Alexander Kluge

Alexander Kluge is an author, filmmaker, and lawyer. His research and practice revolves around film, literature, social theory, film theory, and political action on various cultural fronts. His body of work can be regarded as a continuation of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. His first feature film, Abschied von Gestern (Yesterday girl), won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1966. In 1987 Kluge founded the television production company DCTP, which produces independent television slots on German commercial television. In 2008 he presented the almost nine hours of News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx/Eisenstein/Capital — a reinvention of Eisenstein’s unfinished project of filming Capital by Karl Marx. Alexander Kluge’s major works of social criticism include Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung and History and Obstinacy, both co-written with Oskar Negt. His most important exhibitions include The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied (Fondazione Prada, Venice, 2017), Pluriversum (Museum Folkwang, Essen, 2017; Belvedere 21, Vienna, 2018). Foundation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, is showing the exhibition James Ensor & Alexander Kluge: Siècles noirs until February 2019. Together with the New York poet Ben Lerner, Kluge published The Snows of Venice in the autumn of 2018 with Spector Books.

As of January 2019