Systems for Agitation: A Harun Farocki Retrospective
17.04.2026 - 24.05.2026
In the late 1960s amid a highly politicized cultural climate, German artist and filmmaker Harun Farocki (1944 – 2014) began making films that question the forces behind the images we encounter every day. Across more than five decades and over 120 films and installations, he developed a pioneering practice on ways to collectively explore how images shape perception and encode the social, political and technological structures that produce and circulate them. A concern of high relevance in our image-saturated present.
Het Documentaire Paviljoen presents Systems for Agitation: A Harun Farocki Retrospective bringing together a selection of Farocki’s films and installations, alongside a series of collaborative events. Ranging from canonical and early works such as Inextinguishable Fire (1969), Videograms of a Revolution (1992), to less frequently screened projects. Across these works, Farocki acts as an ethnographer of everyday life, analysing the structures and systems that shape how we see and experience the world, mixing urgency with his signature subtle humour
Building on his close observation of everyday life, Farocki’s works question the process through which images are created, framed and circulated. By entering the concealed spaces where images are produced, such as editing rooms, post-production studios, and techno-military laboratories, Farocki reveals what becomes visible, and how reality itself is framed through the act of seeing. For him, filmmaking is a form of inquiry: How can I make visible what you do not (wish to) see? By demanding a form of engagement, Farocki’s work demonstrates that to see is never neutral; to see is always to take a position.
Specials
Guest programmes analyzing Farocki's practice. With introductions, conversations, a reading performance and various compilation programmes.
Films
Harun Farocki Exhibition
The retrospective features a free exhibition with three of Farocki’s installations. A reading space in the exhibition gallery offers publications by and about Farocki, offering the opportunity to familiarize with Farocki’s teachings and writings.
