01/07
Kodwo Eshun
e-flux journal #59 Ñ november 2014 Ê Kodwo Eshun
A Question They Never Stop Asking
A Question They
Never Stop
Asking
12.08.14 / 15:23:51 EST
Watching the artificial waves breaking on the
mechanical shore in Images of the World and the
Inscription of War (1989) prompted a question:
Why did I, together with Anjalika Sagar, under the
name of The Otolith Group, have to travel to
Cinema Empire Sofil in Achrafieh, Beirut, in order
to see nine Farocki films for the first time?1 To
answer such a question in March 2006 meant
confronting the implications of FarockiÕs absence
from BritainÕs film culture. The experience of
being enlightened Ð and no other word can
convey the impact of watching the ways in which
The Creators of Shopping Worlds (2001) studies
architects as they discuss images that track the
eye movements of shoppers Ð provoked a
corresponding revelation of the inconsequence
of so much artistic culture within the UK. So
many critically lauded moving images, I began to
realize, actually functioned to shield spectators
from having to come to terms with the ways in
which moving images operated as interlocking
components of the military, entertainment,
sports, finance, and corporate complex within
Europe, America, and beyond. These moving
images, it seemed to me, should be challenged, if
not rejected outright, for their inabilityto produce
the kind of perceptual training provided by works
such as War at a Distance (2003) or Videograms
of a Revolution (1992). Inside that cinema in
Achrafieh, the dynamic tension inside and
between images was playing itself out. The
mystifying force of images that were mobilizing
outside Cinema Empire Sofil, outside of Beirut,
beyond the edges of Lebanon, which would
emerge in the July War, were revealed by the
clarifying powers of montage inside that cinema
in Beirut.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThose three evenings spent watching
Farocki films with Anjalika Sagar and the writer
Emily Dische-Becker acted as a kind of extended
primal scene. They precipitated a process of
disidentification from a tacit consensus within
the UK. They incubated a desire to position The
Otolith Group against the values championed by
people that Farocki once characterized as Òthose
polite British assholes.Ó To align yourself with his
works did not mean imitating his artistic
methods. It meant affiliating yourself with all
those that considered themselves to be friends
of Farocki, whoever they might be, wherever they
might live. These friendships were nurtured in an
almost clandestine fashion until 2009, when
FarockiÕs London allies broke cover to mount
three exhibitions intended to win contemporary
generations over to the joys of instrumentalism
and didacticism.2 Perhaps many others were
drawing the same conclusions. Six years on, I can
discern Farockian thinking in the demonstrative,
detailed, comparative projects that confront the
multi-scalar histories of the present.3 And yet
03/07
none of these projects have travelled to the UK.
Which suggests that Farockian projects continue
to affront deeply held presuppositions about the
nature and purpose of moving images. What,
then, is the nature of this affront, and how can it
be characterized? In FarockiÕs works, aesthetic
thinking takes on a very specific form, which
Nicole Brenez describes as an
The outcome of this encounter between an
Òexisting image and a figurative projectÓ tends
towards the instructional, the instrumental, the
demonstrative, the didactic, the comparative,
and the mimetic. These qualities were, and are,
bad objects within a moving-image culture that
still aspires towards cinema as an expanded
form of painting, diary, dream, fantasy, sculpture.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo take FarockiÕs preference for the
instructional seriously is to embark, joyously,
upon an internal exile from much of what
understands itself as experimental culture. And
now that Farocki is gone, it becomes clear to me
that his films, videos, television programs,
essays, texts, exhibitions, and interviews provide
nothing less than an alternative value system
that enables you to encounter the mutation of
images in the present. This face-to-face
encounter with the present entails a practice of
psychic secession from much of what is
recognized as art through metabolizing FarockiÕs
methods, attitudes, stances, positions,
sensibilities, sensations, intensities,
preferences, and negations. This process cannot
be illustrated; it must be lived. Instead, the
metamorphosis undergone by FarockiÕs ideas
can be glimpsed by studying certain cinematic
gestures in his films. These gestures appear as
involuntary memories, unbidden and uninvited.
They are expressions orphaned from narratives
and disarticulated from their montage. Memory
condenses and compresses a Farocki film into a
single scene that takes on a mimetic character.
