VIENNA.- In line with this year’s motto ‘Spirit of ‘68’, the
Belvedere 21 has dedicated a retrospective exhibition to the many years of work by German author, filmmaker, and former Adorno confidant Alexander Kluge (b. 1932). The show visualizes the core of his multimedia oeuvre and was developed in close dialogue with the artist himself.
Artistic director Stella Rollig remarks that, ‘Clarity on the state of affairs, self-determination, and emancipation are motifs central to Kluge’s body of work, in the sense that the potential for hope that arose in 1968 is constantly being developed anew. His multimedia works seek to mobilize the individual’s thinking and feeling and position the individual against fatalism towards one’s own life story and history in general.’
An engaged poet, polyphonic chronologist, and seismographer of the present, Alexander Kluge has known the spotlight for quite some time. The trained lawyer can be described as one of the last polymath scholars and is undoubtedly one of the most prolific poets in the German-speaking world. Kluge sees himself as an author and filmmaker whose work tends to revolve around Modernism’s greatest themes and queries. As a keen observer of our social reality, he detects questions and topics and negotiates this complex present of ours by way of his texts, films, and interviews. Kluge has received numerous international awards for his comprehensive, cross-genre work. In 2017, he was awarded the Jean Paul Prize for a lifetime of accomplishments in literature.
The exhibition Pluriverse. The Poetic Power of Theory dives into Alexander Kluge’s topics, methods, and aesthetics. From images, films, texts, and objects, the author ever forms new constellations whose meaning is largely determined by the principle of montage. Historical events, cosmic realities, scientific findings, individual experiences, images, works of art, and his own literary texts form the source material. By piecing them together and Kluge-specific ‘cross-mapping’, i.e. the overlay of heterogeneous material and the combination of different arts, new contexts are created and narrated. The show in the lower level of the Belvedere 21 transfers this connection-generating process into three-dimensional space. Aside from Alexander Kluge’s ‘minute films’, additional film works created especially for the exhibition are being presented. Moreover, for the first time, this show grants insight into Kluge’s creative processes, his extensive archive, and his ‘Pluriverse of Images’. The ‘terminological star chart’ elucidates key concepts and central themes in Kluge’s text-and-image cosmos.
Curator Axel Köhne explains about the process: ‘In an intimate collaboration with Alexander Kluge, we have adapted and further developed his first large museum exhibition, Pluriverse, which was on view at the Folkwang Museum until the beginning of 2018. Kluge’s works seek the public sphere and connection to audience, which they accomplish by engaging participants both intellectually and emotionally. Alternating between the approximately 55 films shown, as well as the texts and objects, each visitor determines their own viewing time, a direction of movement, and thus generates new contexts and connections.’
‘My moon does not shine if not illuminated by other constellations’, asserts Alexander Kluge. The idea of exchange and cooperation is fundamental to Kluge’s work. The subtext of the exhibition is cooperation and co-contemplation between artists, scientists, employees, and friends. The exhibition features works by Kerstin Brätsch, Thomas Demand, Anselm Kiefer, and Thomas Thiede in relation to Kluge’s cinematic practice. Alexander Kluge transforms the exhibition space into a multimedia thinktank, which has been expanded to include an audio installation in the lower-level courtyard, a film program in the Blickle Kino, and the virtual space of visitors’ smart phones.
