The advent of commercial television in Germany in 1984, and the ensuing paradigm shift away from a mandate for quality and education towards one of quotas and profit, was also – in hindsight at least – one of the motives for the founding of VideoFest. Video art was seen at the time essentially as a deconstruction of the new flood of glaringly colourful commercial imagery. The privatisation of television was, however, only part of a larger social reconstruction, which has come to be known as neo-liberalisation; it was not enough that financial capital was "freed from its shackles" through changes in regulations: people's attitudes also needed to adapt to the new system. Through an agonisingly slow piece of observation, Die Schulung – Indoctrination (VideoFilmFest ’88) reveals in detail how this difficult process plays out. By 2008, the reconstruction of society had long since been completed; neo-liberalism was sliding into its first big crisis and a banker was federal president: die Führung – Guided Tour documents his visit in this capacity to an art college.

Die Schulung – Indoctrination, Harun Farocki, de 1987, 44 min

Führung – Guided Tour, René Frölke, de 2011, 37 min

(Image: "Die Schulung" © Harun Farocki, 1987)