038

How to Open Your Eyes

Georges Didi-Huberman
o Ndnot Karun'ilfoc:kl'WprDIMllOll
0 10D ~ ~ ~ FiJl" HMun FMOClIl FIIm!:Irodv.t.oon
o /ml!ff.;lce.1Wvn FarOl;1.l ~ l I a n
O w0 c ~ ~ HarunF..odl filrnproduI,llOn
Certainly, there exists no image that does not simul t aneously Implicat e gazes,
gestures and t hought s. Depending on the situation, the gazes may be blind or
piercing, the gestures bruta l or delicate, the t hought s inept or sublime. But there
ISno such thing as an image t hat is pure vision, absol ute t hought or simple
manipulation. It is espec ially absurd to t ry to disquali fy certain Images on the
grounds that they have supposedly been 'manipulated'. All images of the world
are the result of a manipulation, of a concerted effort In which the hand of man
intervenes - even if it i s a mechan ical device. Only theologi ans dream of images
\Ioll ictl were not made by the hand of man (the acheiropoietic images from the
Byzantine tradition, Mei ster Eckhardt' s ymagine denudari etc.j . The Question is
rather how to ascertain, each and every t ime - In each image - what exactly the
hand has done, In which way and to which purpose the manipulation took place.
We use our hands for better or for worse, we st rike or stroke, build or break, give
or take. We should , in front of each image. ask ourselves t he quest ion of how it
gazes (at us), how It thinks (us) and how it touc hes (us) at the same t ime.
Aphotograph, certainly taken by one of t ns fri ends. shows Harun Farocki In spring
1981 in front of the Arsenal film the atre In West-Berlin. which was runnmg a
programme of films organised by Filmkritlk. the journal he edi ted as part of a
ccnecuve. Sitting on a gate. the st em-Iacec filmmaker raises t ns fist towards
us spectators - like a demonstrator. albeit a rather strange one: a solitary
cenonstratcr.'

Liftingone's t hought to the level of anger (the anger provoked by all the violence
III the world. this Violence to which we refuse to be condemned). liftIng one's
anger to the level of a task (the task of denounci ng t his violence wit h as much
calm and intelligence as poss ible).

Harun Farocki was part of the first graduate class of the Deuts che Film- und
remsenakaoemie in Berlin In 1966. He was expelled from t he film school as early
as 1969 because of his polit ical act ivism along with his companions Hen rnut
Bitomsky, Wolfgang Petersen. Gunther Peter Stras chek and Horger Meins. His
early student films, as Tilman Baumgart el has so apt ly put It. proceeded from a
'guerrilla' thinking which was fuell ed by political anger and borrowed it s formal
devices from Slt uattnnl sm, the French New Wave and Direct ctneme.s Farockl
was making very harsh judgments on the most prominent directors of - vcung
German Cinema" of that time - Wim Wenders. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Volker
Schlondorff - whom he accused, and would conti nue to be accusing for a long
time, of confor ming to the Idea everybody had of what a film was supposed to
1 I li m/mhtNnganel \10m GIIef,J/<Illrnl rom
fs$ll)'t;/m Hawn Wenmotlagrapll,e
eee aooa II 2Q3.
2 seeIbid, liP 25 103. <too
llllumgilrtel, -B,ldmsdeS Kunstle1'5 a1s
M<t M. Mul\urrevGluuon, Sallatiornsmus und
Focusl hec,Hlinden Sludentenfilmen I'C"
Kerun Fa,oekl o, InRoll endUlrich
Kroest leds.), O!J( );,germil der' B'kJem.
OleFiimevIm He""n Konslanl 1998.
1lJl 155 177. SeealsoKleus Kre'n1e>er,
'Pap;e, sceee Slem Fa'ock,sfMIt!
'tlId" 1111. 27-45,
lhIfo<1......tely!lle phOUI wrt!It he ' a1se<1 fisl
IS lllesumed lost !EcWol"SJlOtel.
0 39
3 " Lall..BI Ul lufltllf li'
in Intk , no. 55j1005, p 62
"RlSQue<sa .,e Imageli de
HQlger M'lfls" l l998), In ChrlsMlI
ted.), pours,,,,", COU,be'vOle
2002, p. 29. r Rllik\IIChos LIte. ImateSot
HoIVr Ml!",,' . in; H.lnJI'I Nadldllld/
/lIlpI'1llI. eel.bJ