As I write these words, I catch myself emulating
a characterÕs expression with my hands,
mouthing her words. A characterÕs gestures take
momentary control of my hands and move them
into a position that I then recall. They arrange my
mouth in a certain shape. Goethe Institute,
London, February 19, 2009. I am the front end of
an image of a ponytailed, horse-faced white
American male demonstrator of an animation
therapy platform in Serious Games III: Immersion
(2009), talking to an unseen audience, running
12.08.14 / 15:23:51 EST
e-flux journal #59 Ñ november 2014 Ê Kodwo Eshun
A Question They Never Stop Asking
intensive and meditated form of encounter
É a face-to-face encounter between an
existing image and a figurative project
dedicated to observing it Ð in other words,
a study of the image by means of the image
itself.4
through the menu of audio options for rocket
shells, tilting his head, waiting for the delayed
audio of a detonation, obediently lifting the right
side of his mouth as it finally, satisfyingly
explodes on impact. In my mindÕs eye, I see
FarockiÕs face, that peculiar complexion that
eluded racial identification, in Interface (1996). I
see him imitating the right-hand-on-right-hip of
a Greek statue, the video camera framing his
standing position in a perspective whose
awkwardness recalls the cramped, cornered
perspective of Gustav Leonhardt seated at his
harpsichord in The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena
Bach (1968).
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMarch 2008. I watch Zurich bystanders
during a grey afternoon waiting for their bus,
ignoring the giant screen of Transmission (2007)
that depicts people placing their hands in the
devils footprint. 2009. November. The red room at
Tate Modern. An incongruous, uncredited Jaco
Pastorius-esque fretless bass that plays faintly,
intermittently, insistently as the images
assemble one abstract diagram after another in
As You See (1986). Hamburger Banhhof, 2014.
August. In Serious Games I: Watson is Down
(2010), a sullen expression of an American
soldier, facing his monitor at frame left, his
shoulders slumped as he sits back in his chair
upon hearing a soldier announce unexpectedly,
inexpressively to the other soldiers practicing
steering tanks: ÒWatson is down.Ó Raven Row.
November 2009. Ground floor.I watch crowds
watching Marilyn Monroe scowl at her loutish
boyfriend when he says to her, ÒYouÕll spread,Ó as
the couple, dressed in denim shirts, sleeves
rolled, and jeans, walks away, the camera
following them, picking them out from the
dispersed crowd of factory walkers in Workers
Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades (2006).
September 2014. Parallel II (2014). In my laptop
screen, on my cheap IKEA table, an animated
man is standing; in an uncouth gesture, he
reaches down to adjust the position of his
testicles in the crotch of his baggy khaki
trousers. From an unseen monitor in an
exhibition space that I fail to recognize, I hear
Cynthia BeateÕs serene voice analyzing missiles
travelling in opposing directions in the garish
promotional video integrated into Eye/Machine
(2000). Lichtenberg. December 2008. Hearing the
massed monolith march of a flat drum, a single
repeating guitar, a violin bowing and droning,
repeating and building, implacably. Faust and
Tony Conrad playing on the soundtrack for The
Taste of Life (1979). Lichtenberg. January 2009.
The Words of The Chairman (1967) plays on
Farocki and EhmannÕs television set. A paper
plane splashes the black-and-white blood of
tomato soup on a face drawn on a paper bag that
lurches back as if shot by a bullet fired by
12.08.14 / 15:23:51 EST
05/07
onwards.7 It seemed to speak about film using
the same techniques as film itself. It looks
forward to the cross-section epic of A Day in the
Life of A Consumer (1993) or the Òelementary
motif analysisÓ of The Expression of Hands
(1997). It is a summa logica of Farockian soft
montage.
Pier Paolo Pasolini writing his unfinished novel Petrolio (Oil).
e-flux journal #59 Ñ november 2014 Ê Kodwo Eshun
A Question They Never Stop Asking
montage.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWithin this itinerary of medial-memory
implants can be glimpsed moments from other
works that were neither directed nor written by
Farocki but which he admired and
recommended, which he learnt from and thought
with. This kind of text or film or record triggered a
process from which a concept might emerge that
would in turn become operative as a method. To
look at any of these works is to go under the hood
of FarockiÕs thinking in order to approach the
operating system whose commitments he never
ceased to upgrade. 2009. June. I pull the heavy
volume Pier Paolo Pasolini: corpi e luoghi (1981),
clad in its black slipcase, from the lowest shelf in
Farocki and EhmannÕs front room. I sit on the
sofa and open its pages at random. Farocki
appears, gently takes the tome from my hands,
and begins to point to a sequence of eight
images in the book, arranged in two columns of
four.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊPage 129. A man holds a mirror to his
tongue in Pigsty (1969). A student bites his
thumb in Notes towards an African Oresteia
(1970). A woman gnaws her nail in Theorem
(1968). A man covers his mouth with all his
fingers in a gesture of apology. Pigsty. A man
presses his finger against his lip in Accatone
(1961). A monk presses his finger to his mouth in
an impudent gesture of silence in Hawks and
Sparrows (1966). A man covers his mouth in
surprise in The Decameron (1971). Another man
instructs an offscreen presence to be silent in
The Decameron. Page 155. Two images at top left.
