Screening of Vexation Island by artist Rodney Graham (Canada) and Schnittstelle [Interface] by artist Harun Farocki (Germany).


Vexation Island, 1997
DVD. 10´ in looping

With "Vexation Island" and subsequent films, all of which are designed to endlessly loop, the preoccupation with time and repetition comes into focus not only formally but also psychologically. In "Vexation Island," the shipwrecked pirate, played by Mr. Graham, wakes up on a tropical island only to be knocked unconscious by a falling coconut that he has succeeded in shaking out of a palm tree; after a while he reawakens, returns to the tree and the cycle repeats. It is as though he were caught in a Sisyphean spell or a Freudian repetition compulsion.


Schnittstelle, 1995
23´

Harun Farocki was commissioned by the Lille Museum of Modern Art to produce a video "about his work". His creation was an installation for two screens that was presented within the scope for the 1995 exhibition The world of Photography. The film Schnittstelle developed out of that installation. Reflecting on Farocki's own documentary work, it examines the question of what it means to work with existing images rather than producing one's own, new images. The title plays on the double meaning of "Schnitt", referring both to Farocki's workplace, the editing table, as well as the "human-machine interface", where a person operates a computer using a keyboard and a mouse.