Nora Alter’s book Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence is a comprehensive and insightful take on Farocki as a filmmaker and artist. It joins the ranks of earlier strong (film studies) research on Farocki but also with additional rich detail of the various layers that impacted Farocki’s thinking and modes of expression. Farocki’s work circulates frequently in current media theoretical and artistic contexts but not many necessarily know the history of his work that goes beyond filmmaking – but also as a filmmaker (and professional of moving images, critically interested also in the mass media system), includes a variety of genres. For example, many would know about his attempts at making feature films such as Brunner ist dran (1973) and Betrayed (1985). As Alter narrates, “And it was in part because of the failure of Betrayed that he turned to making documentary films”, continuing by way of quoting Farocki himself: “The attempt to make a feature film that adheres to rules was a complete failure. Hence documentary films.” Point taken. Now, quite a long time later, we can say: failures are productive, and Farocki’s documentary style films and installations continue as the central inspiration for many contemporary artists working with moving image but also new media such as game-environments. Just some years after Betrayed, his by now classic Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1988) comes out and really marks a particular kind of an image of Farocki himself and how his work maneuvers different kinds of academic and theory discussions, as well as different kinds of artistic circles, too. This is the Farocki many of us know. Much of this is captured in Alter’s book, with titles of chapters and themes including, Labor, War, Critique and Montage, and then the overview of how his thinking relates to the cultural industries and themes in media and film studies.

The book does an excellent job in staying close to the sources and using Farocki’s own rich voice and pithy summaries as part of the analysis. It also dives deep into the “forgotten” projects like Betrayed as well as to many of the works Farocki is famous for. His persistent interest in the Cold War stack of military-industrial complex is one aspect of this, but so is the sort of extended Cold War that persists and is present in the later work in for example the 2000s. Besides the well-known The Inextinguishable Fire (1969) that you can easily watch online, too, such work as White Christmas and Their Newspapers also focused on visual “home front” culture of Vietnam war that extends to the broader media culture beyond the war as defined by military actions only. The logistical and infrastructural backdrop of war is thus the point that then continues also attract media theorists and historians to Farocki’s images and writing.

In terms of cinematic form or genre, a curious mix is already present in the early work. As Alter observes, writing about The Inextinguishable Fire, it fuses fiction and fact; feature, documentary, and cinema verité and avant-garde mix in this striking piece. What’s more, throughout the book, Alter is able to point to how Farocki’s writing and his films are linked (an early example of such writing is “Vacuum Cleaner or Submachine Gun” that was just translated into English, too, some years ago by Ted Fendt and you can read it in the Grey Room journal) but also how some of this earlier and later work like with Antje Ehmann find a shared common ground in certain motifs of interest.

Just as an added sidenote, the mentioned “Vacuum Cleaner or Submachine Gun” is a great example of the laconic style of Farocki’s prose that comes through of course in many of the moving image projects too, often with a sense of dry humor of sorts:

“An actor says: I am a worker and work in a vacuum cleaner factory. My wife could really use a vacuum cleaner. So every day, I take a single component of one with me. At home, I want to assemble the vacuum cleaner. But whatever I do, it always ends up as a submachine gun.

An actor says: I am a student in an engineering school. At the moment, I work in a vacuum cleaner factory. But I think this isn’t true and the factory is manufacturing submachine guns for Portugal. We could really use this evidence. So I take a single component home every day. At home, I want to assemble the submachine gun. But whatever I do, it always ends up as a vacuum cleaner.” Labor and militancy are some of the recurring motifs.

Farocki’s work on war, industrialization, and media, too, is also utterly relevant to the current moment, to state the obvious, even if the modalities of mediation have extended beyond journalism and TV to for example TikTok. In another register, Farocki’s interest in new technologies of war is also here to be mentioned. This is something we recognize from the 1980s and 1990s discussions of theorists, such as Paul Virilio and Friedrich Kittler. Farocki asks, quoted by Alter: “Is war technology still the forerunner of civil technology such as radar, ultrashortwave, computer, stereo sound, jet planes? And if so, must there be further wars so that advances in technology continue, or would the simulated wars produced in laboratories suffice.”

Farocki’s work speaks though well to the continuum of different kinds of violence that is not only about war but also capitalism. As Alter well brings to view, Farocki’s range of interests fluctuates between Brecht and Flusser: critiques of the dominant mode of organizing labor and capital, and insights into the transformation of media and image cultures. Of course, Farocki’s long career and life was populated by many other influences, too, from theorists, such as Roland Barthes to the extensive network of friends and collaborators, including for example filmmaker Christian Petzold. Petzold’s 2000 film The State I Am In, to name an example, has Farocki credited as the co-writer. Similarly, a key collaborator was indeed Ehmann. Many others could be mentioned. As for the “Brecht to Flusser” motif, I find it a peculiar point for my own interests too: how Farocki’s work became so influential – and closely tied – with the mentioned media theory crowd while at the same time so close to e.g. Frankfurt style critical theory discourse, such as Adorno. In terms of theory, these poles do not always mix so well, to say the least, but somehow Farocki found a way maneuvering fluently across such intellectual terrains of the German cultural scene.

The book also dips into the term “operational images”, which has had its strong impact also after Farocki’s death in 2014. Alter does a fine job in outlining its key manifestations in the video installations since early 2000s as well as Farocki’s interest in VR and games that link to similar terrains of digital imaging, too. As per Farocki’s own definitions, operational images are part of a process, not a portrayal of a process – and they present, not so much represent. But his own work problematizes such a distinction, too, as Alter does bring out. Farocki’s take on operational images is also about the framing of such image practices as part of contexts of institutions, subjects, and politics of images – they become represented, and the process itself becomes portrayed. Operational images become a peculiar concept, somewhat recursive but also denouncing itself while enacting itself. This helps to explain the attraction it has gained in later artistic uses and discussions, as well as in media theory.

I believe the main audience are people in film studies and to an extent, in media studies, too. I know this book will appeal to a lot of readers in art practice and theory as well. I do wish Alter’s book would have been available before I wrote my Operational Images study as it offers such a great background of the recurring themes in Farocki’s work. It is a smart and well-written take on a really original and influential professional of moving images. It shows the richness of his collaborations, too. Hence, it reads also as a good cultural history of a particular episode of (West) German history, and more broadly, the critical discourses operative in contexts of media practitioners just at the dawn of the so-called digital age.