Brianne Cohen
German filmmaker Harun Farocki has tackled issues of deregulation both explicitly and metaphorically. In the past this has included, for instance, an overt, leftist critique of the financial market deregulation of the 1980s and its concomitant “casino capitalism.” More recently, Farocki has experimented with a type of Brechtian deregulation in video installation, relinquishing his career-long role as a Benjaminian “author as producer” in order to imbue collective viewers with more responsibility in the production of meaning. This essay interrogates Farocki’s globalized update on the “epic theater” in his piece Deep Play (2007), which works to transform spectators into ethnographic observer-participants. Read more
