Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin

#3 min Pavlína Vogelová

3. 3. 2022

Harun Farocki, Between Two Wars, Germany, 1978, © Harun Farocki GbR
Harun Farocki, Between Two Wars, Germany, 1978, © Harun Farocki GbR

The Harun Farocki Institute (HaFI) can be understood as a specific living archive as well as an active research platform for visual artists and art historians and theorists. It is a dynamic environment for analytical thinking within the process of the transformation of image perception, the idea for which was given by Farocki himself (1944–2014) with his specific approach to image communication already in 1976.

#41 Postdigital PhotographyInstitution ProfileVideo art

The current Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin (HaFI), which was established in 2015, continues in the same spirit. It stresses the continuity of systematic research into media, image and society with reference to Farocki's film and theoretical work. HaFI initiates and supports new research, residencies, publication and exhibition projects that could advance and refine the reflection of Farocki's work. Their basis is a connection to topics or approaches grounded in a critical analysis of one’s own subjectivity towards the social spectacle.

Harun Farocki (1944, Jičín, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia - 2014, Berlin) was a German visual artist, film director, editor of Filmkritik magazine, theorist and professor at the universities of Berlin, Berkeley and Vienna. He became known as a filmmaker concentrating on film essays, documentaries, experimental films, video and video installations. He exhibited at prestigious world galleries, such as Hamburger Bahnhof, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, and others. He was interested in the discursive infringement of moving images into the artistic and academic spheres. He referred to the texts of Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and Vilém Flusser. He used a highly expressive, archaeological approach to examine the power of the image in relation to situations of conflict that man and society find themselves in for various reasons. He thus tracked the social dimension of visual traces and their navigation in defining the social role of the film medium.

Harun Farocki's work has also resonated in the Czech Republic. It was shown at several years of the International Documentary Film Festival in Jihlava (dramaturgy by Andrea Slováková) and at the Moravian Gallery in Brno as part of Echoes of Jihlava IDFF (dramaturgy by Pavlína Vogelová, 2007). In the Prague City Gallery, Farocki's films were represented at the Monument of Transformation exhibition (curators Vít Havránek, Zbyněk Baladrán, 2009) in parallel with the solo exhibition of video installations in the tranzitdiplay gallery (curator Vjera Borozan together with Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki, 2009). Immediately after the departure of Harun Farocki in 2014, the confrontational exhibition Harun Farocki / Zbyněk Baladrán (2015) was presented in the curatorial diction of Michal Novotný at the FUTURA Gallery, underlining the power of Farocki's artistic contribution precisely at the level of video art.

HaFI is a non-commercial platform built on cooperation and collaboration with a number of entities such as Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst e. V., Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), e-flux, Goethe-Institut, Journal of Visual Culture, Radical Film Network Meeting Berlin and others. Importantly, it cooperates with the publishing and distribution company Motto Books, which published for instance not only Farocki's own texts in a series of 14 volumes (What Ought to be Done, On Display: Peter Wiess. A Production Dossier; Before Your Eyes; On the History of Labor, etc.), but also reflections by other authors. It is an open collection of texts, links to publications, documents, videos, photographs that can contribute to further study of Farocki's work, as well as an online environment for the presentation of research and projects related to his work and personality.

Text: Pavlína Vogelová

#41 Postdigital PhotographyInstitution ProfileVideo artInstitutional critiqueResearchArchivePhilosophyCollaborationPostdigital photography

Pavlína Vogelová

is a curator of photography and film at the Historical Museum of the Czech National Museum and a PhD candidate at the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She was previously employed by the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Her research focuses on intermedia elements in documentary art and experimental work in photography and film in relation to history, science, art and education.

