Richard Langston – författare

Nazi Germany's book burnings, its campaign against ""degenerate art,"" and its persecution of experimental artists pushed the avant-garde to the brink of extinction. How the avant-garde came back, finding a new purpose in the wake of the war, is the subject of ""Visions of Violence"". An extreme faction of aesthetic modernity intent on bulldozing contemporary life, the avant-garde has regularly employed visions of violence in their push for societal and cultural renewal. But in the shadow of unparalleled war and genocide, such aesthetic violence lost its force. This book explores the reconfiguration of the avant-garde in response to the violent transformation of European reality. Citing the emergence of independent avant-garde practitioners in the place of the previous collective, Richard Langston considers six individual exemplars of Germany's post-fascist avant-garde - works that span the last six decades: painter, writer, and filmmaker Peter Weiss' appropriation of French surrealism in the fifties; writer Dieter Wellershoff's coterie of ""new realists""; artist WolfVostell's mediation and conflation of the experiences of the Auschwitz trials and the Vietnam War; poet and novelist Dieter Brinkmann's collages from the seventies; the multimedia displacements of Alexander Kluge; and the performative engagements of dramatists Christoph Schlingensief and Rene Pollesch. Taking stock of the evolution of Germany's post-fascist avant-gardes, Langston's book shows how the movement from Weiss to Pollesch exhibits the problems that both modernity and postmodernity pose for an aesthetic engagement of Germany's violent past.

Alexander Kluge is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, he has also cowritten three acclaimed volumes of critical theory, published countless essays and numerous works of fiction, and continues to make films even as he expands his video production to the internet. Despite Kluge's five decades of work in philosophy, literature, television, and media politics, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. With the aim of introducing Kluge's heterogeneous mind to an Anglophone readership, Difference and Orientation assembles thirty of his essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. This landmark volume brings together some of Kluge's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight Kluge's career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.

Alexander Kluge is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, he has also cowritten three acclaimed volumes of critical theory, published countless essays and numerous works of fiction, and continues to make films even as he expands his video production to the internet. Despite Kluge's five decades of work in philosophy, literature, television, and media politics, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. With the aim of introducing Kluge's heterogeneous mind to an Anglophone readership, Difference and Orientation assembles thirty of his essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. This landmark volume brings together some of Kluge's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight Kluge's career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.

Revitalizes Alexander Kluge's classic 1979 film, showing it to be not just great storytelling but also an exploration of the poetic force of Frankfurt School Critical Theory.Alexander Kluge achieved his breakthrough at the 1966 Venice Biennale with his first feature, Yesterday Girl (Abschied von gestern), but it is arguably his 1979 film The Patriot (Die Patriotin) that first embodied the great heights his storytelling could reach. Titled after its heroine, the history teacher Gabi Teichert, The Patriot is, however, much more than just a curious story about a headstrong pedagogue intent on teaching kids a version of German history that does not end in war and death: it is one of the finest examples of Kluge's exploration of the poetic force of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. This book pursues The Patriot's conception as a cinematic extension of the theoretical agenda that Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt began developing just as the Frankfurt School's first generation was ending. It will guide twenty-first-century English-language readers past superficial interpretations of the film's engagement with German history. By asking how and why The Patriot brings the twin concepts of history and obstinacy - the human propensity to resist capitalism's forces of expropriation and alienation - to the screen, this book revitalizes Kluge's film for the new millennium.

Collaborators for more than four decades, lawyer, author, filmmaker, and multimedia artist Alexander Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt are an exceptional duo in the history of Critical Theory precisely because their respective disciplines operate so differently. Dark Matter argues that what makes their contributions to the Frankfurt School so remarkable is how they think together in spite of these differences. Kluge and Negt's "gravitational thinking" balances not only the abstractions of theory with the concreteness of the aesthetic, but also their allegiances to Frankfurt School mentors with their fascination for other German, French, and Anglo-American thinkers distinctly outside the Frankfurt tradition.At the core of all their adventures in gravitational thinking is a profound sense that the catastrophic conditions of modern life are not humankind's unalterable fate. In opposition to modernity's disastrous state of affairs, Kluge and Negt regard the huge mass of dark matter throughout the universe as the lodestar for thinking together with others, for dark matter is that absolute guarantee that happier alternatives to our calamitous world are possible. As illustrated throughout Langston's study, dark matter's promise-its critical orientation out of catastrophic modernity-finds its expression, above all, in Kluge's multimedia aesthetic.

