Lost in Narration: Transparent Storyteller and Mobile Spectator in Early Harun Farocki

Abstract

In this article my aim is suggest the move from the discussions regarding the immobile gaze in terms of film theory and editing towards the discussion on wandering or mobile spectator enabled by the mobility of filmic means such as narration and camera. I claim that mobility of the viewer is not necessarily a corporeal condition, but a political and emancipatory potential arising from a certain aspects of film attributes that allow for spectator’s engagement with what is being seen on screen. I will look for at least four sets of what I consider prerequisites for the emancipatory engagement of the spectator in my specific case studies of Harun Farocki’s films: mobility of the gaze, visibility of narrative agency, visibility of film language and procedure and the visibility of the spectator himself. I claim that the procedures described in this analysis can nullify Baudryan view of film as a product of the ideological effects of cinematography as manipulative apparatus. Hence, standard model of film theory described by Bordwell and Burch in form of IMR is not applicable to Farocki’s model. Instead of the image as a final product, Farocki is constantly presenting the viewer the whole procedure of the production (apparatus, narration, camera and the work needed to produce an image). In doing so, he does not render reality banal, but positions it as a starting point for viewers’ intellectual emancipation.

Keywords

• visual culture
• Harun Farocki
• emancipation
• narration
• spectator