![\"162_holert_01\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/7d0a848e-bd8f-49e0-b2d1-651ae6da1f8a.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTom Holert<\/p>\n
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Harun Farocki, Eye\/Machine I, film still, 2001. Copyright: Harun Farocki GbR.<\/p>\n
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Notes<\/p>\n
1<\/p>\n
Erika Balsom and Harun Farocki, \u201cThe New Constructivism: Erika Balsom and Harun Farocki Discuss Parallel I\u2013IV\u201d (2014), in Harun Farocki: Programando o Vis\u00edvel, ed. Jane de Almeida, Priscila Arantes, and Patr\u00edcia Moran (CinUSP, 2017), 130.<\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
Harun Farocki and Hartmut Bitomsky, Die Teilung aller Tage (1970), in Eine indexikalische Spur: Nachtr\u00e4ge und Register (Schriften, vol. 7), ed. Volker Pantenburg with Gerti Fietzek (Harun Farocki Institut, n.b.k., and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz K\u00f6nig, 2026), 10. My translation.<\/p>\n
3<\/p>\n
Since he coined it over twenty years ago, the scholarship on the term \u201coperational images,\u201d on Farocki\u2019s deployment of it in writing and audiovisual work, and on its application to current developments in machine vision and algorithmic governance and warfare have continued to evolve. In the following I am indebted to the research by Nora M. Alter, Hannes Bajohr, Martin Blumenthal-Barby, Christoph Brunner, Jimena Canales, Jan Distelmeyer, Ariana Dongus, Anthony Downey, Jake Goldenfein, Aud Sissel Hoel, Ingrid Hoelzl, Rosemary Lee, Rui Matoso, Roland Meyer, Trevor Paglen, Volker Pantenburg, Jussi Parikka, Rebecca Uliascz, and others.<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
Harun Farocki, \u201cDer Krieg findet immer einen Ausweg\u201d (2003\/2005), in Harun Farocki, Lerne das Einfachste! Texte 2001-2014 (Schriften, vol. 6), ed. Volker Pantenburg (Harun Farocki Institut, n.b.k., and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz K\u00f6nig, 2022), 140; an English translation by Brian Poole, titled \u201cPhantom Images,\u201d first appeared in Public: Art, Culture, Ideas, no. 29 (Spring 2004). I deviate slightly from this translation here.<\/p>\n
5<\/p>\n
Paul Virilio, The Vision Machine (1988), trans. Julie Rose (British Film Institute and Indiana University Press, 1994), 59\u201360.<\/p>\n
6<\/p>\n
Harun Farocki, \u201cThe Industrialization of Thought,\u201d trans. Peter Wilson, Discourse: Journal of Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 15, no. 3 (Spring 1993); also included in Harun Farocki, Unregelm\u00e4\u00dfig, nicht regellos: Texte 1986\u20132000 (Schriften, vol. 5), ed. Tom Holert (Harun Farocki Institut, n.b.k., and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz K\u00f6nig, 2021).<\/p>\n
7<\/p>\n
Harun Farocki, \u201cDankesrede,\u201d in Eine indexikalische Spur (Schriften, vol. 7), 60. My translation.<\/p>\n
8<\/p>\n
For an important theorization of the \u201cinvisuality\u201d of operational images, see Jussi Parikka, Operational Images. From the Visual to the Invisual (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), 22\u201324.<\/p>\n
9<\/p>\n
Serge Daney\u2019s writings became well known to Farocki through his friendship with Christa Bl\u00fcmlinger and Raymond Bellour, close allies of the legendary film critic (who passed away in 1992), but also because Daney and Farocki were both featured in Politics\/Poetics, the publication accompanying Documenta X (1997), the former with his 1991 essay \u201cBefore and After the Image.\u201d (More on how Daney\u2019s essay informed Farocki\u2019s concept of operational images below.)<\/p>\n
