任该校正教授。

2011 - 2014年与Antje Ehmann合作长期项目《单镜头劳动》。

2014年7月30日在柏林附近去世。

“严肃游戏”展览现场

“严肃游戏”展览现场，2019 图片©昊美术馆

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Serious Games

Duration: 2019/08/02 - 2019/11/02

Artists: Alexis Mailles, Feng Chen, Harun Farocki, Jon Rafman, Kent Sheely, Andrew Luk, Lawrence Lek, Matthieu Cherubini, Payne Zhu, Peter Nelson, Wu Chi-Yu

Curator: Fu Liaoliao

Venue：Gallery 6/ 7, 3F, HOW Art Museum, No 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road, Shanghai

Serious Games, the current exhibition of HOW Art Museum Shanghai, is on view from August 2. The exhibition presents in the same time the writings of participating artists, intending to stimulate further the reflection and discussion on videogames and relevant topics. Today's release is about exhibited artworks Serious Games III: Immersion and Serious Games IV: A Sun without Shadow of Harun Faroki and his article War Always Finds a Way（Part Two）. 

Serious Games III: Immersion

&

Serious Games IV: A Sun without Shadow

Serious Games III: Immersion，2009

Harun Farocki

Video (double projection), color, sound, 20’ (Loop)

Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR, Berlin

For the video installation Immersion Farocki visited a workshop organised by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a research centre for virtual reality and computer-simulations. One of their projects concerns the development of a therapy for war-veterans suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Farocki is interested in the use of virtual realities and games in the recruting, training and now also therapy for soldiers. Farocki explores the connection between virtual reality and the military – how the fictional scenarios of computer games are used both in the training of U.S. troops prior to their deployment in combat zones, and in psychological care for troops suffering battlefield trauma upon their return.

Serious Games IV: A Sun without Shadow, 2010

Harun Farocki 

Video (double projection), color, sound, 8'(Loop)

Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR, Berlin

This chapter considers the fact that the pictures with which preparations were made for war are so very similar to the pictures with which war was evaluated afterward. But there is a difference: The program for commemorating traumatic experiences is somewhat cheaper. Nothing and no-one casts a shadow here. 

War Always Finds a Way（Part Two）

Harun Farocki

2009

Beginning with my first works on this topic ("Eye/Machine” 2001), I have called such images, which are not made to entertain or to inform, “operative images.” Images that are not simply meant to reproduce something but are instead part of the operation. This term can be traced back to Roland Barthes. In Mythologies, he writes in a theoretical afterword: “Here we must go back to the distinction between language-object and meta-language. If I am a woodcutter and I am led to name the tree which I am felling, whatever the form of my sentence, I ‘speak the tree,’ I do not speak about it.... But if I am not a woodcutter, I can no longer ‘speak the tree,’ I can only speak about it, on it.” For Barthes, this text is an affirmation of his own practice. He wanted to belong to the revolutionary left without having to take up the Stalinist line, as the CPF (Communist Party of France) was then demanding of intellectuals. Moscow persecuted the kind of semiotics represented by Barthes with particular hatred, since it did not refer back to anything foreign, but to formalism, the ostracized Russian avant-garde theory; the only thing theoretically new, according to Foucault, to come out of Communism.

Nothing compels us anymore to be radical materialists and to account for materialist rules of effect in language and thought construction. If we are interested in images that are part of an operation, this more likely comes from the flood of non-operative images, from the tedium of meta- language. Tedium of the everyday practice of re- mythologizing everyday life, and the multiple and many-channeled program of images that confirm the most banal thing: that the world is as it is.

Eye / Machine II，2001

Harun Farocki

Video (double projection), col. and b/w, 15’ (Loop)

Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR, Berlin

Images from surveillance cameras are, as a rule, never viewed by human eyes. They are recorded to survey a process. They are therefore considered so insignificant that they are not stored, and the recording medium is erased and reused. Only in exceptional cases are the images observed and archived. Such images are a provocation to artists, in that they are not authorial and intentional, but do have a certain beauty that is not calculated. Showing something in art that comes close to the unconsciously visible was outperformed in 1991 by the US military leadership when they made surveillance images the main representation of war reporting.

The materialists today are authors like Heidi and Alvin Toffler. They do not belong to an intellectual circle in Paris but to a think tank in Washington, centered on the Pentagon. In their widely read mass-market books The Third Wave (New York, 1980) and War and Anti-War (New York, 1993), they assume that there is a necessary correspondence between technologies of production and of destruction, the manufacture of goods and war. They compare war and industry in the same way that one would compare, for instance, agriculture and industry. In this axiomatic view of evolution, war is a field of activity like any other.

(Left)The Third Wave, 1980, Alvin Toffler, Image from Wikipedia.org; (Right) War and Anti-War, 1993, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Image from Amazon.com

We received a short, computer generated promotional tape, sent to us by the Swiss weapons manufacturer Oelikon-Bührle: two fighter jets in front of a blue sky, over the sand colored desert. One of them shoots out an orange colored cruise missile, which, located by a dark green radar, is in turn shot at from an anti-aircraft cannon, and finally destroyed. There are no people to be seen. The synthetic desert landscape is the right place to imagine a pure war in which every weapon is reacted to by a counter-weapon, which is then reacted to by a counter-counter-weapon. This succession of products, where the new annihilates the previous, is a cultural model. The Cold War made it possible, over a forty-year period, to write off rockets, tanks, aircraft, and ships that were materially unused, but were morally already worn out–sometimes even before they were completed.

