October 46: Alexander Kluge: Theoretical Writings, Stories and an Interview (1988)

“This special issue of October, which serves as the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition of Kluge’s films I have organized for Anthology Film Archives and Goethe House, New York, has been prepared with the conviction that Kluge’s “cinematic variety show”–tied as it is to a much larger project encompassing his fiction, social theory, film theory, television programs, and political action on various cultural fronts–constitutes a unique venture in the annals of postwar German culture. Kluge’s is a radical cinéma impur, situated at the farthest possible remove from that conception of an autonomous, “pure” cinema which defines itself in opposition both to mass cultural film practices and to the terms and strategies of other modernist art forms developed since the 1920s. The motives, themes, and formal strategies of Kluge’s project raise questions in diverse areas of concern to us: about representation and gender, about history and memory, about theory in its relation to practice, about the ongoing vitality of one of his great modernism. Moreover, the work of Kluge is formulated–as one of his great precursors Walter Benjamin would have hoped–with an acute awareness of the most advanced “technical” means of production available as well as of the social circumstances in which production takes place in advanced industrial societies today.” (Stuart Liebman in the introductory essay)

Contains Liebman’s interview with Kluge conducted in 1986-87, selections from Oskar Negt and Kluge’s The Public Sphere and Experience (published in German in 1972), the essay “Word and Film” by Edgar Reitz, Kluge, and Wilfried Reinke (1965), “Why Should Film and Television Cooperate?” (1987), selections from New Stories, Notebooks 1-18 (1977), and the essays by Andreas Huyssen, Heide Schlüpmann, Fredric Jameson, Miriam Hansen, Stuart Liebman, filmography, videography, and bibliography.

Edited by Stuart Liebman
Publisher MIT Press, Fall 1988
ISSN 0162-2870
ISBN 0262751968
218 pages

PDF (13 MB, updated 2015-5-10)

See also New German Critique 49: Special Issue on Alexander Kluge, 1990.
Kluge at Monoskop wiki

Peter Swirski (ed.): The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem (2006)

“The Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, whose works include Return from the Stars, The Cyberiad, A Perfect Vacuum, and Solaris, has been hailed as a “literary Einstein” and a science-fiction Bach. The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem provides an inter-disciplinary analysis of his influence on Western culture and the creative partnering of art and science in his fiction and futorology by American and European scholars who have defined Lem scholarship.

Rather than analyzing Lem solely as a science fiction writer, the contributors examine the larger themes in his work, such as social engineering and human violence, agency and consciousness, Freudianism and the creative process, evolution and the philosophy of the future, virtual reality and epistemological illusion, and science fiction and socio-cultural policy.

This unique collection also includes “Smart Robots,” a previously unpublished essay by Lem.”

Contributors include Peter Butko, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr, Katherine Hayles, Jerzy Jarzebski, Michael Kandel, Stanislaw Lem, Paisley Livingston, Krzysztof Loska, and Peter Swirski.

Publisher McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006
ISBN 0773575073, 9780773575073
208 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2014-12-29)

Richard Kostelanetz: Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993–)

“This book elucidates, celebrates, enumerates, and sometimes obliterates achievers and achievements in the avant-garde arts. Although it runs from A to Z, it could as easily have been written from Z to A (or in any other order you might imagine) and may be read from front to back, back to front, or point to point. It is opinionated, as all good dictionaries should be, but it is also inclusive, because there can never be just one avant-garde.

Blake • Rimbaud • Apollinaire • Stein • Cage • Lichtenstein • Tatlin • Keaton • Captain Beefheart • Hologram • Text-Sound Texts • Strobe Light • Grotowski • Soho • Micropress • Electronic Music • Reinhardt • Pound • Performance • Postmodern • Duchamp • Fuller • Oldenberg • Paik • Armory Show • Reich • Cunningham • Copy Culture • Pattern Poetry • Bread and Puppet Theatre” (from the back cover)

With contributions by Richard Carlin, Geof Huth, Gerald Janecek, Katy Matheson, H.R. Brittain, John Robert Colombo, Ulrike Michal Dorda, Charles Doria, and Robert Haller.

Publisher A Capella Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, 1993
ISBN 1556522029
246 pages

PDF
2nd edition (2000, 47 MB, added on 2020-3-18)
New additions (2011) selected for Soanyway by Derek Horton (HTML)