One depicts a man with badly misshapen teeth
from The Gospel According to Saint Mathew
(1964). The second is a man with decayed front
teeth from La Ricotta (1963).The third fills the
lower third of the page. A man thumbs back the
upper lip of a young woman to reveal her single
decaying upper tooth in Salo (1975).5 These stills
represent a fraction of the 1,800 frame stills
which constitute the Pasolini Antropologo of Pier
Paolo Pasolini: corpi e luoghi.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn their catalogue essay for their ÒCinema
like never beforeÓ exhibition, Farocki and
Ehmann described the Pasolini Antropologo as
Òcontaining photograms É organized according
to themeÓ Ð quoting visual motifs that recur
throughout PasoliniÕs films, such as Òunburied
bodiesÓ and Òcannibalism, victimÕs remains.Ó
They conclude that Pier Paolo Pasolini: corpi e
luoghi relies on Òthe successively juxtaposed
images to form relations, on the images to
comment on images.Ó6 In other words, it studies
the image by means of the image itself. The
immanent logic of the Pasolini Antropologo
seemed to have overcome the Òpeculiar
unquotabilityÓ of writing on film that faced film
theorists like Raymond Bellour from the 1970s
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt prompts many questions. What happens
when you place images side by side? Face to
face? When you put them to work?What
capacities for comparison or commentary
emerge in the movement from one image to
another and back again? If images comment on
images, then what kind of commentary do they
produce? What are they saying? How do they
explain themselves? What are they arguing
about? What do they demonstrate? What do they
imitate? When do they copy each other? Who do
they inhabit? What do they emulate? Who do they
rival? Where are they going? What do they
possess? Who do they possess?8
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊImages reveal images to be an
industrialization of thought that needs to be
analyzed on its own terms, which are not human.
From 1967 onwards, Farocki pioneered the
historical unfolding of images as an Òexternal
objectification of thought.Ó9 He invents face-toface encounters between existing images and
figurative projects dedicated to their
observation. And now it is March 25, 2006. 10
p.m. I walk up the street, away from Cinema
Empire Sofil. I can see FarockiÕs lean silhouette
ahead. A cigarette between his fingers, on the
way towards his lips. He hadnÕt stayed to watch
his films. He has seen them all before. Four
months later, the July War begins between the
Israeli Defense Force and Hezbollah forces. The
mystifying powers of images and the clarifying
powers of montage continually reverse into each
other. FarockiÕs images never stop working. What
is an image capable of? It is a question they
never stop asking.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×
e-flux journal #59 Ñ november 2014 Ê Kodwo Eshun
A Question They Never Stop Asking
06/07
All images are copyright of Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann.
12.08.14 / 15:23:51 EST
Kodwo Eshun was born and lives and works in London.
He studied English Literature at University College,
Oxford University, and teaches Aural and Visual
Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.ÊHis
published work includes critical analysis, catalogue
essays, and magazine articles. His art projects include
film and video compositions that coalesce around the
notions of the audiovisual archive and archaeologies
of futurity. He regularly presents papers at
international conferences and symposia and has
chaired discussions and moderated dialogues and
debates. Author ofÊ More Brilliant than the Sun:
Adventures in Sonic Fiction (Quartet, 1998), he is a
cofounder of the artistsÕ collective The Otolith Group
and a regular contributor to the magazinesÊFrieze, The
Wire, and Sight & Sound.
12.08.14 / 15:23:51 EST
07/07
PasoliniÕs films, although
PasoliniÕs films actually number
twenty-two. 6
Harun Farocki and Antje
Ehmann, ÒKino wie noch nie,Ó
inÊKino wie noch nie, eds. Antje
Ehmann and Harun Farocki
(Cologne: Generali Foundation
and Verlag der Buchhandlung
Walter Koenig, 2006), 17. Curated
by Harun Farocki and Antje
Ehmann at Generali Foundation
from January 20 to April 23,
2006, the exhibition travelled to
Akademie der Kunst in Berlin in
May 2007. John Akomfrah,
Anjalika Sagar, and I visited
ÒKino wie noch nieÓ with Farocki
and Ehmann in May 26, 2007.
