Harun Farocki UMGIESSEN

Variation on Opus 1 by Tomas Schmit

20 May to 21 November 2010

Opening: Wednesday, 19 May 2010, 7p.m.

Artist talk and screening:
Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 7p.m.

Kunstbau der Städtischen Galerie im Lenbachhaus
Subway station U2 Königsplatz

For the eighth installation on the SEVEN SCREENS the internationally renowned film maker Harun Farocki has created a site specific work that reacts to the ‘spectacle expectation’ that is often associated with LED stelae as a medium.
Umgießen (Re-pouring) refers to Tomas Schmit’s performance, Zyklus für Wassereimer (oder Flaschen) (Cycle for Water Buckets [or Bottles]), which he performed on 18 December 1963 in Amsterdam. The Fluxus artist knelt on the floor in a circle of empty milk bottles and poured water from one bottle into the next until all the water had spilled or evaporated. “The action,” claimed Farocki, “evaded symbolism ... it had no vital quality. It was akin to a Beckett play in the simplicity of its conclusiveness. Despite the uniformity of the event, there was a development; the anti-action found an end on its own initiative.”

Harun Farocki transformed the ritual action into a twenty-minute long, unedited film, translated for the spatial arrangement of the stelae. Each stele is assigned to a bottle. Farocki let the pouring be done by a robot, whose arm wanders through the expanded pictorial space, executing the unspectacular act of re-pouring.

Harun Farocki was born in 1944 in Novy Jicin (Czech Republic). He studied at the Deutsche Film ‐ und Fernsehakademie Berlin (West) 1966 – 1968. 1974 – 1984 he was author and editor of the magazine Filmkritik, Munich. In 1999 he published Speaking about Godard / Von Godard sprechen, New York / Berlin (a collaboration with Kaja Silverman); He was visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley 1993 – 1999. Since 1966 Farocki has made more than 100 productions for television and cinema, including children’s television programs, documentaries, essay films and narrative films; since 1996 the subject of many group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, most recently in 2009 at the Jeu de Paume, Paris and Museum Ludwig, Cologne; participation in 2007 in documenta 12. 2004 – 2006 visiting professor, since 2006 full professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna.