The Physiognomy of Power.
Harun Farocki & Florentina Pakosta
Publication to the exhibition from November 2021 to March 2022.
Ed. by Thorsten Sadowsky for the Generali Foundation Collection—Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Preface by Dietrich Karner and Thorsten Sadowsky. Texts by Antje Ehmann, Elsy Lahner, Christina Natlacen und Jürgen Tabor. Interview by Jürgen Tabor with Florentina Pakosta.
The exhibition and the publication The Physiognomy of Power considered the oeuvres of the German filmmaker Harun Farocki and the Austrian graphic artist and painter Florentina Pakosta from a common perspective. Whereas Farocki has been one of the most important documentary filmmakers and media artists in Germany since the 1970s, Pakosta is one of the central figures of the feminist avant-garde of Austria and a notable representative of politically critical drawing, graphic art and painting. The critical thought of the two artists is rooted in the German and Austrian postwar eras. It directs an analytical and documentary or satirical and narrational, but in any case oppositional focus towards the structures of domination and power mechanisms in politics, economy, culture and society. There are two aspects which, in spite of all diversity, unite the oeuvres of Farocki and Pakosta: on the one hand, their relentless critique of power; and on the other hand, the language that they chose for this purpose in their respective media—the language of a critical realism.