200 1. p. 288).
I IboG pp. '1 22 (p 2101
1 HalWlS l lldller hoJ'i<llilfllYll <!\:arun'
(l!J98), III rrak, no. 13/7002,p. n
7 Tn.odor WAdo,oo, .lJI'Iev. nt' re.li>le
1'.f8caue, ' [19MJ.ioNOles surla
1,lIer,tW,., Palls 1984 {eu. 2009l, p. 261
{Il\todIDf W 4domo 'Tile Cu'Hl'Il' Realist On
Sie&lrled Mf;lCa_ , 10 Gel.......Cnllque.
r-o.54/ 19911
040
be ". notably in their edl tmg or by their habit of resorting to the ceoomseo forms
of. for Instance. the snct-coumersnot."
In 1967, Holger Mems had been the cameraman on Farocki's film Die Worte
des vomueraen (The Words of the c naum anj. who in t urn noted tha t 'Holger
Melns' work at the edit ing table consisted of examining the shot s so as to form
hi s own j udgement "." Shortly afterwards, Hotger Meins disappeared into the
underground, was arrested on 1 June 1972 togeth er with Andreas Baader and
Jan-Carl Raspe. was convicted of terrori sm, and died on 9 November 1974 in
Wittlich prison on t he 58'" day of his third hunger strike, which he had begun in
order t o protest against the condit ions of hi s impri sonment, Farccki. like everyone
else, was to discover the photograph of his dead body in the press - the image
of an emaciat ed body, Inci sed from the autopsy and sutured for whatever 'good
ouenc occasion' present s it self. An image Itself messed, di.... ided and dividing
Farocki's gaze: between Its st at us as a horrific "police trophy" - a state image
which was deliberate ly wrrhout durat ion and wt uc h, according to Farocki. seemed
to say: ' look, we dIdn' t kill him, he did it himself, and it was outsioe cc r power to
prevent It - and as a 'figure of Passion mscnoec' nonetheless in the image as
ti me endured, t he time suffered by this poor body,$
lifting, therefore, one's thought of the image to the anger provoked by t ime
endured, the t ime suffered by human beings In order to det ermine their own
history,
So one had to take a st ance. To Intervene. Some of the photographs from
that t ime show Harun Farocki With placards or megapho nes In oubuc spaces.
All t he whi le he was paying clo se attention to the films of Jean-Marie St raub
and Daniele Hulll et and Jean-luc Godard. In 1976 he staged two plays by
Heiner MOller, The BaWe and Tractor. together wit h Hanns zrscmer . - Workmg
with Harun". l ischler later .... rote. "Is both a trying and stimulating endeavour.
He obst inately, and seemi ngly without nesuanc n. maint ains the primacy of the
profound Impr ession over Immediate success , A pati ent msrstence on duratio n,
an anu-mhtttst persoecuve and a materi alist Impul se deter mine the ethi c and the
aesthetic of tns work , There are beauti ful moment s where t he flow of his t hought s
meovertenuv stops because somet hing new, somet hing strange, the uncanny
part of that which is familiar, has sudde nly cross ed his path. We then witness
him wondering aloud, and this is when the interlocutor we always dreamed 01
re....ears himself. -. These words remi nd me of what Adorno said somewhere about
Siegfried Kracauer, uus ' CUri OUS reali st' : "He thinks Wit h an eye that ISastoni shed
almost to helplessness but then suddenly flashes into illuminat ion: '

Taking a stance in t he publ ic realm - even if it means intervening on one's own

bodyand suffering (or some time. Such is the strategic pivot which, in 1969, the
film Nicht /6schbares Feuer (Inext inguishable Fire) represent s in Farockrs ent ire
oeuvre, A film for which t he artist still claims full responsibi li ty, showing it, for
instance, alongside his most recent insta llat ions in his exhibition at t he Jeu de
Paume in Paris a few weeks ago. t hat is thi rty years later.8 Inextinguishable Fire
is a lilm that combines action, passion and t hought. A film organised around a
surprising gesture: Ferockt's fist is no longer raised at us in a sign of rallying
(taking sides) . but rests on a tabl e for an unpredictable act ion (taking a stance).
But we should not be mistaken: this fist , resting on a tab le in a neutral and calm
room, Is not at all aquiescent in its anger provoked by t ime endured, It adopts
this positio n because it forms part of a well t hought-out choreography, a carefully
elaborated dialectic. Firstl y, Farocki reads out aloud a test imony deposited by
Thai Bihn Dan, born in 1949, t o the Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal in Stockholm:
' wnnewashing dishes on March 31" 1966, at 7 ern. I heard planes approaching,
I rushed to the underground shelter, but I was surprised by an exploding napalm
bomb very cl ose to me, The flames and unbearabl e heat engutreo me and I lost
consciousness. Napalm burned my face, both arms and both legs, My house was
burned as wel l. For 13 days I was unconscious, then 1awoke in a bed in an FLN
hospital."'
Secondly. Farocki, In the manner of the best philosophers, presents us with an
aporia for thought, or to be more precise, an aporia for the thought of the image.
He addresses us, looking straight into the camera: "Howcan we show you napalm
in action? Ana how can we show you the damage caused by napalm? If we show
you pictures of napalm damage, you'll close your eyes. First you'll close your eyes
to the pictures; then you'll close your eyes to the memory; then you'll close your
eyes to t he facts; t hen you'll close your eyes to the connections between them. If
we show you a person wit h napalm burns, we'H hurt your feelings. If we hurt your
feelings, you'll feel as i f we've tried out napalm on you, at your expense. We can
giveyou only a weak demonstrat ion of how napalm works.'?"

