Borders In A Single Shot: After Farocki

We are initiating a project to parallel Harun Farocki’s and Antje Ehmann’s project “Labour in a Single Shot”, as a form of research for Temple Film & Media Arts MFA students and other participants into the work of Harun Farocki. 

 

Following the “Labour in a Single Shot” project by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki, the graduate students and faculty of Temple Film & Media Arts have initiated a project “Borders in a Single Shot”.  Ehmann/Farocki’s project explores labor as a potential force of both production and disruption of capitalist systems; and also explores labor processes in the production of the image itself.  Presented as an anonymous, systematically produced grid of fragments, the project is a collectively authored, as an intimate kind of “essay film” on labor, free of the overdetermining filmic devices of montage, voiceover, linear structure, sponsorship, etc. 

 

Borders in a Single Shot follows a structure similar to that of Labour in a Single Shot, but takes the liberty of substituting the theme of “borders” as the thread that ties together the works of contributors:  closed borders, soft borders, border crossings, perilous or liberating, -- exploring both the contemporary fluidity and control of borders of nationality, technology, nature, identity, media.   In Borders in a Single Shot, the concept of “borders” might be seen, perhaps, as an elaboration on Farocki’s commentaries on the work of montage in film: the edge where conflicting realities either serve the narrative or threaten assumed meanings; the blurred boundary between video games and war games; the “editing ins” and “editing outs” of history, news, culture, entertainment.

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This parallel project, “Borders in a Single Shot” modifies the original project, by addressing contemporary discourses on “borders”.  Filmmakers follow a modified set of the constraints designed by Farocki and Ehmann for “Labour in a Single Shot”, namely:

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1. Participants view Farocki’s remake of the Lumiere Brother’s film “Workers Leaving the Factory”, as well as the original Lumiere film.  We will also ask participating filmmakers to study the online site for “Labour in a Single Shot”, and to read writings by and about Farocki.

2. Participants  make videos "in a single shot" of 1-2 minutes in length, unedited, on the topic of “Borders”.   In the “Labour” project, Farocki asks participants to consider questions of labour in both the subject of their videos, and in the very labor of producing their films.  How might the concept of “borders” be re-iterated in the making of films for the Borders project?  How are border controls and border transgressions experienced moment by moment, now?  Borders engender meetings, departures, apprehensions, seepages, compulsions, overflows, transitions, eruptions, etc. What borders might be encountered in the process of filmmaking, of documenting itself?  

3. The project aggregates these films in a site that makes them accessible as a database, and that invites participants to engage in research into Farocki’s work and thought.

 

Some concepts related to Borders:

Migration                         Race                                Searching

Passage                          Refuge                             Alienation

Diaspora                         Walls                                Hybridity

Access                            Dislocation                       Alienation

Escape                            Relocation                        Sexuality

Journey                           Gentrification                  Shelter

Wandering                      Gender                             Transience

Travel                              Reproduction                  Transience

Roaming                         Refuge                              Sanctuary