#41 Postdigital Photography

Few theorists of photography have a complex vision of the whole world of photography and the need not to confine this medium in discrete bubbles or groups of supporters. Filip Láb was one of these. He took part in debates during the preparation of issues of the magazine; he belonged to the editorial board. Filip left this world prematurely. His exceptional capacity to span photojournalism and to reflect on contemporary art was unique, and it is precisely this type of understanding and openness that helps to merge bubbles instead of reinforcing our confinement in them. We will all miss it. The intention of this issue is to develop the legacy of Filip Láb and his latest book of the same name, Postdigital Photography. Filip’s contributions consisted both in an interest in the medium of photography and the technological aspects of its further development, as well as in observing the media world and uncovering the manipulations that photography can facilitate in a way that is even dangerously brilliant. We will start on post-digital photography with the first digitally edited image in the world, John Knoll’s depiction of his girlfriend Jennifer in Tahiti. Artist Constant Dullaart dedicated an entire project to Jennifer using Photoshop filters with the ability to comment on both the recent past and ask questions about the future development of image making. Another paradigmatic example that Filip would rave with enthusiasm about is the case of photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen, whose book full of post-produced films is written about by Adam Mazur. What is postdigital photography? In this issue, it is a spectrum of approaches, contexts, and technological aspects. From DeepFace and use of artificial intelligence for automatic image retrieval, through the (un)hidden carbon footprint of data, fake news and the notion of post-truth, to manipulation through post-production, to artistic approaches from home-office desktop documents or wild post-internet aesthetics or lapidary mixing of photos into liquid mucus. A rich selection.

Portfolio review: how to make the most of 20 minutes

#3 min Markéta Kinterová

Portfolio review: how to make the most of 20 minutes

Fotograf zone PortfolioNetworking

What is a portfolio review, really? It’s a meeting that often lasts no more than twenty minutes. For some, it’s an unusual format — something between a professional consultation and a kind of informal speed dating. On one side are artists, on the other are professionals from the field: curators, editors, gallerists, offering their attention, experience, and above all, feedback. So how can you make the most of those twenty minutes?

Meet the talents nominated by Fotograf Zone for 2026

#5 min Markéta Kinterová

Meet the talents nominated by Fotograf Zone for 2026

Fotograf zone FUTURESFutures talents

We are pleased to introduce four artists nominated for the international FUTURES platform: Ondřej Kubeš, Jakub Tulinger, Miriam Pružincová, and Linda Zhengová. The nominated artists will take part in FUTURES activities, where they will have the opportunity to present their work to an international professional audience, establish new professional connections, and further develop their practice in dialogue with curators, institutions, and fellow artists from across Europe.

Jan Švankmajer – Principles of Imagination in a Gourmet Geyser

#3 min Pavlína Vogelová, Jan Švankmajer

Jan Švankmajer – Principles of Imagination in a Gourmet Geyser

#42 FoodProfilePhilosophy

Anything can come to life in Jan Švankmajer's imagination, even meat in love in an ironic mode combining neediness with greed. In the one-minute film sketch Zamilované maso (Meet Love, 1988), the act of two steaks breaking free from the captivity of a large leg of meat comes alive in the directness and imagination of hidden meanings. The two solitaires establish a certain form of attraction and, it seems, intimacy between them. Reciprocally, they probe their brief shared space-time encircled by human conveniences, oblivious to the hostile signals of knives, sharpened forks, graters, pots and red-hot pans. They check themselves out egoistically in a polished spoon while rollicking, wooing and seducing each other. The music from the transistor relaxes the atmosphere, dampens the awareness of a threat. The forbidden release escalates, during dancing and flirting in a dishtowel gown, into an amorous act in a flour duvet, only to have the moment of ecstasy cut short by the direct hit of a fork and the betrayal of a hot frying pan.

Dalibor Chatrný – The Skeletons in Interpretations of Photographs by Jindřich Štreit

#2 min Pavlína Vogelová, Jindřich Štreit, Dalibor Chatrný

Dalibor Chatrný – The Skeletons in Interpretations of Photographs by Jindřich Štreit

#38 Death, When You Think About ItProfilePhilosophy

In 1996, Dalibor Chatrný realized an exceptional series titled Interpretations of Photographs by Jindřich Štreit. It comprises a selection from Štreit’s systematic photographic documentation of the foothills of the Jeseníky Mountains between the 1960s and 1980s, uncovering the authentic and highly specific existential conditions of the local people. Their lives are lived with a firm sense of belonging to their delineated time-space, which reflects a broad range of social and psychological states in all phases of life. One of the dominant authoritative roles is played by the local priest, who accompanies the locals from their birth to their final fulfillment in life.