The products of the IT industry actually last longer than war devices, so in order not to clog the market, moral campaigns are led to represent them as obsolete, making it possible to replace them with new ones. The increasing importance of the production of informational goods, tending to be immaterial, is supposed to have been the reason for the sudden demise of the Soviet Union. The rival went under, but not only because it was weaker. It was dissolved because it was no longer needed. Even competition as the motor of obsolescence and renewal is no longer used in the IT industry.

The arms industry, on the other hand, has difficulty justifying new products these days. It’s lacking the enemy to produce the counter-weapons that make the counter-counter-weapons necessary. The process of delivering surplus weapons to an ally, which then later secedes and becomes the enemy—such as was the case with Afghanistan and Iraq—can hardly be systematized. I’m speaking here from the phantom perspective of war, from an imagined war-subjective. In Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, it goes as follows: “War always finds a way.” Barbara Ehrenreich understood this sentence to mean that war is unimaginably inventive when it comes to its own survival[1] . Even if no human being wanted it anymore, it would still attempt to mutate into an automatic war on a deserted battlefield. In the rich countries, most people do not want war. War is as unnecessary as the gold standard behind currency.

Mother Courage and Her Children（rehearsal of the play）, 1939

Bertolt Brecht

Image from Wikipedia.org

The idea of a deserted battlefield on which war battles on–a bit like the toys that wake up while the children are sleeping–reminds us of the emptiness of production facilities. In the automobile industry, for instance, we only see people working where there’s no room for another robot. In connection with production and destruction, the following analogy seems to apply: while in the rich countries the factories are deserted of people, in the poor countries more and more people are performing mechanical, manual labor. And war is increasingly taking place in the poor countries.

The operative war images from the 1991 Gulf War—which didn’t show any people—were more than just propaganda, despite rigid censorship meant to hush up the 200,000 deaths of the war. They came from the spirit of a war utopia, which takes no account of people, which puts up with them only as approved, or perhaps even unapproved, victims. A military speaker in 1991 said, when asked about the victims on the Iraqi side: “We don’t do body counts.” This can be translated as: “We’re not the gravediggers. This dirty work has to be done by other people.” Taking it as well intentioned, it can also be interpreted to mean that the rich countries do not wish to gloat over enemy deaths and want to avoid victims on their own side. The hope rings out that from the rich countries’ booty, something might trickle down to the poor ones!

The operative images that gave the impression of clean warfare were certainly stronger than the counter-images of the dirty war—for instance, the images of the bunker in Baghdad in which hundreds of civilians were torn to pieces. The television viewer is meant to become transformed into a war technician by means of the aerial shots that are actually only meant for the eyes of war technicians, they are meant to empathize with the technology of war. But we still remain political beings whospeak with each other and criticize images, and can indeed differentiate between the first war—in which Kuwait was attacked and annexed by Iraq—and the second Iraq war.

In the second Iraq war in 2003, the images from the heads of projectiles were hardly shown at all. We also didn’t hear anything more about “intelligent weapons,” only about precision guided weapons. Because of non-disclosure, it is difficult to prove—although everything points to it—that there were no “intelligent weapons” in either the first or in the second Gulf War, that is, weapons that could recognize and hit a target on their own. That the idea of an “intelligent weapon” was at the very least not contradicted was more than the typical strategy of deceiving the enemy. It was about making the idea of seeing bombs so common that they only needed to be ordered, developed, and paid for without critical questions.

There are as few images that would not be directed at a human eye as there were “intelligent weapons.” A computer can indeed process images, but it needs no real images from which to determine the veracity or the falsity of what is shown. For the computer, the digital representation is enough. The axe of Roland Barthes’ woodcutter is also no purely reified instrumental reason; but a tool does not only speak to the substance, it also speaks to the human senses. We can, nonetheless, differ in degree between the object-linguistic images and the meta- linguistic ones, just as machine aesthetics can be distinguished from the aesthetics of commodities. If a program in a sequence of images only draws in what it is looking for—whether it is colored lines as markers in an aerial landscape or the baseboard in the hall of a research institute used to orient an autonomous robot— then we’re seeing a kind of disavowal of what is being marked. The lines proclaim that in this image, only what is marked can be seen. Like any disavowal, this also creates a strong counter-reaction.

