Comparison Via a Third

Film-maker, artist and theorist, Harun Farocki, who died last summer, was one of the major figures of documentary film.

His work explores subjects such as war, the system of labour and production, surveillance technologies, and the role of the mass media in contemporary society. Through specific editing methods, he subverts the conventional forms of documentary film.

In the 1990s, Harun Farocki developed work involving video installations, often taking the form of multiple screen projections. The video installation process enabled him to further develop his incisive investigation of the image and to work out a spatial arrangement offering the viewer another form of relation to filmic temporality. In the two-channel video installation Comparison via a Third, 2007, Harun Farocki questions the processes of the automation and rationalisation of work through the production of bricks in traditional and industrialised societies. Images shot in factories in Africa and India are juxtaposed with images of European factories. The gradual linear presentation of ever more perfected manufacturing procedures are followed by a succession of images which interrupts this reading. The montage made up of repetitions uses the image to comment on the previous image and through this procedure imposes on spectators an exercise of reflection which prompts them to draw their own conclusions. Comparison via a Third is thus open to relations of infinite, unfixed interpretations.

The installation is part of the project “The Screen: Between Here and Elsewhere”, that presents films and videos by international artists of different generations who are exploring political and social subjects while developing an ongoing investigation of the image.

until March 15, 2015
Harun Farocki
Comparison Via a Third
curated by Anne-Sophie Dinant
CAPC
musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux
7 rue Ferrère, Bordeaux