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Columbia University Press

book: Harun Farocki
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Harun Farocki

Forms of Intelligence
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2024

About this book

This groundbreaking book is an incisive and comprehensive analysis of Harun Farocki’s oeuvre, shedding new light on his media experimentation and writings across platforms and venues.

Author / Editor information

Nora M. Alter is a professor of film and media arts at Temple University. Her books include Chris Marker (2006) and The Essay Film After Fact and Fiction (Columbia, 2018).

Reviews

Eric Rentschler, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University:
In Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence, Nora Alter rises admirably to the challenges and complexities posed by the endeavors of an oppositional archivist/archaeologist, an unrelenting deconstructor/reconstructor, and an inimitable contrarian. Drawing on the artist's elaborate personal archives and benefitting from decades of interactions with Farocki and his closest collaborators, Alter offers original perspectives on a rich legacy dedicated to the vast meaning potentials of images within late-modern technocratic culture.

Lutz Koepnick, author of Resonant Matter: Sound, Art, and the Promise of Hospitality:
Nora Alter's book is an exemplary labor of love: a thoroughly absorbing engagement with Harun Farocki's films that illuminates his legacy and allows us to better understand where his work has left us—not just as film scholars or intellectuals, but as humans and citizens, trying to find a compass amid the precarious history of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence approaches Farocki's films with the very intelligence, care, sophistication, and open-mindedness his work continues to call for and deserves.

Gertrud Koch, professor emerita of film studies, Freie Universität Berlin:
Nora M. Alter, the comprehensive and eminent chronicler of essay films, elegantly interweaves the artistic and intellectual work of Harun Farocki in an analytical portrait of the artist and his work from the early student films to the major installations and global multimedia projects of his late years. This book provides new insight into the fascinating world of Harun Farocki as image maker and theorist.

Anton Kaes, author of Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War:
Nora Alter offers a superb tribute to Harun Farocki's immense impact as a filmmaker, media theorist, and digital artist. The author, who was part of Farocki's circle in Berlin, combines a compelling intellectual biography with an incisive analysis of his multifaceted work. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Farocki's legacy.

Renée Green, artist, filmmaker, and author of Other Planes of There: Selected Writings:
Bravo for this first approach in English to provide a combined descriptive analysis and compelling guide to Harun Farocki’s intriguing work. Alter raises questions that make it possible to explore the “interconnected constellations of ideas” that characterize Farocki’s production, yet opens paths to stimulate unique ongoing probes into his rich and resonating oeuvre.

Jaimey Fisher, author of German Ways of War: The Affective Geographies and Generic Transformations of German War Films:
Harun Farocki: Forms of Intelligence offers a full and fascinating portrait of one of the most important postwar German filmmakers. Addressing the sheer diversity and quantity of Farocki's work is, frankly, an astounding feat—one that Alter, in this highly engaging volume, accomplishes with alacrity.

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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 8, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9780231560825
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Other:
39 b&w images
Downloaded on 28.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7312/alte21549/html?lang=en
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