Harun Farocki - by Nora M Alter

About the Book

This groundbreaking book is an incisive and comprehensive analysis of Harun Farocki's oeuvre, shedding new light on his media experimentation and writings across platforms and venues.

Book Synopsis

Harun Farocki was one of the world's most celebrated experimental filmmakers at the time of his death in 2014. In a career spanning over fifty years, the German artist produced more than one hundred works, including political cinema, nonfiction film and video, and art installations, which have been exhibited globally. After his early politically engaged films in Super 8 and 16 mm, Farocki spent many years making independent films and commissions for German public television. In the last phase of his career, he transitioned to creating digital and multichannel installations. He also collaborated with the director Christian Petzold on a dozen films. In addition to his prolific media-making career, Farocki was an incisive critic and editor.

This groundbreaking book is an incisive and comprehensive analysis of Farocki's oeuvre, shedding new light on his media experimentation and writings across platforms and venues. Nora M. Alter examines how Farocki's work investigates film and media images: their history, nature, manipulation, changing function, and strategic use. Focusing on interconnected ideas surrounding labor, critique, and war, she shows how his politically committed art is informed by pedagogical strategies that drive viewers to perceive how the media world they inhabit functions. Alter also argues that Farocki's career provides a lens on the history of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking amid shifts in materials and exhibition platforms. Tracing the transformations of Farocki's artistic practice and thought, this book offers new insight into the body of work of one of the most significant media makers of the late twentieth century.

Review Quotes

A highly readable survey of the filmmaker, critic, essayist and artist Harun Farocki....Essential.-- "Choice"

Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence offers a full and fascinating portrait of one of the most important postwar German filmmakers. Addressing the sheer diversity and quantity of Farocki's work is, frankly, an astounding feat--one that Alter, in this highly engaging volume, accomplishes with alacrity.--Jaimey Fisher, author of German Ways of War: The Affective Geographies and Generic Transformations of German War Films

Nora M. Alter, the comprehensive and eminent chronicler of essay films, elegantly interweaves the artistic and intellectual work of Harun Farocki in an analytical portrait of the artist and his work from the early student films to the major installations and global multimedia projects of his late years. This book provides new insight into the fascinating world of Harun Farocki as image maker and theorist.--Gertrud Koch, professor emerita of film studies, Freie Universität Berlin

Bravo for this first approach in English to provide a combined descriptive analysis and compelling guide to Harun Farocki's intriguing work. Alter raises questions that make it possible to explore the "interconnected constellations of ideas" that characterize Farocki's production, yet opens paths to stimulate unique ongoing probes into his rich and resonating oeuvre.--Renée Green, artist, filmmaker, and author of Other Planes of There: Selected Writings

In Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence, Nora Alter rises admirably to the challenges and complexities posed by the endeavors of an oppositional archivist/archaeologist, an unrelenting deconstructor/reconstructor, and an inimitable contrarian. Drawing on the artist's elaborate personal archives and benefitting from decades of interactions with Farocki and his closest collaborators, Alter offers original perspectives on a rich legacy dedicated to the vast meaning potentials of images within late-modern technocratic culture.--Eric Rentschler, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

Nora Alter's book is an exemplary labor of love: a thoroughly absorbing engagement with Harun Farocki's films that illuminates his legacy and allows us to better understand where his work has left us--not just as film scholars or intellectuals, but as humans and citizens, trying to find a compass amid the precarious history of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence approaches Farocki's films with the very intelligence, care, sophistication, and open-mindedness his work continues to call for and deserves.--Lutz Koepnick, author of Resonant Matter: Sound, Art, and the Promise of Hospitality

Nora Alter offers a superb tribute to Harun Farocki's immense impact as a filmmaker, media theorist, and digital artist. The author, who was part of Farocki's circle in Berlin, combines a compelling intellectual biography with an incisive analysis of his multifaceted work. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Farocki's legacy.--Anton Kaes, author of Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War

About the Author

Nora M. Alter is a professor of film and media arts at Temple University. Her books include Chris Marker (2006) and The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction (Columbia, 2018).