Interview: Daphne Dragona talks to Harun Farocki (Neural, 2012)

Don't miss this splendid interview on Neural: Daphne Dragona talks to Harun Farocki (b. 1944) about Serious Games. It was originally published in November 2012 and highlights the connection between Vilem Flusser and the German artist.

Here's an excerpt of Dragona's conversation with Farocki:

Are you also interested in the positive aspects of video games?

[HF] Well, yes. I would not want to be judgmental. The problem is that there is a great contradiction between video games and real life. In real life we have no agency; we can’t control everything. In video games suddenly you are the master of the universe. They bring back a brutal vitality where your life is based on competition, vital competition.

On the other hand of course it is interesting that in video games you can also navigate in different ways, allowing you to look into details. It is not like in a film where you have to watch a main story and have to identify with the main hero.

Maybe I should to clarify that it is the computer-animated images that interest me, rather than games. These images are on the verge of becoming the standard, making images based on photography begin to look anachronistic. Because computer-generated ones are not just a copy of the world – they are a new creation of the world." (Neural)

Meanwhile, Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art gallery in Oldenburg, Germany, is organizing Harun Farocki: Playing the Game (April 12 - June 9 2013), the first comprehensive solo exhibition of Farocki in norther Germany. Curated by Claudia Giannetti, the exhibition "focuses on the relationship between technical images and the concept of games and playing by the rules, both in our society as well as in films and narratives. It becomes clear how he inimitably and frequently plays with the categories of documentation, fiction, and staging reality."

Related articles

Game Art: Harun Farocki's "Parallel" (2012)