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Alexander Kluge - filmmaker, lawyer, author, television producer, critical theorist - is a cultural institution in the German-speaking world. Though he is known to an Anglophone audience as spiritus rector of the New German Cinema and co-author, with Oskar Negt, of Public Sphere and Experience, the sheer variety of his work has tended to blur the profile of this prominent public intellectual.
Kluge's films include Yesterday Girl (1966), Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave (1974), collaboration on Germany in Autumn (1978), The Patriot (1979), Power of Emotions (1983) and News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx/Eisenstein/Capital (2008). But his contributions to film go far beyond what has appeared on the screen: Kluge was one of the figures behind the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 and led the project of securing the institutional bases of an independent German cinema; he was also the first Professor of Film at the Ulm Institute of Design. His active engagement with television in Germany has continued this work in important yet controversial ways. As a literary author, he presented sections of his debut work Case Histories (1962) to the Gruppe 47 and has continued with works and collections such as Learning Process with a Deadly Outcome (1974), Power of Feelings (1984), The Devil's Blind Spot (2004) and recent collaborations with the artist Gerhard Richter. He has also written foundational works of social theory in collaboration with the sociologist Oskar Negt: Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere (1972, English trans. 1993); History and Obstinacy (1981, English trans. 2014), and Maßverhältnisse des Politischen (Politics as a Relation of Measure, 1992).
An English edition of Kluge and Negt's magnum opus History and Obstinacy will appear this autumn from Zone Books. Edited by Devin Fore and translated by Richard Langston, the book is an edited and revised version of a work that appeared more than thirty years ago, but which has lost none of its relevance. To mark this new phase in the reception of Kluge's work, two events have been organised at UCL in cooperation with Alexander Kluge. Further information on History and Obstinacy and related events in London.
Friday 3 October - Screening: Alexander Kluge will premiere excerpts from recent works, including: Money, not Gold or Love: Elfriede Jelinek, Richard Wagner and the Financial Crisis. Followed by a discussion with Sarah James (UCL) and Frederic Schwartz (UCL).
Location: Institute of Archaeology Lecture Theatre, 31-34 Gordon Square, 4:30pm
This event is free, but spaces are limited.
Saturday 11 October - Workshop: On the works of Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt: Public Sphere and Experience / History and Obstinacy / Maßverhältnisse des Politischen. With Philipp Ekardt (Freie Universität Berlin), Devin Fore (Princeton University and editor of the translation of History and Obstinacy, just published by Zone Books) and Frederic J. Schwartz (UCL)
Location: UCL Department of History of Art, 20 Gordon Square, Seminar Room 3, 11am-5pm
This event is free, but spaces are limited.
Please note that Alexander Kluge will not be present at this event.