10<\/p>\n
For more on the latter, see my forthcoming Kunst und Politik zur Einf\u00fchrung (Junius, 2026).<\/p>\n
11<\/p>\n
Roland Barthes, \u201cMyth Today,\u201d in Mythologies (1957), trans. Richard Howard and Annette Lavers (Hill and Wang, 2012), 254. Barthes\u2019s model case of \u201ca total critique\u201d was \u201cthe simultaneously formal and historical, semiological and ideological description of the sacred\u201d in Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s Saint Genet (see \u201cMyth Today\u201d).<\/p>\n
12<\/p>\n
Barthes, \u201cMyth Today,\u201d 255. On Barthes\u2019s anti-Stalinist position in the years prior to the publication of Mythologies, see Andy Stafford, \u201c\u2018L\u2019histoire ne pourra jamais marcher contre l\u2019histoire\u2019: Roland Barthes et l\u2019antistalinisme, 1946\u20131953,\u201d Litt\u00e9rature, no. 186 (June 2017).<\/p>\n
13<\/p>\n
Harun Faroqhi (sic), \u201cDer t\u00e4gliche Mythos,\u201d Spandauer Volksblatt, May 16, 1965, 22. Reprinted in Harun Farocki, Meine N\u00e4chte mit den Linken: Texte 1964\u20131975 (Schriften, vol. 3), ed. Volker Pantenburg (Harun Farocki Institut, n.b.k., and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther K\u00f6nig, 2018). Translated by Ted Fendt as \u201cEveryday Myth,\u201d Grey Room, no. 79 (Spring 2020).<\/p>\n
14<\/p>\n
Farocki, \u201cDer Krieg findet immer einen Ausweg,\u201d 140.<\/p>\n
15<\/p>\n
Michel Foucault, interviewed by G\u00e9rard Raulet, \u201cStructuralisme et poststructuralisme,\u201d Telos 16, no. 55 (Spring 1983). Translated as \u201cHow Much Does It Cost for Reason to Tell the Truth?\u201d in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961\u20131984, ed. Sylv\u00e8re Lotringer, trans. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston (Semiotext(e), 1996), 348.<\/p>\n
16<\/p>\n
Devin Fore, Soviet Factography: Reality without Realism (University of Chicago Press, 2024), 79. Fore\u2019s monograph and his publications preceding it represent the most advanced research and writing on the subject of factography and \u201coperativism,\u201d thanks in part to their precision regarding the genealogies of vocabulary and conceptual frameworks. They point out that even if \u201cTret\u2019iakov popularized operativism in the West, and he certainly thought through its poetological consequences more rigorously than any of his contemporaries, \u2026 he hardly invented the phenomenon\u201d (127).<\/p>\n
17<\/p>\n
Two different versions of the radio script for the Sender Freies Berlin program (broadcast June 26, 1965) are located at Farocki\u2019s private archives in Berlin, courtesy of Antje Ehmann.<\/p>\n
18<\/p>\n
Barthes, \u201cMyth Today,\u201d 258\u201359, emphasis in original.<\/p>\n
19<\/p>\n
Barthes, \u201cMyth Today,\u201d 259, emphasis in original.<\/p>\n
20<\/p>\n
Barthes, \u201cMyth Today,\u201d 261.<\/p>\n
21<\/p>\n
Barthes, \u201cMyth Today,\u201d 261.<\/p>\n
22<\/p>\n
Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Indiana University Press, 1976), 7.<\/p>\n
23<\/p>\n
Charles J. Stivale, \u201cMythologies Revisited: Roland Barthes and the Left,\u201d Cultural Studies 16, no. 3 (2002): 465.<\/p>\n
24<\/p>\n
See, e.g., Sven Spieker, Art as Demonstration. A Revolutionary Recasting of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2024), 85\u2013107.<\/p>\n
25<\/p>\n
See Tom Holert, \u201cTabular Images: About The Division of all Days (1970) and Something Self-Explanatory (15 x) (1971),\u201d in Harun Farocki: Against What? Against Whom?, ed. Antje Ehmann and Kodwo Eshun (Koenig Books, 2009); and Nora M. Alter, Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence (Columbia University Press, 2024), 57\u201366.<\/p>\n
