Bertille Bak, an artist living and working in Paris, has been developing for more than a decade a practice that centres on observing societies, understanding the organisation between individuals, highlighting their personal and collective histories, traditions and folklores, their hobbies and revolts. Working in collaboration with community groups, she constructs narratives between fiction and documentaries where poetry and utopias usurp the simple assessment of a situation or site…

Alexander Kluge is best known as a founding member of the New German Cinema. His work, however, spans a diverse range of fields and, over the last fifty years, he has been active as a filmmaker, writer and television producer. This book—the first of its kind in English—comprises a wide selection of texts, including articles and stories by Kluge, television transcripts, critical essays by renowned international scholars, and interviews with Kluge himself. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the fields of film, television, and literary studies, as well as those interested in exploring the intersections ...

The older paradigm for photojournalists was to simply record events, with the hope—and frequently the expectation—that people and their governments would be moved to respond to the injustices pictured, as witnessed by the impact of certain images during the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. Given evolving media and political climates, however, including the billions of images now available online from all kinds of sources, the purpose and effectiveness of media, in particular of visual journalism, has been called into question. Bending the Frame, by author and critic Fred Ritchin, addresses the new and emerging potentials for visual media ...

West Africa’s Guinea-Bissau declared unilaterally independence in 1973 and was recognized internationally in 1975 along with the other former Portuguese colonies. Luta ca caba inda (The Struggle Is Not Over Yet) is the title of a documentary film on the country’s post-independence left unfinished in 1980. Even in its fragmentary form, it is but one of several testimonies of a decade of militant cinema in the country, as part of the people’s struggle for independence from Portuguese colonialism, between 1963 and 1974, and the subsequent nation-building. The remains of this period of politically-engaged cinema, including finished and unfinished Guinean films, audio recordings, and ...

Art critic Ida Hiršenfelder interviews Trevor Paglen, a radical geographer with an academic background, muckraking author and outlaw artist who has been exploring the secret activities of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies for several years. Hiršenfelder and Paglen discuss here four projects: Simbology (2006) – a collection of insignia and patches used in secret operations, Missing Persons – a list of fake names used to cover up CIA agents in the war on terror, Code Names – a catalogue of words, phrases and terms employed for active military programs, and Limit Telephotography Project, which unveils the geographies of classified ...

1. In 1991 I wrote critical notes on the nature of The Poet: “I have a fixation with a poem’s disgrace.” 2. I recorded myself reading from these notes. 3. Soon after, while the audio track played, I had myself video-taped leaping into a corner. 4. I was to present the video to an audience at the Bijou Theater at CalArts. 5. Just prior to the screening, I previewed the video to a friend who told me, rather severely, that I mispronounced a key term: Polyphony. I uttered “poly-phone-ee.” The correct pronunciation is pa-l-f’a-nee. 6. Panic-stricken, I immediately told the projectionist to mute the audio. ...

DISCOURSE is a series of small books in which a theorist, artist, or writer engages in a dialogue with a theme, an artwork, an idea, or another individual across an extended text.

The Dove on the Roof and The VW Complex Sunday 26 February | Doors 7pm | Admission free The Dove on the Roof / Die Taube auf dem Dach By Iris Gusner Germany (GDR), 1973, 84 mins The VW Complex / Der VW-Komplex By Hartmut Bitomsky Germany, 1990, 93 mins Hartmut Bitomsky’s intriguing investigation of Volkswagen combines archival material and his own footage. He writes: However a VW is put together, what comes out is always the Federal Republic of Germany. The VW factory is a museum of industrial technology, and at the same time it is its Utopia. The old factory buildings convey the impression of almost like ...

We can now say with some certainty that one advantage of the Cold War was that it placed many of the complexities and contradictions of economic problems within a clear and singular binary between capitalism and communism. On top of that, arguments in favor of one or the other had massive geopolitical blocs backing them, and the sheer scale alone was enough to draw any economic argument into the tide of one side or the other. This made it only natural for dominant narratives following the dismantling of communism to profess the triumph of capitalism. However, it is only now ...

The films of Adam Curtis—a BBC journalist by vocation, but a filmmaker and information archeologist in practice—appear as conspiracy theories wrapped in historical facts wrapped in social desires. These films remind us that dominant historical narratives are not only subject to rewriting but also sites of intense confusion, ideology, and intrigue. By fusing together narrative and reportage, Curtis’s films enter an ecstatic and playful sphere where themes of power, coercion, technology, morality, and freedom assume a life of their own. This issue of e-flux journal features a rare in-depth interview with Curtis by Hans Ulrich Obrist, coinciding with the filmmaker’s first ...

On some days it is more apparent than others that the ground is shifting below our feet. On a clear day, we can see the horizon that tells us we are in the midst of a global regime change, yet we do not yet know the face of the new power just beyond it. But what we can see is the limit of an economic regime that has dangled vast advances in symbolic spheres of information and communication, in capital flows and even human movement across the globe. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before we realized the ...

Organized in collaboration with Antje Ehmann and Doreen Mende, this issue of e-flux journal pays tribute to Harun Farocki (January 9, 1944–July 30, 2014) with a series of essays and reflections on his work and life by friends, collaborators, film scholars, and admirers. Those who knew Harun personally remember not only the epic influence of his work, but also his generosity as a friend and collaborator. As for us, we have never before dedicated a full issue of e-flux journal to a single artist… Editorial—Harun Farocki Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle A Question They Never Stop Asking Kodwo Eshun Also of Things: Notes for a Film Remembering ...