l et us halt t he speech and briefly reflect on the aporia, which is here arti culated
as three conjoi ned problems. An aest het ic problem: Farocki wants to address
his spectator's ' feeli ngs', and wants to respect t hem. A political problem: a few
seconds later, t he sensory tactfulness t urns into a linguistic punch as Farocki
brutally Questions that same spectator's 'responsibility'. 'If viewers '. he says,
'want no responsibilit y for napalm's effects, what responsib ility will they take
for the explanations of its use?, l1 (A reasoni ng which, incidentally, i s inspired
by Bertolt Brecht), So you don' t want responsibility? Then it is also a problem
of knowledge [connaissanceJ, of mtskoowreoge [meconnaissanceJ, and of
B SeChantat Pont!>"aM ted.), HfjRG.
Haron Fi md l/Rodruq Gtallam.
Palls 2009. p 200
9 Harun h rod;i. -fe u tne,t illgulble" (1969) .
ill BIQrnlmger(ed.) 2002. p. 15.
, 0 11)10 . pp. 15-16
11 Ibid.. P 16
041
U lbod,p 16
13see OI(li.Hubermen, -r imegt briikl-
(2004),ln l.3urt IlIZifnmer"llln" (t d) ,
.....rO\lfde$uaw....
GecJtXes fJIdI.lfI.obetmatI. Nanl6 2006,
Illl. 1152.
04.
acknowledgeme nt (reconnaissance], But how to invest someone with knowl edge
who refuses to know? How to open your eyes? How to disar m their def ences, their
prot ect ions, thei r stereotypes, their ill will. their ost rich polit ics? It is with t his
quest ion constant ly in mind that Farock! considers the probl em of his enti re film,
It is with t his question in mind that his gaze returns t o the camera lens, and t his
is when he star ts to take act ion.
Thirdly, t hen, as can be read in the scenario of Inextinguishable Fire: - DOl l YINto
Farockrs left hand resting on the t able, Wit h hISright hand he reaches crt-sc reen
for a burning cigarette and then presses it into the back of his left arm, midway
between the wrist and elbow (3,5 seconds), Off-screen narrator: A cigarette bums
at 400 degrees. Napalm bums at 3,000 degrees."u

l et us halt the Image and not forget that this SImple crymg point - just as
one refers to t he 'crying trut h - ttus poi nt of pain, of burnt skin, recalls other
images that emerged at the t ime: t he Vietnamese who immolated themselves
and more recent ly still, Jan Paracn burning on Wenceslas Square in Prague on
16 January 1969. Palach died from his terrible burns a mere three days later,
I recent ly listened again to the only radio inter view he managed to give, in a
broken VOice, from his hospital bed, What is deepl y moving Is t hat. as an example
of civil freedom, In the name of which he has just suffered the worst ordeal.
he spontaneously cites the freedom of information. He basically says that it is
preferable to immolate oneself than to live deprived of the world, cut off trom the
necessary ' images of the world'. He addresses the world in these terms: 'Can't
you see that we're burning?', referring to the hell of totali tarianism, and turmng
t his very address into an image to be transmttted.w It was to commemorate t he
anni versary of his death that large demonstr ati ons were organised in Prague 20
years later; and It was for trying to lay a wreath on hi s grave that vacrav Havel
was arrested on 16 February 1989 and subsequentl y sent enced to nine months'
imprisonment. A few months before the dictatorship collapsed.
lifting one's thought to anger. lifting one's anger to t he point of burning oneself.
In order to better. to cal mly denounce t he violence of the world.

