2014, Videos for installation – Mexico

Series of videos made as part of the collaborative project and workshop “Labor in a Single Shot” by Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann

www.labour-in-a-single-shot.net

Frida Kallejera

Video 1 (1:30) – Video 2 (1:30)

Zócalo Plumbers

Video (1:04)

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Concept

Labour in a Single Shot 
is a project that Antje Ehmann and Harun Farocki started in 2011:

We have initiated video production workshops in 15 cities worldwide. From February 2013 on we are also setting up a series of exhibitions that will show selected workshop results in a larger context.

Constraints
 The task of the workshops is to produce videos of 1 to 2 minutes in length, each taken in a single shot. The camera can be static, panning or travelling – only cuts are not allowed.

Labour
 The subject of investigation is ‘labour’: paid and unpaid, material and immaterial, rich in tradition or altogether new. In some African countries an entire family lives from cultivating a tiny strip of land next to the highway. In many European countries farmers survive by leaving their soil uncultivated and being paid for it, an arrangement monitored by satellites.

Camera Work
 The task as set leads straight to basic questions of cinematographic form and raises essential questions about the filmmaking process itself. Almost every form of labour is repetitive. How can one find a beginning and an end when capturing it? Should the camera be still or moving? How to film the choreography of a workflow in one single shot in the best and most interesting way? Yet the workshop results show that a single shot of 1 or 2 minutes can already create a narrative, suspense or surprise. And this is precisely what we love about many of the workshop videos.

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