Seismographies – Alexander Kluge’s Polymorphous Urgencies: A Workshop and Tribute Symposium

Open to the public.

This two-day event honors the work of the late writer, philosopher, and filmmaker Alexander Kluge (1932–2026). Inviting Kluge’s collaborators in art, philosophy, and literature to Princeton, and further drawing on archival holdings as our working material, the format alternates between film screenings and roundtables around topics including Kluge’s relationship to critical theory; his multimedia and collaborative praxis; and his intertwined understandings of historical experience, meaning, and political emotion. The event features film screenings of Kluge’s award-winning Abschied von gestern (1966) and Sarah Morris’s Finite and Infinite Games (2017). Two further sessions will feature a seminar-style close reading of Kluge’s prose fiction and a workshop on Kluge’s recent approach to digital tools and video work. Open to the public, the event honors the life and legacy of a seminal thinker whose friendship and collaboration with Princeton spanned decades. It also aims to open his work to new audiences—and to lay up material for the Kluge scholarship still to come.

Thursday November 5

Location: East Pyne 010

5 pm – Film Screening: Yesterday Girl / Abschied von gestern (dir. Kluge, 1966), with introductory remarks by Michael W. Jennings and post-film discussion led by Thomas Y. Levin

Friday November 6

Morning: Workshops & Film Screening

Location: Princeton University Art Museum, room 134 (Tuttle Lecture Hall)

9 am – “Constellative Collections: Orientations in Alexander Kluge's Video Work”: an archival workshop led by Kizer S. Walker

10:30 am – Close reading breakout sessions

11:30 am – Film Screening: Finite and Infinite Games (dir. Morris, 2017), with an introduction by Sarah Morris

Afternoon: Symposium featuring invited speakers:

Location: Senate Chamber, Whig Hall

2 pm – Panel I. Kluge & critical theory

4:30 pm – Panel II. Atlas: Kluge’s multimedia practice, from architecture to AI

Invited speakers: Juan-Jacques Aupiais (Ohio State University); Michael W. Jennings (Princeton University); Gertrud Koch (Freie Universität Berlin/Leuphana University Lüneburg); Richard Langston (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Sarah Morris (New York); Irina Simova (Wesleyan University); Joseph Vogl (Princeton University/Humboldt-Universität Berlin); Kizer S. Walker (Cornell University)

Co-sponsors

Hosted by the Princeton University Department of German. Co-sponsored by the Center for Digital Humanities; Committee for Film Studies; Department of Art & Archaeology; Department of Comparative Literature; Department of English; Department of Philosophy; Forum for the History of Political Thought at the University Center for Human Values; Princeton Humanities Initiative; Princeton University Humanities Council; Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society; Program in European Cultural Studies; Program in Media and Modernity; Program in Political Philosophy.

Further Information

This event is open to the public and to all regardless of identity. Sponsorship of an event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. For further event details, please check the Princeton German Department website, https://german.princeton.edu/whats-on/events/upcoming or the event website, https://sites.google.com/princeton.edu/kluge.

Event contact: mljames@princeton.edu.