German and French use a similar expression - seine Hand ins Feuer legen;
mettre sa main au tev. lit erally 'putting one's hand in t he fire' - to SIgnify a moral
or political engagement, one' s responsibility when faced wit h trut hful content, As
though it had become necessary, in our cur rent historic conditions. to truly dare
'to put (Iegen) one's hand in the fire' in order to better underst and, to better read
(/esen) this world from which we are suff ering - which we must state, repeat.
claim to be suffering from - yet which we ref use t o suf fer (lei den).
Inextinguishable Fire had far fewer spect ators in 1969 than in 2009, in the
beautiful white exhibi tion spaces at the Jeu de Paume. Hi stor ic and poli tical
places - t he Jeu de Peume, wit h it s revolutionary past. provides a near-perfect
example for this - qui te often turn into places of cul t ural consumpt ion. Why not
- provided one remains attentive to an obvious misunderstanding: it is easier
to watch Inextinguishable Fire today. in t he context of a pacified history of art.
than in the context of the burning political history in which this film effectively
wanted to intervene, In the appeasement of the whit e cube, you are therefore
less likely to think of the barbanc acts committed in Vietnam (occasrcmog cause)
than of the arti stic actions (formal causes) which were notoriously fertil e during
the 19505, 60s and 70s ; those years of ' performances' for which the apt ly t it led
American exhibition Out of Actions attempted to provide a historic snapshot. U
l uckily, Farocki was not part of that picture. But what would an art r nstcnen
spontaneously thi nk of when confronted with InextmgUl shable Firt!? He would
certainly thi nk of the Viennese Actionists on the one hand and of Chris Burden's
famous Shoot on t he other. But this would merely obscure the very simple - yet
very dialect ical - lesson of this film.
So let us compare. When, in 1971, Chris Burden had himself shot in the arm
witha rifle, he remained, at least to my knowledge, quiet thr oughout tusgesture.
A famous photograph shows him st anding upright but dazed f rom t he shock,
with two holes in hi s arm. from which flows a tr ickle of mooo. " Hi s ' act ion'
was only ever discussed in reference to subsequent or preceding 'art works' ,
for Instance. Niki de Saint Pnane's Tirs or Gina Pane's Corps pressenti.... Chri s
Burden himsel f later referred to the gun shot as a minimalis t scul pture (In t his
sense, hi s 'sculpture' Is the distant heir of the ' wall shot' by Marcel Duchamp
in 1942 for the cover of the First Papers of Surreali sm, the date of that work
itself implying a historical allusion, at a time when there was a lot of shoot ing in
Europe): "SUddenly, a guy pull s a t rigger and, In a fraction of a second. I'd made a
sculpture.'?" The cigarette burn on Haren Farocki's arm in 1969 is Qu ite different
from the wound on Chris Burden's arm in 1971. Burden's inj ury was conceived
as an artwork, and t his art work t akes place - and ends - when the bullet is
tired. It is therefore a means unto itself, an aesthetic means. Farockrs burn. on
the contrary. is merely a means at the beginning of a film t hat will last anot her
20 minutes (which is the ti me it effect ively t akes to unders tand the t errifying
economy of napalm in place t hroughout the world). Because his wound was an
U Paul Sch.mmel (ed I. Outo! AcIlOtl$. BetM!en
Perlol'l'llfnoe alld the Objecl, I !i4!J-1979.
loodOO/los Angeles 1998.
l ' SeelIMlmte Bemand Oorleat . fOro'"
satNale. VIolence, Mpeme e! ""ns
I'M de s anllfl.'S 1950 1960, P3I' S2004,
p, 304.
17Quoted In Ibid, llll. 375376. (Me Dery.
Escape \!t IQC' IY: 81 ina
01rneceflrufJ', NewYork 1996).
043
ulTI'Mllna$ nseesser. farock,
filmfQkllf, All,S!, Med,aIhl)Ofl$I' .... tnomas
Hit/WI rarocll: WOtIung on
rile Soghl"nas, Amsterdam 2004. pp, 17 IS
i t see Ge<l,ges Otddt..tlrrman, Quand res
IJN&eS p'l'tllletli po&!1QII l' OilII A I'h rsttHm.
I. "-'IS 2009
0 44
absolute means. Burden logically had no commentary to offer: t here was no need
of language Since it was the ri fle t hat had spoken (had shot l and it was the body
that was speaking {was bleeding}. Farocxrs burn. on the contrary, calls for an
apprai sal wit hin the language and, more so, a rrnnrrrsseuon or an experi mental
retauetsanon (hence the ooccsue of a ' nerotsauon of the art ist ' ): A cigarette
bums at 400 degrees. napalm burns at 3,000 degrees."

To compare - this is precisely what Harun Farocki had in mind with this setr-
infli ct ed burn. It seems to me that his gesture was not so much a ' met aphor',
as Thomas Etsaessers put s it , than a choreography of dialect ical comparison,
Or even a metonymy, if one cons iders this punctual wound as a Single pixel of
what Jan Palach had 10suffe r in his entire body. It was . in any case, a carefully
considered histor ic argument, which used real heat, at 400 or 3,000 degrees.
as its pIvotal point. The burning maocwas not an ultimate pomt or li s weakened
meteonor. but a relative point, a point of comparison: -wnen he's done speaking,
the author (this IS how, In 1995, farocki referred to himself in his msteueuco
SChmttstelle/lnterface, 1996) burns himself, although only on a single point of
skin. Even here, only a point of relation to t he actual world. -
Harun Farocki was born in 1944, in a t ime when the world at large was still
threatened by an unprecedented fury of politi cal and military violence. It is as
thou gh not only the ashes of t he bombed cit ies had landed directly on his cradle,
but also the t houghts written at the same ti me, though at the other end of t he
world, by a few exil ed Germans, among whom, from with in t heir own suffered
time (thei r dirty lives of exiles, their 'mutilated life'), t hought had been able to
ntt itsel f to the level of politic al anger - as though they had been offered him
for hi s entire life. I think of Bertolt Brecht. of course. and his ArbeltSjoumal. In
which nearly every single page reflects upon the question of the politics of the
Image.
u
But I al so think of the Dial e/mk de, Aufkfarung composed by Theodor
Adorno and Max Hcrkheimer dUring t hei r American exile. Those are Indeed t wo
words dear to farocki - Dlalektlk describmg most accurately tus own method of
working, of editing, and AufklBrung signifyi ng both t he ' fight" of enlightenment
and the most menacing 'reconnais sance' actwuy of planes. as in those wars
replet e With cameras , which the filmmaker has quest ioned in several 01his films,
among which Bi/der de, Welt und Inschrift des Krieges ( Images of the World
and the Inscr iptio n of War, 1988) or in Install ati ons such as Auge/Maschme
(Eye/Machine, 2000), The two aut hors of thi s famous work - writt en in 1944 -
certainly did not represent what Brecht appreci ated most during me stay in the
United States. For although Brecht discussed t heatre and cinema with Adorno,
nsteneo to Hanns Eisler' s records at home, took pleasure in Shocking everyone
by criticiSing Schonberg, and attended, among others in June and August 1942.
the seminar in exile of t he Frankfu rt lnstltute w, he compared Horkhelmer to
a "clown" and a "mill ionaire [who] can aff ord to buy himself a professorship
wherever he happens to be staying:
n
Still. Somel hing fundamental nevertheless
links all these great enu-rascrsts who paid dearly for the ir f reedom of thought . It is
precisely t hat which links t he Dialektik, this word that speaks of negation. of tr uth .
of history and Au(kMrung, t he light of enlightenment whose historic work of sel f-
reversal and of self-destructton they had all observed wit h t hei r own eyes, filled
with anguish - an inext inguishable burning of onesel f. It would thus seem even
more accurate to describe this somethin g as t he possibility of the worst to wtncn
our most precious values - the light of enlightenment . the ideal of communi ty. the
truth of words. t he accuracy of images - are constantly exposed,
All things kept In perspective. Harun Farocki could t hus be said to share with
Adorno and Hcrkhermer the fundamental Quest ioning t hat alms to underst and "t he
self-destruct ion of enli ghtenment " right up to "the power by whiCht he technology
is controll ed", as stat ed in the very first pages of Dialectic of Enllghtenmenr.
u
Wtrj does "the f Ull y enlightened earth radiatelsJ disaster UiumphanC?U Why is
It that "knowledge, which IS power. knows no limits. either in it s ensl avement of
creation Of in Its deference to worldly masters"?" These are recurring quest ions
III the work of many t hinkers, such as Aby Warburg and Sigmund Freud. Walter
Benjamin and Siegfr ied Gideon. Hannah Arendt and Gunt her Anders, but also
GIlles Deleuze or Michel Foucault . Guy Debord or Giorgio Agamben. Friedrich
Kittler or vuemFlusser. Jean Baudrill ard or Paul lIi rilio; t hey are common
questions. except t hat Farocki t ackles them f rom t he vant age poi nt of specific
and intensive observati on: eut hese phenomena of sett-oestrucuon today - today
admittedly as much as yesterd ay. yet today more tha n ever - involve a cert ain
work on images ,
Thus, when Adorno and Horkheimer note that "abst ract ion, the Inst rument
of enlightenment. st ands in the same relati onship to it s objects as fate,
whose concept it eradicates; as liqui dation [so t hat ] t he liberated finally
themselves become the ' herd' (Trupp), which Hegel ident ified as the outcome
of enngnteomenr'. Farockt would presumably add that today the treatment of
images in the social sphere in it s widest possible underst anding - from military
aviat ion to urban t raff ic management , from the penitent iary to the shopping mall
-ccmrnanos both thi s abst ract ion and t he liquidat ion of peoples int o ' herds'. The
astonishing mont age which, In Dialectic of Enlightenment . saw a chapter on the
'Culture Indust ry' (Ku/l urindustrie) foll owed by an explorat ion of t he foundations
of enu-sermttemw. i s t oday echoed by r arockrs obsessive quest ioning of their
\lery arti culat ion, whether In Images of the World and the Inscription of War or in
Aufschub (Respite, 2007).
M 8e<loIIllrtdI\, .Iou,"",de lrw.lil (1938
1955). Pans 1916, p. 265 (21 u.dI 19121.
p. 216(24 ~ 1942), p. 282(9 Ma, 19421
and p. 313(13Auc>Jsl1942).
.tI 1btcI., P 201 (Aug\ls1 19411 (()uoIe<I III
RK:Ml Wolin, flte ftJnM\Hl $C:IlOO/ RMsItt:d
iMla Ot/lefEssays 011 PoIifa I/IId SoctPry.
"""'" ""I
22M,). HO' kI1elllle<" It>(!T W Adorno, La
D<a1e(:1!que de liJ R.iIson. f r " g ~ s
/lMo$OptwqlltS il 9441 , Pans 1974 (ed .
1983), pp 15 ' lid 19 {Di.1lec1ll: of
( 1lI,/:hreMle ni. PMOSCjl !lll:alfragmell!s,
PaloAlto 2002)
2J Illld..p, 21,
24
11l
I
d
., p. 22,
U tee, pp, 30.31.
045
046
Z7 V>el or KlIlmpe<er was a theorist and
Illf\lI.. ned f(Khis 19451.>0010 In - lmj u,l
i The-laIlguageof 1Il8Ihlld RelCll ;
APhiloIol;Sl"S NOlebook. l oncon 20051-

