A Labour of Love

By Neil Cooper, 16.02.2023

Magda Kulag, Natural History, Labour in a Single Shot. Lodz, 2013. From Labour in a Single Shot by Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki, 2013.

Harun Farocki:Consider Labour, the first major Scottish exhibition of the pioneering German filmmaker has opened at Cooper Gallery in Dundee. Neil Cooper reviews.

As the criss-crossing cacophony of Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann’s ten-screen installation, ‘Labour in a Single Shot’ (2012-2014), engulfs you from all sides, close your eyes and it’s easy to believe you’re in the heart of some twenty-first century global village. With monitors hung back-to-back on metal platforms that could double up on building sites, this compendium of 60 moving image snapshots of people at work forms the centrepiece of this first major exhibition in Scotland by German filmmaker Farocki. The resultant bombardment of sound and vision captures all the bustle and noise of a world in messy motion. 

Made prior to Farocki’s death in 2014 aged 70, ‘Labour in a Single Shot’ forms part of a larger project begun with Ehmann in 2011 by way of a series of film and video workshops in fifteen cities. Here, participants were tasked with producing videos one to two minutes long, based on the idea of ‘labour’, and filmed in a single shot. 

A butcher in Bangalore, an electrician touting for business at the side of the road in Johannesburg, and riot police in Buenos Aires are all in the mix. A sex chat line operator holds the line in Mexico City, and workers make quilts for IKEA in Hangzhou. Amid the hubbub, there are many more backstage glimpses of those who keep capital moving. As the rhythms of assorted shifts collide, the result is an everyday industrial symphony, with the films themselves becoming part of the production line, and viewers cast as off-duty tourists passing by.

‘Labour in a Single Shot’s’ epic rough guide is framed by three earlier films by Farocki; ‘In Comparison’ (2009), ‘Workers Leaving the Factory’ (1995) and ‘Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith’ (1988). 

‘In Comparison’ (2009) focuses on the process of brick building in thirteen cities. As physical foundations of societies develop from East to West, it becomes less of a communal exercise and more a tech-driven conveyor belt.

‘Workers Leaving the Factory’ (1995) takes the Lumiere brothers’ 1895 footage of workers exiting their photography factory in Lyon as the starting point for an archive riff on the choreography of clocking off that reveals a series of mass movements. 

In ‘Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith’ (1988), Farocki’s interview with the German author explores the relationship between the physical, the cerebral, and the craft instilled in both of Glaser’s vocations. As notions of the workplace shift since the Covid 19 pandemic, Farocki and Ehmann’s focus on those doing the grafting is a labour of love in every way.  

Harun Farocki:Consider Labour  is exhibited at Cooper Gallery, Dundee until 1 April