The title ÒKino wie noch nieÓ is
an homage to Helmuth CostardÕs
masterpieceÊFussball wie noch
nie (1970), in which six cameras
follow George Best throughout a
Manchester United match. 7
Raymond Bellour, ÒThe
Unattainable TextÓ (1975), in
Kino wie noch nie, eds. Antje
Ehmann and Harun Farocki, 118.
8
So exhaustive indeed that I have
never reached the conclusion of
Pier Paolo Pasolini: corpi e luoghi
since acquiring a copy at Donlon
Books when it was still at
Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal
Green, in 2010. It cost £70,
which made it the most
expensive book I had ever
bought, at that time. To this day,
I have yet to see the sequences
on Òunburied bodiesÓ and
Òcannibalism, victimÕs remainsÓ
referred to by Ehmann and
Farocki in 2007. 9
Ray Brassier,ÊNihil Unbound:
Enlightenment and Extinction
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), 238.
e-flux journal #59 Ñ november 2014 Ê Kodwo Eshun
A Question They Never Stop Asking
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1
ÒTravelling is Impossible: Harun,
Kodwo, and I,Ó films by Harun
Farocki and the Black Audio Film
Collective, presented by Kodwo
Eshun. Organized by the
Lebanese Association for the
Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan at
Cinema Empire Sofil, Beirut,
March 23Ð26, 2006. Preoccupied
as I was with presenting three
films by Black Audio Film
Collective, I was unprepared for
the impact of watching double
and triple bills of Farocki films
over two consecutive nights
followed by a quadruple bill over
6 hours and 30 minutes. 2 These
exhibitions were Harun Farocki,
ÒThree Early Films,ÓÊcurated by
Bart van der Heide, Antje
Ehmann, and myself at Cubitt
Gallery from January 17 to
February 22, 2009; Harun
Farocki, ÒAgainst What? Against
Whom?,Ó curated by Alex
Sainsbury at Raven Row from
November 2009 to February 7,
2010; and Harun Farocki, Ò22
Films 1968Ð2009,Ó curated by
Stuart Comer, Antje Ehmann,
and The Otolith Group at Tate
Modern from November 13 to
December 6, 2009. Two weeks
into Ò22 Films,Ó Comer showed
me an email he received from a
well-known structuralist
filmmaker dismissing FarockiÕs
films as mere ÒtelevisionÓ and
cautioning him to Òremember
who his friends wereÓ and
Òwhich side he was on.Ó 3
I discern Farockian thinking in
projects and exhibitions such as
ÒAnthropocene Observatory Ð
The Dark Abyss of TimeÓ by
Armin Linke, John Palmesino,
and Ann-SofiÊRšnnskogÊand
Anselm Franke, 2013Ðongoing at
Haus der Kulturen der Welt in
Berlin; ÒTravelling
CommuniquŽÓÊat the Museum of
Yugoslav History, Belgrade,
conceived and curated by Armin
Linke, Doreen Mende, and Milica
Tomic, 2014; ÒForensis: The
Architecture of Public TruthÓ at
Haus der Kulturen der Welt,
curated by Anselm Franke and
Eyal Weizman, 2014; Ò1979: A
Monument to Radical InstantsÓ
at La Virreina, Barcelona,
curated by Carles Guerra, 2011;
and ÒThe Potosi PrincipleÓ at
Reina Sofia, Madrid, curated by
Alice Creischer and Andreas
Siekmann, 2010. 4
Nicole Brenez, ÒHarun Farocki
and the Romantic Genesis of the
Principle of Visual Critique,Ó
inÊHarun Farocki: Against What?
Against Whom?, eds. Antje
Ehmann and Kodwo Eshun
(London: Raven Row, 2009), 128.
5
Pier Paolo Pasolini: corpi e
luoghi, a cura di Michele Mancini
e Giuseppe Perrela (Theorema
edizioni, 1981). Mancini and
Perrela worked with Laura Betti
for three years to complete the
text, and founded their own
publishing imprint, Theorema
edizione, in order to publish
what the editors described as an
Òantropologiche di corpi e di
luoghiÓ in the form of an
Òarchiviazione di set
cinematografici.Ó Ehmann and
Farocki write that the frames are
extracted from all twenty-one of