In t he same way that certain philosophers want to maintain their thought at the
level of a cntical theory that deserves its name - weshould remember that Bertolt
Brecht and Walter Benjamin had a common project , a magazine called Krisis und
Kntik, and that Harun Farocki was an editor of Rlmkritik from 1974 to 1984 -
certain filmmakers have tr ied t o maintain t heir pract ice at the level of what could
be called a critical montage of images; a montage of thought accelerated to the
rhythm of anger in order to better, to cal mly denounce the violence of the world.

This is an arduous task and, to be precise, a dialectic al one. The cri tique of
enlightenment cannot dispense with the use of critical enlightenment. as
demonstrated. for instance, by thework ofTheodor Adorno over it s longcourse(one
could, on the other hand, call nmrnsts. or 'cynics' in the modern understanding of
the word, those who indulge in the laziness or ' luxury' of abandomngenhghtenment
altogether to those who use It for totalitarian purposes: t he fact is that you should
never surrender t he Slightest morsel of t he common good to the political enemy,
as Vict or no doubt knew when he ref used to surrender so much as 11
single word of the German language to Goebbets] . Simil arly, a cri tique of images
cannot dispense wi th the use. pract ice and product ion of critical Images. Images,
no matter how terri bl e the violence t hat instrumemauses them, are not ent irely
on the side of the enemy. From this point of view, Harun sarockt constr uct s other
images which, by countering enemy images, are destined to become part of t he
common good.

like Aby Warburg who, throughout his life. was obsessed with the dialect ic of
what he called the mons/ra and astra - a dialect ic which, according to him.
enshnned the ent ire ' t ragedy of culture ' - and like Theodor Adorno, who was
constantl y worried about the dialect ic of self-destruct ing reason, Harun Farocki is
relentlessly asking a terribl e questi on (t he same question. dare I say. which has
spurred my work ' forever", as one so inadequately says, and wtuch, In any case.
orcvees me with t he sensation of true recognition when facing the filmmaker's
montages), The quest ion is the foll owing; why, in which way, and how does the
product ion of images take part in the dest ruction of human beings?

