Harun Farocki : Weiche Montagen = Soft Montages

"Organized by the Kunsthaus Bregenz, this exhibition, which is the most comprehensive retrospective of his work in Austria to date, spans the period from 1968 to the present and for the first time in Europe shows three video installations that, with the support of the KUB, were created especially for this occasion and form part of the series Serious Games. For these new video installations, which each last eight minutes, Farocki shot footage in military facilities in the USA and combined these sequences with material from computer simulations. Reminiscent of computer games, these programs are used by soldiers to practice for real emergency situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and potential crisis zones. A variation of this can be found in another film in the Serious Games series, Immersion, which deals with the reenactment of soldiers’ traumatic wartime experiences using the same kind of simulation technology, which in this case serves therapeutic purposes." -- publisher's website