Crisis-Proof

Exterior view of an administrative building with blue-tinged windows; different perspectives. A logo is embedded in the façade. It is winter. Title and subheading: FÜR DIE VIELEN – DIE ARBEITERKAMMER WIEN (For the Many—The Vienna Chamber of Labour). The shot moves inside: an entrance hall and visiting clients from the receptionist's point of view. Similar problems, mostly about unpaid wages. They are directed to a waiting area.

If it weren't for the subtitle, from a German perspective you might think you were in a job centre or a trade union advice bureau. In any case, you have entered the building of an organisation that assumes certain social functions. The central function is to advise workers. So the organisation has a side that is open to the public, there is general traffic; and it has an internal side that reaches the public only indirectly. This is where events are planned, where people's own actions are controlled and there is accountability to a different kind of outside: politics.

The organisation of the Chamber of Labour is an institution close to the state. Similar to state administration, it is structured hierarchically. Some people have names and a major voice in internal meetings. They are not seen talking to clients seeking advice, but among staff or at public events. They give speeches on behalf of the organisation, they open events, they speak in parliament and in front of TV cameras. They have power within the organisation and are bound by instructions from politicians. Under them, heads of department act with special fields of responsibility. Below them, ordinary staff are responsible for the day-to-day running of the organisation, distributing mail, pushing file-laden trolleys along the corridors, and directing clients to waiting rooms.

Organisation or Institution?

Organisations are visible and observable; if they have rooms, buildings even, they are easily separable from the rest of society. In these rooms, speech becomes audible and the scope of action of individuals becomes visible, for instance in meetings, especially when actors from different levels of the internal hierarchy participate. As visible and audible institutions, organisations have repeatedly been the subject of documentary films. The British documentary film school of the 1930s in particular focused on (state) organisations (and their benefits)—such as the post office in NIGHT MAIL (1936) or the fire brigade in FIRES WERE STARTED (1943)—organisations which provide services for many and thus relieve individuals of tasks like putting out a fire or delivering a letter themselves. But documentary "auteur" filmmakers like Harun Farocki or Hartmut Bitomsky have also turned their attention to organisations, albeit show often only a few exemplary situations, such as Farocki's observation of an advertising agency presentation to a client in DER AUFTRITT (1996). More recently, the focus in nonfiction filmmaking has shifted to educational institutions, such as adult education centres and schools, most recently in HERR BACHMANN UND SEINE KLASSE (2021).

In all these films, organisations come into view by way of very different degrees of emphasis; attention can, for instance, focus on the social roles of pupils and teachers and neglect the hierarchical structure of the school as a whole, or, as in the film about the British postal service, it can focus on the purpose of the organisation itself and neglect those individuals who perform its tasks. But organisations always become visible through the specificity of the actions and modes of speech taking place within them which give expression to their function, and all films provide answers to questions like: What is the purpose of a zoo, a university, a factory? And what room for manoeuvre remains with staff?

But why do film critics like to talk so much about "institutions" when discussing Frederick Wiseman, for instance, the American director who has documented both state institutions like the military and private ones like a department store? And Constantin Wulff, following the Wiseman tradition, who is also credited with portraying institutions like in his film IN DIE WELT (2010), about a maternity clinic, or WIE DIE ANDEREN (2015), about a child and adolescent psychiatric clinic.

The institutional can for instance be made apparent in the repetition of actions that specifically do not arise from the personal motivation of an actor but obey a kind of anonymised compulsion to act.

In contrast to organisations, it seems far less clear what constitutes an institution. For example, it can be said that the Louvre is a Parisian institution, although by this we only mean that the Louvre is associated with and as a site in Paris. Even with "institutional filmmaker" Frederick Wiseman it remains unclear whether he is in fact documenting organisations or institutions. Sociologists in this field are also ambiguous on the subject but do tend to see institutions more as invisible entities, and to understand them as rule systems that govern social, political, economic, or cultural life. This is why marriage and family are referred to as institutions rather than organisations, even though both involve formal legal contractual relationships which are, after all, associated with an inherent purpose. Since the terminology is therefore ambiguous, it is also clearer in this case to refer to the Chamber of Labour primarily as an organisation and only in the second instance to ask what might be institutional in its observable workings.

Since the institutional is described as a set of rules, as requirements or norms of behaviour, this can for instance be made apparent in the repetition of actions that specifically do not arise from the personal motivation of an actor but obey a kind of anonymised compulsion to act. For example, the delivery of mail is secondary to the specific function of the Chamber of Labour, but it is highly institutional, a daily, reliable ritual in every organisation.

The Pandemic as an Opportunity

Due to the timing of its shooting—the pandemic fell in the middle of its filming—FÜR DIE VIELEN offers a great opportunity to focalise the institutional in relation to the specifically purpose-bound organizational. An invitation to the French economist Thomas Piketty (“Capital in the 21st Century”) to present his new book in Vienna forms the interface for the time before and with Corona, before and after the first hard lockdown in Austria in March 2020. It occurs precisely at a time when everything is disrupted that the advantage of institutional action comes to the fore. And so, with the Chamber of Labour we experience an organisation which, with the same measures as any other (purchasing laptops, working from home, switching from on-site measures to media-mediated ones), can nevertheless meet its specific goals.

It is precisely because the Chamber of Labour already supports state action that it can react so well to the pandemic-related demands of politics. Its traditional cooperation with the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions puts it in a position to easily respond to labour law requirements and collective bargaining regulations, and its research department, already involved in data collection, can quickly identify who will be the losers in the pandemic on the labour market. The film thus also exemplifies how the longevity of institutions helps the organisation to cope with states of emergency.

Eva Hohenberger is Research Associate at the Institut für Medienwissenschaft at the Ruhr University Bochum.

Translation: Claire Cahm