Auge/Maschine I

Harun Farocki

Auge/Maschine I, 2001

Artwork text

At the center of the film are images of the Gulf War, which attracted world-wide attention in 1991. In the shots of projectiles on target flights, the bomb and the reporter were identical, according to a thesis of the philosopher Klaus Theweleit. In the same way, photographic images and computer-simulated images could not be distinguished from each other. With the loss of the “authentic image,” the eye’s historical function as a witness was also cancelled out. It is said that in the Gulf War what was new was not the weaponry, but the image policy. The foundations for electronic warfare were laid there. Today, more important than penetrating power and kilo-tons is the so-called C3I cycle, which now encom-passes our world. C3I means: Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence —and it means global and tactical early warning systems, site monitors using seismic, acoustic, and radar sensors, radio-location systems and eavesdropping on enemy communications as well as repressing all of these things with jamming transmitters. (Harun Farocki)