Harun Farocki's 'Empatie' Explores Labor in Marseille

Harun Farocki's monographic exhibition 'Empatie' is on view at Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille until March 18, 2018, after presentations at MoMA, Tate Modern, and Jeu de Paume. The show comprises nine video installations focusing on labor and capitalist production, revealing shifts in production processes and societal representations. Farocki, born in Nový Jičín in 1944 and died in Berlin in 2014, employed Brechtian alienation to return to objectivity in documentary practice. Key works include 'Interface' (1995), which places viewers in the editing room, and 'Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik in elf Jahrzehnten' (2006), reinterpreting the Lumière brothers' 'La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon' with clips from Chaplin's 'Modern Times', Lang's 'Metropolis', and Antonioni's 'Red Desert'. 'Gegen-Musik' (2004) juxtaposes film history with surveillance footage, while 'Variation Von Opus 1 von Thomas Schmit' (2010) shows a robotic production line. 'Vergleich über sin Drittes' (2007) returns to double-image editing. 'Travailleurs quittant leur lieu de travail' (2011-2014), created with curator Ante Ehmann and participants worldwide, features videos from nine cities including Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Hanoi, Johannesburg, Cairo, New Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv. The exhibition explores empathy as a cryptographic confidence in human activity, questioning whether labor is a tool of submission or emancipation.