26<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, there is a better, more positive criterion for evaluating books on class struggle in the Third World: the formula: informative literature\u2013operative literature. Informative literature can inform about anything, and anything can follow from it. Operative literature has ideas about the consequences of the information it provides. In the case of Guatemala, operative literature should help the reader learn something about Guatemala and learn something for Guatemala \u2026 Operative literature should analyze the reasons for this and ask: Does Guatemala City have a different significance in Guatemala\u2019s agricultural economy than Havana had in Cuba? It should examine whether the privilege of permanent work in Latin America implies a different form of struggle for the proletariat. It should take its analyses so far as to help the revolution in its struggle against the United Fruit Company, rather than merely describing it.\u201d Franz Putz (Harun Farocki), \u201cRevolution f\u00fcr den Konsum? Vom Anspruch an die Information \u00fcber Lateinamerika,\u201d Die Zeit, no. 49 (December 6, 1968): 53. Reprinted in Farocki, Meine N\u00e4chte mit den Linken (Schriften, vol. 3). My translation.<\/p>\n
27<\/p>\n
Originally published as Harun Farocki, \u201cdie agitation verwissenschaftlichen und die wissenschaft politisieren,\u201d film, no. 3 (March 1969). Reprinted in Farocki, Meine N\u00e4chte mit den Linken (Schriften, vol. 3), 63.<\/p>\n
28<\/p>\n
The first new translations of theoretical texts by Tretyakov appeared in 1971 in the Frankfurt journal \u00c4sthetik & Kommunikation: Beitr\u00e4ge zur politischen Erziehung (Aesthetics & Communication: Contributions to Political Education), and in 1972 the collection Die Arbeit des Schriftstellers (The Work of the Writer), edited by the West German literary scholar Heiner Boencke, was published, as well as Lyrik Dramatik Prosa, edited by East German Slavic scholar Fritz Mierau.<\/p>\n
29<\/p>\n
Heiner Boencke, \u201cNachwort,\u201d in Sergei Tretjakov, Die Arbeit des Schriftstellers: Aufs\u00e4tze\u2014 Reportagen\u2014Portr\u00e4ts, ed. Heiner Boencke (Rowohlt, 1972), 211. Concerning Tretyakov\u2019s reception in West Germany, see also Eduard Jan Ditschek and Ewald Sch\u00fcrmann, \u201cDie Zeitschrift \u00c4sthetik und Kommunikation und die Tretjakov-Rezeption der Neuen Linken in der BRD: Interview mit Eberhard Kn\u00f6dler-Bunte (2014)\u201d \u2192<\/a>; and Eduard Jan Ditschek, \u201cEin Schriftsteller der \u00dcbergangsgesellschaft: Die Tretjakow-Rezeption der Neuen Linken in der BRD,\u201d lecture, University of Zurich, Slavisches Seminar (2014) \u2192<\/a>.<\/p>\n 30<\/p>\n A more intensive examination of the history and prehistory of operations research as a potential context for Farocki\u2019s and other cultural producers\u2019 interest in the trope of \u201coperativity\u201d has to be saved for another occasion. A few references can be found in Parikka, Operational Images, 31\u201333. Other current overviews of this episode in the history of science, military, and management theory include, e.g., Alexander A. Pechenkin, \u201cOperationalism as the Philosophy of Soviet Physics: The Philosophical Backgrounds of L. I. Mandelstam and His School,\u201d Synthese 124, no. 3 (September 2000); Richard Vahrenkamp, \u201cMathematical Management: Operations Research in the United States and Western Europe, 1945\u20131990,\u201d Management Revue 34, no. 1 (2023); and Fotios Petropoulos et al., \u201cOperational Research: Methods and Applications,\u201d Journal of the Operational Research Society 75, no. 3 (2024).