14:14, 13 October 2012 - Monoskop

312 Harun Farocki
like Karl Kraus with his Fackel – one should just start a journal of one’s own. At
the beginning of the ‘90s, I tried to instigate some kind of media magazine on
TV. We were unable to push it through, there was no time slot for it. But even
worse, we were unable to assemble a group of people distinguished enough to
make it seem scandalous, so that we didn’t get the funding for our project.
RH: As far as the history of your projects is concerned – would you be able to
give a brief sketch of the people backing you? And what changes have occurred
in the TV world?
HF: Let’s start with the end. I don’t believe it’s possible to concentrate creative
forces. It’s not realistic to imagine all of the interesting people – auteurs and
producers – working at one television station and making this station special.
The things shown on 3sat [a publicly funded ‘cultural’ satellite channel] by
Inge Classen and others do not exactly correspond to the other material the
station broadcasts, because the channel is a kind of off-loading zone for many
contributors. And the projects made by Werner Dütsch and his team at WDR
tower above the rest like an alien body. With the Arte channel, one can’t always
be sure either that there is a reason behind every contribution. A lot of what
they broadcast makes you realise that they just function as fill-ins for the standards
of one of the many contributors. Then you see some strange feature on
the Caucasus Mountains where you wonder whether this couldn’t have also
been shown on Bavarian Broadcasting at 2 p.m. It’s not really done well, and
you are almost tempted to make a few donations so that they don’t have to
shut down. And, of course, as is the case with journals and magazines, there is
always the covering up of difficulties.
RH: This means that an entire genre of film will be gone when these editors retire?
HF: At WDR, it looks like they are going to get rid of the film programming department
when the – already reduced – staff reaches retirement age. Their
budget has been halved, and there are now a lot of Heinz-Rühmann movies instead
of the rich and diverse productions found in their archives. NDR’s third
channel is the same story – one can’t imagine Klaus Wildenhahn amongst all of
those picturesquely folksy concerts by the harbour singing in their Low-German
dialect. I have always produced work that sits at the very margin of this
channel, and even this won’t be possible any more with the kind of programming
they’re planning. Certain homeless people just can’t get it together to
move to the airport when the railway station is closed down – which is not to
say that the old railway station was anything special.