Gegen-Musik, or Counter-Music, is one of Farocki’s most formally distilled and conceptually rich essay films. Focused on the visual rhythms of the modern city, it explores how urban life is orchestrated through images that are not made for cinema but for control: surveillance cameras, traffic monitors, CCTV systems. These "operative images" are contrasted with traditional cinematic forms, exposing a shift from storytelling to regulation. The city is no longer merely filmed—it films itself.

Through its fragmented yet precise montage, Gegen-Musik draws attention to the systems that govern movement and behavior in public space. Escalators, security gates, traffic lights, and commercial flows become part of an invisible choreography dictated by logistical imperatives. Rather than simply critiquing surveillance, the film reflects on the aesthetics of control: how repetition, tempo, and fragmentation govern both urban life and cinematic language. Farocki composes a counterpoint to this system—an anti-score that reveals the politics embedded in the visual infrastructures we take for granted.