Vacuum Cleaner or Submachine Gun: A Traveling Cinema for Engineers

Harun Farocki (1944–2014) studied at the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) in West Berlin from 1966 to 1968. He realized more than one hundred productions for television, cinema, and radio (documentaries, essay films, fiction, children's television, radio plays) in the following five decades, which he complemented, since 1995, with video installations for exhibition spaces. Farocki's films and installations have been shown widely in solo and group exhibitions, including Documenta 10 in 1997 and Documenta 12 in 2007. A prolific writer, most notably in the journal Filmkritik, which he coedited between 1974 and 1983, he also taught at various institutions, including DFFB, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.