A war without soldiers like a factory without workers

‘Thinking of a war of autonomous machines, a war without soldiers like a factory without workers’ is how Harun Farocki ends the first video of his Eye/Machine trilogy, an astute reflection on the dangers of a society in the hands of the instruments of social control. Although in this trilogy he analyses the treatment of image construction by the media during the Gulf War in 1991, his fine-tuned visual essay activates critical thinking at a time when the possibility of increased measures of social discipline demands a greater capacity for analysis. Reviewing his filmography is today a necessary pedagogic exercise.