First of all there are images fllat dispense with the very human beings they were
intended to represent: "Just as mechanical robots ini tially took workers in t he
factory as their model. shortly aft erwards surpass ing and displacing t hem, so t he
sensory devices are meant to replace the work of the human eye. Beginning with
my nrst work on t hi s topic (Eye/ Machine. 2001), I have called such images that
are not made to entert ain or t o inform, 'operative images'. Images that do not
tryto represent reality but are part of a technical operati on. But the 'dialectic
of enlightenment' is more devious st ill , si nce the development of sophistica ted
technology is likely to go hand in hand with, for Instance, the most brute! forms
of human indignity. Farock! notes in this respect that when "the Nazi s t ook the
first jet-orooeuec plane and remote-cont rolled weapons into t he air. when they
miniaturised the electronic camer a so that it could be built into the head of a
rocket. t here was more slave labour in Central Europe t han ever before. And it is
incredible to watch films from Peenernunde, the base of the V2 and ot her rockets:
the high-powered weapons being rolled on hand wagons ,..
Then there are images for des troying human beings: images whose technical
nature derives f rom their immedia te connection _ generally for reasons of
'reconnaissance' (Aufklarung') and gUiding to armame ntattcn. " In 1991". writes
Faroeki, "there were two kinds of shots from the war of the Coalition Forces
egainstirao that were something new, that belonged to a visual category of t heir
own. The first shows a section of land, taken f rom a camera in a helicopter,
an airplane or a drone - the name for unmanned light aircraft used for aerial
reconnaissance. Crossingt he cent re of t he image are t he lines marking t he t arget.
The proj ect ile hits . t he detonat ion overloads t he contrast range. the automatic
fade counteracts it; the image breaks off. The second shot comes from a camera
installed in the head of a projectile. This camera crashes int o its target - and
here as well, of course, the image breaks Off. I...] The shots t aken f rom a camera
that crashes into its t arget. that is, from a suic ide camera, cling to t he memory.
They were new and added something to t he Image that we may have heard about
sincethe cruise missi les in t he 1980s. but di dn't know anyt hing specific about.
They appeared together wit h t he word 'intelligent weapons "ao
Needless to recall t hat these images. as beauti ful as video games . were offered
tothe fascination of all While. at the same t ime, photo-jo urnalists from all over the
world were strictly kept away from the battl e fields by the US Army. which meant
that these images of technical processes, divided into squares by the viewfinder
and saturated wit h explosions. these abst ract and perfect ly 'contemporary'
images took the place of the images of resu/ls which a journalist could have -
should have - brought back f rom the ruins caused by all these 'surgical st rikes'
land those images would not in t he least have seemed ' new' , since not hing looks
morelike a burnt corpse than another burnt corpse). Farocki. in any case. asserts
that . t he "operative war images from the 1991 Gulf War. which didn' t show any
oeccle. were more than Just propaganda. despite rigid censorship. meant to hush
up the 20,000 deaths of the war. They came from t he 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 mili tary spokesman in 1991 said, when
asked about the vict ims on the Iraqi side: 'We don't do body counts', This can
be translated as: ' We are not t he gravediggers . This dirty work has to be done by
other people.:'
n
U liilrUll Fa,ocki. "LeIl<llnt de lIoe de ta
goerre"j2<103I, Ifalic,no, 50/2{)04, 449,
{RepMlw1n Pootb'lilnd2009. pp. 90 1( 1).
:9Harutl Fa'Geki, "rnlluern:es
(2002), mr,aik fJ{l . 43/2t'lG2, p. 2G
In Ha", n Ow Image
Doesn1 II'" I'i!l(:e DilliePrevwus 0"".
eu TMfiaull, MonlfeaI200S.,
pp 14J.l 53)
30Famek, j2003/, 2004, p. 445.
047
Su lI:Omlm&e!' . - Memolrt du ir"''lI,l
e1lri'" de Ia ,d lNll1t Vortoo/ filroc"
{l C"'amf .
l'I lIlI trr"'N'1oJ/It6 I!'t
lin IS. des Iellrrs ef lecM'QOO:<.
no. 11. 200 11 . PI! 53 68 . 110 tmk,
pp, 101 lI O)
"" bd . p. 53. (p- 102).
1983. , . 30.
3S1'Ia,un h rOCki . ' COIltroll,ngOIlSe,. aUo,,
[1999}. in crllljSpilceje II/1eUlfICs of
S<.rve;Ianee from ller'lilam ru&g 8roI/Ief,
ell OfThoIoIllS \.e'fIrl. li<\sIuIIe /C""""llge
2002pp 102101.
048

There are al so operative Images simpl y dest ined to monit or human beings,
often under the pretext - accepted. if not applauded by a substantial part of
our frightened societ ies - of keeping them from destroying themselves. This is,
to a certain extent . t he reverse si de of the automation of work which Farocki
addressed in Eye/Machine: It can be seen operating In Counrer-Music, in 2004,
which no longer t ries to demonst rate the economy of a chemical product such as
napalm, but the economy of transportation, of passages and flows of popul ations
in any given modern city.l.2 Christa Blumli nger has right ly pointed out the presence
in Farocki's worKof t nrs "fundamental reflection on the control sccrety'w. which
reaches Its critical climax in t he fil m Gefangnisbilder, In 2000, foll owed t he same
year by it s ' inst alled' versrcn ent it led Ich glaubre Gefangene zu sehen (which
tr anslates as I Thoug/lt I Was Seeing coowcts. the near-perfect quotation of
Ingrid Bergman's react ion in Roberto Rosse llini's film Europe 51 when she sees
fact ory workers).
Even to those who have not read MIchel Foucault 's and Gilles Dej euze's
fundament al texts on the 'control societ ies' - not t o forget the stori es by William
S. Burroughs or Phili p K. Di ck - the papers nearly every morning declare that
surveil lance devices, far f rom preventing the destr uct ion of human beings.
mainly provide them with a new, even more spectacular. existence. While
surveill ance certa inly produces "an abst ract existence like the Fordi st factory
produced abst ract work", as Farocki once wrot e. the word abstract must here be
considered In t he precis e underst anding it was given by Adorno and Horkneener
In D,alecl lc of Enlightenment when they wrote t hat - enst racuco. t he Instr ument
of enli ghtenment . stands I... ) to it s obj ects (... j as Iiquidati on-
i
" . To convince
onesel f of thi s, it suf fices to watch agai n. in Gefangnisbilder (Prison Images.
2000 ), t t ns chill ing moment where the camera has detect ed a fight in the prison
yard. and the gun that is linked to i t - for such is the complete device: to monitor
and to destroy - fires a shot at one of the t wo prisoners without a warnmg.
35

