In the Soldier’s Head evokes the traumas of war through the prism of the hallucinations of a soldier. Inspired by the artist’s father,a soldier in Algeria who then suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder,the video depicts the delusions flowing from a mind ravaged by violence: a vision grown from the inside out. Like a mirage amidst a blank, desert expanse, specters are conjured as the inanimate comes to life.
For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations. One of their projects consists in using virtual reality (environments created to simulate this world) for therapeutic reasons for soldiers suffering traumas after the Iraq war. The double projection creates a parallel between animations and testimonies by soldiers reliving their mission, the explosions, gunshots and ambushes, their fears and their guilt.
Taking formal cues from the optical illusions and landscapes drawn in pre-cinematic entertainment, French artist Christine Rebet seeks to unveil the way these kinds of devices are mirrored in contemporary politics and media...
In the 1970s and 80s, the feature films Harun Farocki made contributed to theorizing essay-films, a cinema genre that juxtaposes archival images of different sources (news, film industry) with voiceover commentaries...
For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations...
In the Soldier’s Head evokes the traumas of war through the prism of the hallucinations of a soldier...