Images of the World and the Inscription of War, 1988

Harun Farocki

16mm, col., b/w, !:!, 37, 75’

Courtesy of Harun Farocki GbR, Berlin

My interest in aerial images from the first Gulf War can be traced back to the work for my film Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1988). At core, it is about aerial shots of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, made in 1944 from US reconnaissance planes. These images were actually meant to survey nearby targets, and factories that produced synthetic fuel and rubber, but they also catch sight of the camp connected to them. Only in 1977 was it discovered that a group of detainees can be made out on its way to the gas chambers, another standing in line for registration. The commandant’s house can also be identified, the shooting wall, and even the slots in the roof of the gas chambers through which the Cyclon B was introduced. At the time, these images struck me as an appropriate means of representing the camp, because they maintained a certain distance from the victims. They seemed more appropriate than the images shot close up: the skeletons on the ramp, starving detainees in the barracks, piles of corpses being shoved away by bulldozers. Such images were symbolically doing violence to the victims, yet again, and even the best intentions still make use of them in this way. Over the aerial images of the camps, in which individuals are barely bigger than a dot, I wrote the commentary: “The photograph’s graininess provides them with some protection of their humanity.”

Today it is all too clear that these images, captured from a distance, did not help to spare the dead a further humiliation. There are rarely good reasons for looking at images of mutilated victims. It is part of the nature of the thing that the images of a terrible event that are taken from a distance also allude to the lack of distance, indeed even by presenting themselves as their opposites. It cannot be avoided that in the attempt to be philanthropic, barbarism occurs.

Inextinguishable Fire, 1969

Harun Farocki

16mm, b/w, !:!, 37, 25’

Courtesy of Harun Farocki Filmproduktion，Artlink Magazine

Already in 1969, in my film on napalm and Vietnam, Inextinguishable Fire, I didn’t want to be the one to produce a terrible image that could not then be contradicted. I wanted, at the very least, to make a symbolic advance effort, and so I gave a small introductory speech in which I cited the report of a Vietnamese man who had been hit by a napalm bomb. At the end, I put out a cigarette on the back of my wrist: “A cigarette burns with 400 degrees, napalm with 3,000.” My act was about the here and now. Vietnam was far away and the pointed contact with the heat was meant to bring it closer. The small act was meant to disturb the image, was directed against the cinematographic apparatus, and indeed confirmed, as an unedited sequence, the testimonial power of the film image.

In a remote archive in Florida, we ran across a promotional film from Texas Instruments: B-52 bombers in slow motion, bombs falling from their chutes—the opposite of an operative image—an image that was meant to instill fear and entertain, preferably both; accompanied by the Valkyries’ music, which alludes to Coppola and only unwittingly to Nazi war newsreels; a commercial making the economic argument that it is cheaper to drop computer-guided bombs, and cheaper still to use laser guided precision missiles. A productive misreading, saying that very few bombs have any slump in sales that has to be compensated for. If there is a relation between production and destruction, it is also true that it is not so much hardware that needs to be disposed of, as it is the controlling and targeting. But selling more control depends precisely on differentiating between friend and foe. The economy, at least that of the weapons manufacturer, demands war for humanitarian aims.

REFERENCES

[1] Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passion of War, New York, 1997

About the artist

Harun Farocki

January 9, 1944 born in Nový Jicin (Neutitschein), at that time Sudetengau, today Czech Republic. 

1966 – 1968 Admission to the just opened Berlin Film Academy, DFFB. 

1966 Marriage with Ursula Lefkes. 

1968 Birth of the daughters Annabel Lee and Larissa Lu. 

1974 –1984 Author and editor of the magazine Filmkritik, Munich. 

1998 – 1999 Speaking about Godard / Von Godard sprechen, New York / Berlin. (Together with Kaja Silverman). 

1993– 1999 Visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. 

2001 Marriage with Antje Ehmann.

Since 1966 more than 100 productions for Television or Cinema: Children's TV, Documentary Films, Essay Films, Story Films.

Since 1996 various solo- and group exhibitions in Museums and Galleries. 

2007 with Deep Play participation at documenta 12.

Since 2004 Visiting Professor, 2006 - 2011 full Professorship at the Academy of Art, Vienna. 

2011 – 2014 longterm project Labour in a Single Shot, together with Antje Ehmann. 

July 30, 2014 died near Berlin.

昊美术馆（上海） 

HOW ART MUSEUM (SHANGHAI)

昊美术馆（上海），图片©昊美术馆

昊美术馆（上海）是具备当代艺术收藏、陈列、研究和教育功能的全新文化机构，坐落于上海浦东，共有三层展览和活动空间，总面积约7000平方米，于2017年9月正式对外开放。昊美术馆首创“夜间美术馆”的运营模式，常规对外开放时间为周二至周五下午1点至夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间为上午10点至夜间10点。此举能让更多观众在工作之余前来美术馆观展，昊美术馆也举办“国际策展人驻留项目”、“户外电影节”、“雕塑公园”等国际交流项目和户外活动，以此建立全新的艺术综合体和浦东新地标。

昊美术馆（温州） 

HOW ART MUSEUM (WENZHOU)

昊美术馆（温州），图片©昊美术馆

昊美术馆（温州）延续昊美术馆（上海）的“夜间美术馆”运营模式，是浙江省首家"夜间美术馆"，常规对外开放时间为下午1点到夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间将向前延长为上午10点至夜间10点。昊美术馆（温州）将持续为公众呈现丰富的公共教育及户外艺术项目，引领融合艺术、设计、科技的全新生活方式。

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