Manuals for Life: Harun Farocki on Work and Play
Keynote by Thomas Elsaesser (film theorist, University of Amsterdam), Introduction by Detlef Gericke-Schönhagen (director Goethe-Institut Boston/Vilnius)
With English-German simultaneous translation
The international conference, developed jointly with Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann, takes as its starting point for discussion the phenomenology of work as presented in the exhibition. It probes methods of cinematic compression with regard to their discursive potential, and debates questions about work conditions, relationships, and practices in their global and multiple manifestations.
The conference will be launched with a keynote by the film scholar Thomas Elsaesser. This address will map out the theses and leitmotifs of the conference and exhibition: work as a subject, and film as a medium and a means of expression.
Thomas Elsaesser is a film scholar, film critic, and professor of film and television studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is an important representative of international film studies whose books and essays on film theory, genre theory, Hollywood, film history, media archaeology and new media, European auteur cinema, and installation art have been published in more than twenty languages. In Germany he is known primarily for his studies on almost every era of German film history, including a collective volume on Harun Farocki.