Revisiting Harun Farocki: Labor, War, Capital
Workers Leaving The Factory (1995), Harun Farocki
Revisiting Harun Farocki: Labor, War, Capital is a retrospective program by the 7th Istanbul Experimental Film Festival at SALT Beyoğlu and İMALAT-HANE İ.M.Ç Project Space. The program traces Farocki’s sustained inquiry into the entanglements of labor, production and war as they are mediated through images. Screenings at İMALAT-HANE İ.M.Ç. Project Space will be on view from 12 to 23 May.
Across the selection of films, the factory and the battlefield emerge as continuous terrains structured by shared visual regimes—where observation, measurement, and control govern both the organization of work and the execution of violence. Farocki’s films map a genealogy of operational images: images that do not simply represent reality but actively intervene in it, shaping processes, decisions, and forms of life. From its inception, cinema itself appears as a vision machine—linking the factory, warfare, propaganda, and entertainment within a broader economy of images.
Within this expanded field, perception is progressively delegated from human observers to technical systems. Across aerial reconnaissance, industrial monitoring, and machine vision, images become tools of analysis and action, reorganizing landscapes, labor, and social relations. The shift toward automated forms of seeing marks a decisive transformation: no longer addressed primarily to human interpretation, images increasingly circulate between machines, producing new forms of intelligence and control.
Taken together, the films articulate a critical framework for understanding how images operate at the intersection of labor, war, and capital—linking human and machinic perception while foregrounding the infrastructures that continue to shape contemporary life.
Programmed by Aslın Seven & Yavuz Gözeller
Program
İMALAT-HANE İ.M.Ç. Project Space (12 -23 May 2026)
A Way (2005)
Comparison Via A Third (2007)
Eye/Machine I (2000)
Eye/Machine II (2000)
Eye/Machine III (2003)
Visiting Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12:00 - 18:00
Salt Beyoğlu Walk-in Cinema (15 & 16 May 2026)
15:30 - Images of the World and Inscription of War (75 min., 1988)
17:00 - As you See (72 min., 1986)
18:30 - Workers Leaving The Factory (36 min., 1995)
The program is organized in collaboration with Antje Ehmann and hosted by SALT and İMALAT-HANE.
