LABOUR IN A SINGLE SHOT / EINE EINSTELLUNG ZUR ARBEIT
SAT 7 NOV 2015 4PM
 
The Goethe-Institut London is pleased to present ‘Labour in a Single Shot’ / ‘Eine Einstellung zur Arbeit’, a project by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki realised in collaboration with filmmakers from all over the world and the Goethe-Institut. In this one-off event we will screen a selection of the videos produced during project workshops that took place in 15 cities around the world between 2011 and 2014.
 
Antje Ehmann will introduce the screening, which will be followed by a conversation between her and Annie Ring, University College London. The event will close with an informal reception.
 
‘Labour in a Single Shot’ is a co-production of the Harun Farocki Filmproduktion
with the Goethe-Institut.
 
The event is presented in collaboration with the German Screen Studies Network.
 
Venue: Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2PH
Booking: 020 7596 4047 or via Eventbrite
Tickets: £ 3, free for Goethe-Institut language students and library members, booking essential
www.facebook.com/goethe.institut.london
@gi_london1
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/sta/lon/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=20613182

 
About ‘Labour in a Single Shot’
 
Starting in 2011 artist, curator, and author Antje Ehmann and filmmaker, video artist and author Harun Farocki initiated video production workshops in 15 cities around the world in which participants were to engage with the subject of ‘labour’: paid and unpaid, material and immaterial, traditional or new. The videos could not be longer than two minutes and they had to be taken in a single shot. The camera could be static, panning or travelling but cuts were not allowed. This concept references the Brother Lumière’s famous film Workers Leaving the Factory which was filmed in one continuous take from a fixed camera position.
 
The result of these workshops, which were organised together with local branches of the Goethe-Institut, are 400 films which show people engaged in all kinds of work, each film taking a different stance, literally and figuratively, towards its subject while also recording the diverse mental attitudes and bodily relation people have to their work.
 
Facing the challenge of filming something that might be essentially repetitive, continuous and boring, the films also foreground the work of the camera operator and his or her aesthetic decisions. In the multitude and diversity the films form a visual compendium and an archive of labour and cinema in the 21st century that is never boring or repetitive but enhances and simultaneously questions our perception and understanding of work.
 
All the films can be watched on a dedicated website, at random, or sorted by city, colour or type of work. A selection of 90 films was shown as an installation at the House of World Culture in Berlin from 27 February to 6 April 2015 with an accompanying conference. This exhibition also presented the project ‘Workers Leaving the Factory in 15 Cities’ (2011 – 2014), consisting of contemporary remakes of the famous film by the Lumière Brothers which were shot in 15 cities all over the world. Also included in the exhibition was the installation ‘Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades’ (2006), which showed scenes of workers leaving the factory throughout the history of cinema, from the Lumière Brothers (1895) to Lars van Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2000).
 
The project is currently on view at the Venice Biennale, where it can be seen until 22 November 2015. Past presentations took place at the Boston Center for the Arts and the Sherman Gallery at Boston University between September and December 2014.
 
 
www.labour-in-a-single-shot.net
www.harunfarocki.de