Labour in a Single Shot

This collection of essays offers a critical assessment of Labour in a Single Shot, a groundbreaking documentary video workshop. From 2011 to 2014, curator Antje Ehmann and film- and video-maker Harun Farocki produced an art project of truly global proportions. They travelled to fifteen cities around the world to conduct workshops inspired by cinema history's first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, shot in 1895 by the Lumière brothers in France. While the workshop videos are in colour and the camera was not required to remain static, Ehmann and Farocki's students were tasked with honouring the original Lumière film's basic parameters of theme and style. The fascinating result is a collection of more than 550 short videos that have appeared in international exhibitions and on an open-access website, offering the widest possible audience the opportunity to ponder contemporary labour in multiple contexts around the world.

Roy Grundmann is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Boston University. Peter J. Schwartz is Associate Professor of German, Comparative Literature, and Film at Boston University. Gregory H. Williams is Associate Professor of Contemporary and Modern Art History at Boston University.

Acknowledgements, 1. Foreword: Eine Einstellung zur Arbeit/Labour in a Single Shot (Detlef Gericke), 2. Labour in a Single Shot: Critical Perspectives - Editors' Introduction (Roy Grundmann, Peter J. Schwartz, and Gregory H. Williams), 3. Labour in a Single Shot - Antje Ehmann's Workshop and Exhibition Journals , 2011-2014 (Antje Ehmann), History, 4. Attitudes Towards Work : On the Historical Metamorphoses of Psychotechnology (Peter J. Schwartz), 5. One Shot, Two Mediums, Three Centuries (Roy Grundmann), 6. The Body and the Senses: Harun Farocki on Work and Play (Thomas Elsaesser), Poetics, 7. Ten Propositions (Dale Hudson and Patricia R. Zimmermann), 8. Videopoetics of Labour in a Single Shot (José Gatti), 9. Knowing When to Be Wary of Images (David Barker), Embodiment, 10. Punching In/Punching Out: Labour, Care, and Leisure at Work and at Play (Jeannie Simms), 11. Labour's Mediating Objects: Tools, Tactility, and Embodiment (Gregory H. Williams), Networks, 12. Database Labour: Supply Chains, Logistics, and Flow (Thomas Stubblefield), 13. Artwork and Artefact: The Networked Conditions of Labour in a Single Shot (Gloria Sutton), 14. Reading the Web Catalogue: Labour in a Single Shot as Online Environment (Vinicius Navarro), Bibliography Index of Labour in a Single Shot workshop videos, General index