14:14, 13 October 2012 - Monoskop

274 Harun Farocki
formation in the meaning of the words ‘democracy’ and ‘tyrannis’, ‘eunomy’
and ‘isonomy’ at that time, a work that I cite in my compilation Workers
Leaving the Factory. What is essential for me is that the texts in such an
archive are independent of each other and do not acquire their individual
legitimacy through the system in which they are embedded.
My first contribution to this imaginary archive was indeed Workers Leaving
the Factory; the second was from 1997 and was called Der Ausdruck
der Hände/The Expression of Hands. I quote the exposé for this film: ‘The
first close-ups in film history were focused on the human face, but the second
ones showed hands. These close-ups isolate, emphasise or magnify: hands
that greedily grasp a glass, hold a revolver, tremble with fear or are clenched in
rage. A close-up of the face is something else entirely from that of the hands. A
face can stand in for the entirety of the person (perhaps because the eyes are located
there, offering a possible access point to the soul, to the self), while the
longer one looks at them, the more hands look like objects, or perhaps like
small creatures. Hands often seem to reveal something that the face seeks to
hide, such as when someone crushes a glass in their bare hands even as they
try to maintain composure in the face of emotional trauma. Pathologists look
closely at hands, not at faces, when they try to gauge the age of a person. The
hands are not as capable of lying as the face; they present the truth in a more direct
fashion, something that was once believed true of the lower classes. Hands
are designed for the language of gestures. Consider for instance, in general,
the threatening index finger, the counting of money and, more specialised,
sailor’s signs and sign language – the expressions in both these modes are far
more explicit than more mimetic signs. Too often the camera focuses on the
hands in order to prove something, and too seldom, to read something from
them. Too often hands appear as complementary elements to the face [...]
There are other, more magical gestures as well, the caress that enchants or beguiles,
offers blessing and often consoles. These gestures have a long history.
In every contemporary gesture many of these past histories are echoed.’
Currently I am working on a third instalment – I want to consider the
prison, the manner in which the prison is presented in the filmic image. I do
not yet have funding for this project and for that reason I don’t yet have much
material collected. I only have a few silent films and documentaries from the
archives in Washington, which are in the ‘public domain’ there, that is, are free
of charge, as no one holds the rights to them anymore. Everyone is familiar
with the image of the inmate being freed from prison (see ill. 74). This situation
is depicted so often in films that anyone who is indeed being released from
prison is obliged to think of such an image, when the gate closes and the
entranceway to the prison stretches out ahead. Most prisons are set up in such
a fashion that there is a space in front of the entryway that is suggestive of a