Seismographies- Alexander Kluge’s Polymorphous 

Urgencies: A Workshop and 

Tribute Symposium

This 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 symposium 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.

Friday, November 6 — Morning: Workshops & Film Screening

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

• 9:00 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 — Screening of Finite and Infinite Games (2017), directed by Sarah Morris, with an introduction by Sarah Morris. Film information.

Afternoon: Symposium featuring invited speakers

Location: Senate Chamber, Whig Hall

• 2:00 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; Irina Simova (Wesleyan University); Joseph Vogl (Princeton University/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin); and Kizer S. Walker (Cornell University).

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, For a digital version of the program, please click here. Event contact: @email.