Research for Interrupting the Screen Project

Harun Farocki

Underscoring the political and ideological function of image-making, Farocki's films often combine newsreel, archival, and industrial/technological footage with text or voice narrative in the form of "film-essays."

The subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art (199) and the Westfalischer Kunstverein (2001), Farocki has stated about his films:

"One must work with existing images in such a way that they become new. There are many ways to do this. Mine is to look for buried meaning and to clear away the debris lying on top of the pictures. In doing so, I try not to add ideas to the film; I try to think in film so that the ideas come out of filmic articulation."

. . .

"Eye/Machine addresses the automation of images in the present era of "smart machines," "smart bombs," and person-less cameras. Deriving from military technology, the first automated images were those photographs taken from airplanes to measure the accuracy of missile drops in World War II. Eye/Machine charts a kind of geneaology from this moment to the current ubiquity of mechanized imaging in the technological and commercial sectors. This film's "launching" image is a grainy black-and-white picture of an airstrip seen through an automated viewfinder. Beneath it, a subtitle reads: "Images like these could be seen in 1991 - of the wart against Iraq/Operational images/Not Propaganda, ye an ad for intelligent machines."

Source: GreeneNaftali Gallery, NYC. Eye/Machine courtesy GreeneNaftali Gallery.
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Marie Sester

Marie Sester is a French media artist based in Los Angeles. She began her career as an architect, having earned her master's degree from the Ecole d'Architecture in Strasbourg. Her interest, however, shifted from how to build living structures to how architecture and ideology affect our understanding of the world. Her work investigates the way a civilization originates and creates its forms. These forms are both tangible -such as signals, buildings, and cities- and intangible, such as the aspects of values, laws and culture.

Quoting a profile of Sester written by Holly Willis: "What do these signs, these forms, these things that surround us mean?�? asks the artist. "What do they say about ideology? About capitalism? I realized after I finished my degree that I was interested in architectural forms on all levels, from the concrete elements such as city streets to ideological values, and how they evolve together.�? Marie Sester has received grants and residencies from the IAMAS, in Japan, Creative Capital Foundation, New York, Eyebeam, New York and many others. She has taught in France, Japan, and the United States and has exhibited internationally at SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica (in the 2003 edition of the festival ACCESS received an Honorary Mention in Interactive Art), La Vilette, etc.

A few months ago, i was visiting the ZKM and i knew her work ACCESS was exhibited there. I had read what the work was about and was expecting to find it in the entrance lobby but i never suspected i'd be so startled and disturbed by it. ACCESS is a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system that tracks individuals in public places. The beam is either activated as people move through the space under surveillance, or it is piloted remotely using a Web interface. While a friend of mine found the installation quite fun, I felt surprisingly guilty and isolated under that spotlight, exactly what i'd feel if i remembered that i'm under the gaze of surveillance cameras much about everytime i step out of my house. The experience taught me that i should never judge any interactive installation before having tested it myself.

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