Harun Farocki: Consider Labour

Bird's eye view of worker preparing a concrete surface. Concrete is glistening, clearly freshly poured. You can see the empty pail of cement and a trowel. Worker is dressed in brilliant blue. © Harun Farocki GbR
Cristián Silva-Avária, Concrete, Labour in a Single Shot (Rio de Janeiro, 2012), from the film project Labour in a Single Shot by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki, 2013.

Scotland's first major exhibition of Harun Farocki's most important works.

Re-inventing the 'filmic essay', Farocki’s thought-provoking oeuvre investigates how capitalism, consumerism, media, technology and war intertwine with all our lives for the past century. Influenced by theatre director Bertolt Brecht, philosopher Theodor Adorno, and film director Jean-Luc Godard, Farocki’s unique style of non-narrative-filmmaking consistently addresses practices of labour and the production of images that are concerned with understanding, reflecting and confronting modern society.

The exhibition at Cooper Gallery brings together the ten-screen film installation Labour in a Single Shot with Farocki’s most celebrated filmic essays: Workers Leaving the Factory (1995), Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith (1988), and In Comparison (2009). In doing so, it critically questions the technological, aesthetic, and political conditions of making labour visible.

Cooper Gallery is also offering several events during the exhibition's run (see links). Further events in March include A Listening Party with performer Debbie Armour; and Cooper Gallery's screening of Rehana Zaman’s Some Women Other Women and all the Bittermen as part of the city-wide  Dundee Women's Festival, followed by a discussion between the artist and Marissa Begonia. 

This exhibition and public programme are supported by the Goethe-Institut Glasgow.

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