Alexander Kluge Books

A major collection that brings together 166 stories by the German master that deal with love.

A book about bitter fates--both already known and yet to unfold--and the many kinds of organized machinery built to destroy people. Alexander Kluge's work has long grappled with the Third Reich and its aftermath, and the extermination of the Jews forms its gravitational center. Kluge is forever reminding us to keep our present catastrophes in perspective--"calibrated"--against this historical monstrosity. Kluge's newest work is a book about bitter fates, both already known and yet to unfold. Above all, it is about the many kinds of organized machinery built to destroy people. These forty-eight stories of justice and injustice are dedicated to the memory of Fritz Bauer, a determined fighter for justice and district attorney of Hesse during the Auschwitz Trials. "The moment they come into existence, monstrous crimes have a unique ability," Bauer once said, "to ensure their own repetition." Kluge takes heed, and in these pages reminds us of the importance of keeping our powers of observation and memory razor sharp.

Two modern renaissance men pay homage to the medieval tale of Parsifal From Wolfram von Eschenbach's epic of chivalry to Richard Wagner's opera, from the knight as fool to the fool as savior, the story of Parsifal has struck deep chords with artists over the centuries. In this collaboration, Georg Baselitz's studies for a 2018 production of Parsifalat the Munich State Opera (2018) are paired with Alexander Kluge's responses to Baselitz's drawings, through stories in which he filters out individual elements from Eschenbach's epic, such as Parsifal's native wit or the figure of the Knight of the Cheerful Countenance. The result is an ongoing communication conducted over long periods of time: aspects of the Middle Ages can be found in the present. The volume concludes with Tristan Marquardt's text "Excerpts from a Parsifal Lexicon," which shows how far our contemporary language has diverged from Eschenbach's in terms of meaning and sound.

A highly readable and lighthearted, yet intellectual-stimulating exploration of the modern human condition. This volume concerns itself with the question of time, from the description of a brief fragment passing by in a matter of minutes to stories of the unexpected stock-market crash of 1929, a once-in-a-century event that Europeans call 'Black Friday' because Wall Street's collapse reached the Old World one day later. Through this exploration of time, Kluge ponders some fundamental questions not altered by the passing of time: What can I trust? How can I protect myself? What should I be afraid of? Our age today has achieved a new kind of obscurity. We've encountered a pandemic. We've witnessed the Capitol riots. We see before us inflation, war, and a burning planet. We gaze at the world with suspense. What we need in our lives is orientation--just like ships that navigate the high seas. We might just find that in Kluge's vignettes and stories.

A meditation on borders and transitional spaces, illustrated by Katharina Grosse Spector's small-format India paper edition from writer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge (born 1932) juxtaposes his film stills and writings on Niklas Luhmann's theory of "Separatrix" with a selection of luminous watercolors from German artist Katharina Grosse (born 1961).

Revolving around the opera, these tales are an "archaeological excavation of the slag-heaps of our collective existence"

A highly engaging exploration of existential questions, written in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. The Book of Commentary / Unquiet Garden of the Soul confronts the reader with questions of existential meaning, questions rendered all the more potent by the backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic: How fragile are we as human beings? How fragile are our societies? What is a "self," an "I," a "community"? How are we to orient ourselves? And what, if any, role does commentary play? In a fashion that will be familiar to longtime admirers of Alexander Kluge, the book stretches both back in time to the medieval glossators of Bologna and forward into interstellar space with imagined travel to the moon Europa. Kluge's characteristic brief, vignette-like prose passages are interspersed with images from his own film work and QR codes, forming a highly engaging, thoroughly contemporary read.

Through a global geopolitical lens, the book delves into the circus as a reflection of human experience, showcasing its duality as both a symbol of work and a celebration of excellence. Kluge's fascination with the circus weaves together fictional and non-fictional narratives, capturing the chaos and beauty of civilization's journey. The inclusion of QR codes enhances the experience with images and film sequences, presenting a diverse array of characters, from artists to animals, and memorializing their extraordinary performances amidst the complexities of life.

It was Max Weber who famously described politics as 'a strong, slow drilling through hard boards with both passion and judgement'. Taking this as his starting point, Alexander Kluge examines in 133 stories the tools available to political actors in the hard struggle for power. Weber's driller is certainly a suitable figure to embody intelligent tenacity as a precondition for political change. But what is a hammer in the business of politics? What is a 'subtle touch'? Finally, all these questions lead to a single one: What is the 'political' in the first place? As a literary man, the question that interests Kluge is: How does one tell stories about this? Politics, he says, consists of everyday feelings in a special state of matter. It is everywhere. It animates private lives as well as the public sphere, and hence in his stories, as well as the major figure, we also find the small, unknown, almost nameless ones: Elfriede Eilers alongside Pericles, the Chilean miners rescued from a depth of 700 metres next to Napolean, or the sensitive nape of three-month-old child's neck besides Alexander the Great. --

Anlässlich des 85. Geburtstags von Alexander Kluge richtet das Museum Folkwang dem Filmemacher, Autor und Künstler eine umfassende Werkschau aus. Die Ausstellung führt in sein künstlerisches ‚Pluriversum‘ ein und zielt auf die Veranschaulichung von Kluges zentralen Methoden, Themen und Denkwegen. Im Zentrum stehen dabei seine filmischen Collagen. Die ausstellungsbegleitende Publikation greift die Themen der Ausstellung auf und stellt das für Kluge zentrale Arbeitsprinzip der Kollaboration ins Zentrum, das ‚Zusammen denken‘ mit Wissenschaftlern und Künstlern wie beispielsweise Thomas Demand, Georg Baselitz oder Ben Lerner. Wie die Ausstellung entsteht auch die Publikation in enger Zusammenarbeit mit Alexander Kluge. „Alexander Kluge—Pluriversum“, Museum Folkwang, Essen (15. September 2017 bis 7. Januar 2018 und im 21er Haus in Wien von Februar bis April 2018).