14:14, 13 October 2012 - Monoskop

226 Harun Farocki
ing to Auschwitz, this statement calls for the destruction of train lines, this
time the tracks that lead to the atomic weapons placed in Germany by the Allies,
especially the United States (partly responsible for not bombing the death
camps). In an article that contains part of the text of Images of the World,
Farocki says as much, in some detail. 58 But in his essay film, this political message
is at once most explicit and most in/audible and in/visible when Farocki
shows his own hand literally inscribing (à la Astruc), with a crayon or pen, his
call to action on the inmate Alfred Kantor’s drawing of a locomotive bringing
prisoners to their death in Auschwitz (see ill. 56).
Farocki twice writes, ‘Den Zugang blockieren!’ (Block the access routes!). Offering
a first version of a ‘political anamorphosis’, Farocki depicts his inscription at
an unnatural angle – making it harder to see yet still visible. By a similar reckoning,
the entire Images of the World is itself the ‘inscription of war’
(Inschrift des Krieges) alluded to in the title: a more or less concealed, more
or less im/perceptible instruction about waging war against nuclear might,
much as Battle of Algiers was viewed as a manual for waging underground
urban warfare.
To be more precise, Farocki’s film proposes a double war of position and
manoeuvre: tactically and immediately, blockade the trains! But Farocki is
well aware that massive surveillance by the military-industrial complex will
make such blockades almost impossible, though nonetheless necessary.
Hence, his recourse to a second form of warfare in and as Images of the
World itself: a more strategic and long-term action. It involves another
anamorphosis, almost subliminal and quite independent of perspective: images
showing the use of hydropower in opposition to nuclear power. This contrast
provides the underlying reason for the otherwise inexplicably recurrent and
redundant image of the Hannover water-research laboratory. The accompanying
female voice-over notes – but only once, near the beginning of the film –
that ‘the motions of water are still less researched than those of light’. 59 This is a
remarkable acknowledgement of the power of science and technology in a film
that is – ostensibly – critical of their impact on today’s culture. Perhaps Farocki
trusts that labs such as the Hannover plant, given enough financial and public
support, will someday come up with alternatives to nuclear energy. For the
rest of the industrial companies for whom Farocki must make documentaries,
he is employing the Verbundsystem against itself, attempting to accomplish,
what the situationists might have called its détournement, Brecht its
Umfunktionierung. 60 Not far away, one might imagine, is the im/perceptible
affirmation of direct action up to, and including, what others would call
terrorism.