The Model presents Harun Farocki Recognition and Tracking, on view 2 July–21 August 2011.
Harun Farocki: Recognition and Tracking is a survey project of the pioneering work of Harun Farocki. Once infamously dubbed the “world’s most known, unknown film-maker,” Farocki has gone on to further develop an astounding body of film and video work, including internationally-exhibited art projects such his mesmerizing, multi-screen work “Deep Play.” This project, which astonishingly recreates the 2006 World Cup football match in twelve projections, using actual footage and surprising viewpoints, will have its Irish debut at The Model. The overall exhibition focuses on recent video installations featuring footage from US military facilities combined with sequences with material from computer simulations. A series of Farocki’s films, from the 1960s to the present, will also be screened in The Model cinema, and the exhibition is accompanied by a new publication.
Harun Farocki, “Deep Play,” 2007. © Harun Farocki
This project features four film/video installations in The Model galleries, a selection of videos for personal screenings, and a weekly programme of Farocki’s films from the 1960s to today. Farocki will also work with local refugees in Sligo on a film project at The Model during his stay.
“Farocki’s films urge us to see the world differently. Their images, which pull urgent topics into close focus, infect our minds like a virus. We see the stage setting of our social conditions about us. There, we see the enforced and repeated rules and codes of behavior that are reflected in architecture, film, the control of crowds, administrative apparatuses and military technology. As an artist, Farocki is, in the words of Thomas Elsaesser, “willing to name the forces that hollow out democracy from within,” namely, the commodification of public spaces, the creation of simulated worlds, the evolution of war technology, but more than this, he takes on the eye of these mechanical gazes and makes us look through that lens, often at ourselves.”
Seamus Kealy, Director/Curator, The Model
The Model acknowledges the support of the Arts Council, Sligo Local Authorities and Goethe Institut Irland
About The Artist
Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Nový Jičín in, a part of Czechoslovakia annexed by Germany at the time. Since 1966, he has produced more than 100 productions for television or cinema: children’s television, documentaries, essay films, story films. Since 1996, he has held numerous group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, including in 2007 at Documenta 12. Since 2004, Farocki has been professor of Film at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
The Model
The Mall
Sligo, Ireland
(071) 914 1405
[email protected]
www.themodel.ie