"In the first mont hs of 1999, I was travelling to prisons in t he United States to
organi se images produced by surveill ance cameras. It's a type 01 Image which is
st ili hardly meons eo. Most prisons In the United St at es lie f ar away from cities.
and there's only a parkmg lot in f ront of them. nothing else t hat would suggest
any kmd of urban planning 10 create a public space. Instead of travelling to
the prison. some feder al states grant visrtors the opt ion to communicate with
inmates from home via a kind of TV tele phone. In California and Oregon I went
to prisons which had been built in largely uninhabi ted areas, which reminds one
that some time ago pri soners were sent to the cotornes. I...) My prison vtsns
were a ternfymg exper ience, One pnson direct or in Cali forni a. who had been
trained as a pnest. told me that the former governor was of Armenian ongm and
therefore did not tolerat e fences to be put under high volt age. It reminded him
toomuch of the German camps. {... jrn Campden, near Philadelphia, t he prison
was the only building on the main road that was sti ll intact . You could see t he
common areas behind thick glass panels, and it smelled of sweat like in a zoo.
Thecorrecti onal of ficer who gave me a guided tour pointed at the nozzle in the
ceiling, through which tear gas was to be f unnelled In case of an emergency! t fus
never happened since it turned out that the chemicals decomposed when stored
for some time. I... ] After we had fil med in the Two Rivers Correctional Institute in
Oregon, I drank a cup of coffee wit h my camera man Ingo Krat i sch on the terrace
of the adjacent golf club. It was hardly bear able. it was like one of those cheap
editingcut s aiming for maximum effect : from the hi-tech prison {subprcletanat ] to
thearti ficially irrigated gOlf club (pensioners): the golf players were driving around
in electric carts . Oppositions like the se suggest a connection. wX
Denouncing: tifting one' s thought to the level of anger. Protesting. separat ing,
OYerturning things that seem to go wit hout saying. But also establishing a
connection on one level bet ween things which, on anot her level, seem totally
antagOfli stic. This, then, is an act of montage: the American pri son and the
German camp on the one hand, the prison for the dangerous and the golf cl ub for
the harmless on the other hand , But Farockl shows us that the camp - and, more
importantly, colonial history and. of course, the question of slavery - is by no
means absent from the memory of this prison. while this gol f club is really located
nett to the prison. It becomes apparent t hat Harun Farockrs montages first and
foremost concern what Walter Benj amin called the 'opti cal unconscious' , and on
this account. present themselves to our gaze as a true cri tique ofviol ence through
the 'images of the world', given that violence often starts with the implement at ion
of apparentl y 'neutral ' and ' Innocent' devices: regulating visitor traf fic, building
a prison on a speci fic site, designing the window panel s of a common area in
a certain way, pcsttioning 'securi ty' oevces in the condui ts inside the ceiling,
reintroducing some sort of organisation of labour among the prisoners which is
presumed to be 'beneficial' to the instit ut ion et c,
Acritique of violence, t hen. In order to crit ici se violence, one has to describe it
(which implies that one must be able to took). In order to describe it, one has
to dismantle its devices, to 'describe t he relat ion'. as Benj amin writes. where
it const it utes it self (which implies t hat one must be able to disassemble and
reassemble t he states of things). Yet if we are to foll ow Benj amin, establi shing
these relat ions implicates at least three domains, which Farocki tac kles
simultaneously in each invest igation t hat he conduct s. The first is technique as
the realm of the ' pure means' t hat violence put s t o use: "The sphere of pure
means unfolds In the most material human realm - confli cts relati ng to goods.
For this reason technique [ Technik) in t he broadest sense of the word is its most
proper oomaln.?" The second t erritory in which one needs to constantl y quest ion
violence is that 'of the law and of j ustice'
n
, Hence, Farockt's invest igation on
3f, Harun Fa,ilQ.<, "S,IdI!fSCll.l t,
119991. In pc. 94.95,
17 Waller Benjamin, CntlqLle de _iolence"
11921i , In CEuvres, J, Pans 2000, p . 227
I ' CIIlk!ue01vcrer ce'. kO StIe<: fec1 wrWngs,
>'01. r: 19lJ / 926, CDmb,idce 1996)
II Ibid . fl. 210.(Itahc, GOH),
049
see S'a',d Welgl'ls receor CO!IlIneOlllrV.
Walter Ben/,mln. DieI\re,M, (/liSHeilrge,
r.1ie Brlde" FraM,lu,ta M, 100ll , BBt09
4llWaltet Beo/<lmi" 11921J,2000. PIl 241-242
[1\3110$!IV GD-H].

images wilt never be free from legal consequences, starting with the question dl
who "produced" them and to whom they belong, how to quote them and what risk
one Incurs when using them ... Finally, Walter Benjamin - despite t he intrin
philoso phical difficulties of his formulat ions" - makes it perfectly clear that atilt
critique of vrcrence is the philosophy of its history (which] makes possible a
crit ical, discriminating, and deci sive approach to its moment In C
it be, then, that the image IS in league with violence simply because it is <I't
mseperably technical. historical, and legal object?

lifting one's t hought to the level of anger. llft mg one's anger to the level of it
work. Weaving this work t hat consists of quesucning t echnology, history, and the.
law. To enable us to open our eyes to the violence of the world Inscribed in the
images.