<\/p>\n 31<\/p>\n Harun Farocki, \u201cPrim\u00e4r-Kommunikation und Sekund\u00e4r-Kommunikation,\u201d film, no. 11 (December 1969). Reprinted in Farocki, Meine N\u00e4chte mit den Linken (Schriften, vol. 3), 91. My translation.<\/p>\n 32<\/p>\n On this project with the working title \u201cMoving Bodies,\u201d see Erika Balsom\u2019s excellent essay \u201cMoving Bodies: Captured Life in the Late Works of Harun Farocki,\u201d Journal of Visual Culture 18, no. 3 (2019).<\/p>\n 33<\/p>\n Roland Barthes, \u201cRh\u00e9torique de l\u2019image,\u201d Communications, no. 4 (1964). Translated by Richard Howard as \u201cRhetoric of the Image,\u201d in Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation (Hill and Wang, 1985), 31. The first German translation, \u201cRhetorik des Bildes,\u201d was published in the leftist West Berlin\u2013based journal alternative, no. 54 (1967).<\/p>\n 34<\/p>\n Barthes, \u201cRhetoric of the Image,\u201d 31\u201332, emphasis in original.<\/p>\n 35<\/p>\n Sergei Tretyakov, \u201cObrazoborchestvo,\u201d Novyi Lef, no. 12 (1928): 43. Quoted from Fritz Mierau, Erfindung und Korrektur: Tretjakows \u00c4sthetik der Operativit\u00e4t (Akademie-Verlag, 1976), 172. My translation.<\/p>\n 36<\/p>\n Harun Farocki, \u201cAuge\/Maschine: Kurztexte\u201d (2004), in Lerne das Einfachste! (Schriften, vol. 6), 96. My translation.<\/p>\n 37<\/p>\n Harun Farocki, \u201cErkennen und Verfolgen\u201d (2004), in Lerne das Einfachste! (Schriften, vol. 6), 112. My translation.<\/p>\n 38<\/p>\n Farocki, \u201cDer Krieg findet immer einen Ausweg,\u201d 142.<\/p>\n 39<\/p>\n Farocki, \u201cKein Bild das traf\u2014oder: Fernsehbomben\u201d (2003), Lerne das Einfachste! (Schriften, vol. 6), 58.<\/p>\n 40<\/p>\n Nicolas Malev\u00e9, \u201cThe Computer Vision Lab: The Epistemic Configuration of Machine Vision,\u201d in The Networked Image in Post-Digital Culture, ed. Andrew Dewdney and Katrina Sluis (Routledge, 2022).<\/p>\n 41<\/p>\n Daney\u2019s reflections on the ontological shifts in visual culture, as observed in the image politics of the Second Gulf War, can be traced throughout Farocki\u2019s theorization of operative images. For a long quotation, see, for example, Farocki, \u201cKriegstagebuch\u201d (2003), in Lerne das Einfachste! (Schriften, vol. 6), 70. At the Duisburger Filmwoche 24 in 2000, Farocki discussed Von der Welt ins Bild: Augenzeugenberichte eines Cinephilen, a collection of essays by Daney, edited by Christa Bl\u00fcmlinger (Vorwerk 8, 2000), together with Bl\u00fcmlinger, Thomas Elsaesser, and Bert Rebhandl \u2192<\/a>.<\/p>\n 42<\/p>\n Serge Daney, \u201cAvant et apr\u00e8s l\u2019image,\u201d Revue d\u2019\u00e9tudes palestiniennes 3, no. 40 (1991). Translated by Melissa McMahon as \u201cBefore and After the Image,\u201d Discourse 21, no. 1 (Winter 1999), 189, emphasis in original. A German translation (to which Farocki had access, as stills from his and Andrei Ujica\u2019s Videograms of a Revolution, 1992, were printed in the same section of the book) was prominently featured in Poetics\/Politics: Das Buch zur documenta X, ed. Catherine David and Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Chevrier (Cantz, 1997).<\/p>\n \u200c \u00a9 2026 e-flux and the author<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Holert Harun Farocki, Eye\/Machine I, film still, 2001. 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