Collaborators for more than four decades, lawyer, author, filmmaker, and multimedia artist Alexander Kluge and social philosopher Oskar Negt are an exceptional duo in the history of Critical Theory precisely because their respective disciplines think so differently. Dark Matter argues that what makes their contributions to the Frankfurt School so remarkable is how they think together in spite of these differences. Kluge and Negt''s "gravitational thinking" balances not only the abstractions of theory with the concreteness of the aesthetic, but also their allegiances to Frankfurt School mentors with their fascination for other German, French, and Anglo-American thinkers distinctly outside the Frankfurt tradition. At the core of all their adventures in gravitational thinking is a profound sense that the catastrophic conditions of modern life are not humankind''s unalterable fate. In opposition to modernity''s disastrous state of affairs, Kluge and Negt regard the huge mass of dark matter throughout the universe as the lodestar for thinking together with others, for dark matter is that absolute guarantee that happier alternatives to our calamitous world are possible. As illustrated throughout Langston''s study, dark matter''s promise-its critical orientation out of catastrophic modernity-finds its expression, above all, in Kluge''s multimedia aesthetic.

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.

Among other titles, Alexander Kluge has been described over the course of the past few decades by colleagues, critics and academics as an encyclopedist, a "chronicler of the century", "narrator of critical theory", or the "only large-scale project developer we have today" (Habermas). Such titles are merely endeavours to find a term to cover the whole interdisciplinary gamut of his works (running from literary, to film, theoretical and televisual work), which over more than five decades have developed a rhizomatic structure that is difficult to keep track of, even for authorities on Kluge.The Alexander Kluge Yearbook attempts to remedy this situation. Through the publication of new texts, it reflectsthe continued development of the history of his oeuvre, bringing together the results of international Kluge research, presenting documents from earlier periods and thus offering insight into the way he works. Each volume will contain, finally, an updated bibliography (of primary and research literature) and videography (of DCTP productions).

Adorno characterized Critical Theory as a message in a bottle in 1940 when the exiled Frankfurt School''s sphere of influence was an ocean away from the catastrophes of fascism it sought to fight. Turning Adorno''s metaphor on its head some six decades later, Kluge likens his creative method in the interview with Oskar Negt that opens the second volume of the Kluge-Jahrbuch to echoes of light refracted through a bottle: "I can also see something by looking through shards of glass," he explains. Deploying this turn of phrase as its point of departure, this issue of the Jahrbuch devotes its attention first to Kluge''s theory work written with Negt, its roots in and adaptation of the Frankfurt School tradition as well as its indebtedness to other schools of thought. In the remainder of the volume, scholars working in five different disciplines across the humanities query Kluge''s ways of seeing in film, television and literature.

»Die poetische Kraft der Theorie« bezieht sich für Alexander Kluge weniger auf reine »Philosophie« oder die abgesonderte »Lust am Denken« als vielmehr auf die altgriechische Praxis der »Theoria«. Wie der antike Theoretiker namens Theoros, der als Gesandter aus fremden Ländern heimkehrte, um von anderen Völkern und Kulturen zu erzählen, strebt Kluges Interesse an der poetischen Kraft der Theorie nach der Anreicherung der menschlichen Wesenskräfte, die subjektive Erfahrung von Differenz in einer Krisenzeit auszudrücken, in der die Werkzeuge des Erzählens verarmt sind. Diese Ausgabe des Jahrbuchs erkundet Kluges Theorie dieses narrativen Potenzials im stürmischen Zeitalter der Digitalität, das von Algorithmen regiert, mit Informationen überflutet und von sozialen Unruhen zerrüttet ist."The poetic power of theory" has for Alexander Kluge less to do with pure "philosophy" or the solitary "pleasures in thinking" than with the ancient Greek practice of "theoria". Like the ancient theoretician called theoros, who returned home from foreign lands to tell of other peoples and cultures, Kluge''s interest in the poetic force of theory seeks to fortify humankind''s essential powers for expressing the subjective experience of difference at a time of crisis when the necessary tools for narration have become impoverished. The sixth volume of the yearbook queries Kluge''s theory of narrative''s potential in the stormy age of digitality governed by algorithms, flooded with information, and disrupted by social conflict.

Children''s picture books from the Romantic period. Theatrical stages inspired by Spinoza. Scenes from the Thirty Years'' War reimagined by artificial intelligence. What narrative cannot achieve, Alexander Kluge transposes into the logic of images. The first half of the nineth volume of the "Alexander Kluge-Jahrbuch" contains a compilation of Kluge''s most recent image experiments that wrestle with crisis and astonishment in the transatlantic public spheres of the twenty-first century. For Kluge, astonishment not only provokes philosophical reflection but also serves as an essential tool for critically grappling with the society of the spectacle. In addition to dialogues with Oskar Negt, Stefan Aust and painter Katharina Grosse, this volume contains scholarly essays on technology and the new space race, cinema and iconoclasm, revolution and Kluge''s aesthetic politics, and decolonialism and ecocriticism.