Alexander Kluge's "Cultural Window" in Private Television Peter C. Lutze New German Critique, No.

80, Special Issue on the Holocaust. (Spring - Summer, 2000), pp. 171-190.

Alexander Kluge's "Cultural Window" In Private Television *

Peter C. Lutze
One cannot simply criticize such a complex system as television through writing, but rather by actually making products oneself. Don't complain, create!
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Alexander IClugel

Part I: Kluge's Kairos - The Opportune Moment Background Perhaps the most anomalous figure in German private television during the last fifteen years has been Alexander Kluge. In a high-tech world of media moguls, multinational corporations, and high finance, this soft-spoken professor, cultural theorist, and film artisan seems an incongruous outsider. Nevertheless, despite his decades-long attack on the entertainment industries, Kluge has become a pivotal figure in German media politics and the producer of three weekly television

* An earlier version of this analysis of Kluge's television work appeared in Peter C. Lutze, Alexander Kluge: The Last Modernist (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1998). 1. As is often the case with Kluge's public statements, fragments of similar thoughts surface in different interviews. The first sentence is quoted in Christian Schroder, "Das etwas andere Autoren-Femsehen," Der Tagesspiegel 1 Nov. 1991. The second quote occurs in Bettina Huhndorf, "'Parasit mit Steinfemsehen,"' Wiesbaden Kurier 13 Sept. 1994.

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shows for private te~evision.~ Since the early 1960s Kluge has defended cinema as an art form against the commercialism of the German and Hollywood film indusThe tries and the encroachments of te~evision.~ advent of private television in the early 1980s threatened to inundate any distinctively German production with a flood of American and American-style programming: game shows, old Hollywood movies, and reruns of U.S. sitcoms and action shows.4 As a leftist social critic with intellectual ties to the Frankfurt School and political ties to the SPD, Kluge had long opposed the social conservatism and centralized cultural control of tycoons like Axel Springer and Leo Kirch, who have been key players in establish~ ~ ing private television in ~ e r m a n In .the 1980s he re-articulated the media critique of his mentor Theodor W. Adorno to denounce the "new media" as the "industrialization of consci~usness."~
2. Kluge has been a major cultural figure in Germany since the Oberhausen manifesto of 1962. He has directed more than thirty films and written numerous collections of stories in addition to his collaboration on two major volumes of social theory. In the United States his work has received attention in large part due to the critical essays of Miriam Hansen. Her perceptive analyses of Kluge's film work, his relationship to Adorno and his notions of a "counter-public sphere" can be found in previous issues of NGC. Cf., Miriam Hansen, "Cooperative Cinema and Oppositional Public Sphere," New German Critique 24/5 (Fallminter 1981-82): 36-56; "Introduction to Adomo's 'Transparencies,"' New German Critique 24/5 (Fallminter 1981-2): 186-98; and "Introduction," New German Critique 49 (Fall 1990): 3-10. Another Hansen essay appears in the Kluge issue of October 46 (Fall 1988), edited by Stuart Liebman. 3. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kluge was not interested in producing directly for television. Although most of his feature films were broadcast on ZDF, the second public channel, they had all been released theatrically prior to airing. One shorter film, The Indomitable Leni Peickert [Die unbezahmbare Leni Peickert, 1969-701, was first broadcast on television (WDR3), but consisted mostly of outtakes from his second feature, Artistes at the Top of the Big Top: Disoriented [Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos, 19681. In 1990 another Kluge television film, News ofthe Day [Neues vom Tage], produced in collaboration with the Filmwerkstatt Miinchen, appeared on ZDF. Jens Jessen, "Vom Elend der DenkanstoDe," Frankfirter Allgemeine Zeitung 3 1 Oct.1990. 4. The public broadcasters, despite shortcomings, which Kluge frequently pointed out, had limited the amount of foreign programming and had subsidized indigenous producers in a variety of ways through the years. They also attempted to create a balance between popular programming and educational and high cultural offerings. 5. Axel Springer was head of Springer Verlag, which published twenty-five percent of all newspapers in Germany, including the tabloid Bild. Before his death in 1985, Springer was one of the principle forces behind SATI. Leo Kirch is head of Beta-Taurus, the largest film and television distribution company in Germany, controlling an estimated 40,000 hours of programming. 6. Klaus von Bismarck, Giinter Gaus, Alexander Kluge and Ferdinand Sieger, Industrialisierung des BewuJtseins (Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1985).

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Kluge's own film work has provided a striking contrast to the pandering of the entertainment industries. His films have always placed heavy demands on viewers, challenging them to make sense of very heterogeneous and apparently unorganized material. His difficult aesthetics seem more appropriate to small, sophisticated audiences in alternative cinemas than to television's mass audiences seeking more accessible pleasures. But since 1985, sandwiched between commercials, heavy metal concerts, and soft-porn movies, Kluge's "cultural window" has reached millions of German homes each week via the private television channels SAT1 and RTL.
Aesthetic Context Although Kluge's entry into the early stages of German private television surprised many observers of the German media scene, this decision was consonant with developments in his social theory and his aesthetic/political practice. For Kluge, culture is dynamic and dialectic. Although sensitive to the Frankfurt School critique concerning the deception and domination of the culture industry, Kluge never attributed this to any ontological quality of the particular medium - film, radio, or even television - but rather to the ways that the media experience was organized for the viewers. Kluge's twenty-five years of filmmaking constituted a search for an alternative aesthetic practice: innovative modes of production and reception could allow audiences much more active control of this medium. Kluge's theoretical emphasis on the "film in the viewer's head" led him to create a distinctive aesthetic style. He subverted narrative formulas and genre conventions and intermixed nonfiction and fiction to create films which encouraged viewers to make their own meanings based on their own experiences. As his career progressed, his cinematic narratives were becoming increasingly fragmented. His montage style of interruption and juxtaposition led to the combination of several shorter tales with a variety of visual and auditory materials. Especially in his later films he was developing a rapid editing style utilizing music. These films began to resemble the most stylistically advanced elements in television: commercials and music videos. Television promised Kluge a new medium for aesthetic exploration and new tools and techniques to exploit. Social / Institutional Context On an institutional level, Kluge has always been aware that rifts,

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rivalries, and contradictory interests within and between private industry and governmental spheres can provide opportunities for building counter-institutions and creating a "counter-public sphere."7 In the 1960s and 1970s, Kluge was able to collaborate with others - film directors, producers, and cultural organizations - to obtain a public forum, public legitimacy, and often public financing for their activities. In the early eighties a whole new set of private television institutions became available for Kluge and his cohorts to march through. This opportunity presented itself at a critical moment in the development of German cinema. Not only had Kluge's own recent films struggled at the box ofice, but cinema attendance as a whole was down in Germany. The dynamic force of the New German directors was dispersed. Fassbinder's death, global peregrinations of Wenders and Herzog, and international co-productions by other directors diminished whatever cohesion of vision and values had once been present. The cinema appeared under siege and a strategic retreat by directors into television seemed to Kluge the best prospect for film's survival into the next century.
If I had a wish, like one gets in fairy tales, I would wish the whole New Media to disappear. Since I can't make them disappear, then instead we must use these New Media to protect the film medium. Since we can only do this through aggressive action, we must take the New Media seriously. We want to develop an island or a show-window of high-quality, exciting programs. Thereby we can simultaneously obtain the financial means to be able to invest again in film.8

Thus Kluge's antipathy to television and to the promoters of private television was not necessarily a barrier to his participation in it, particularly if the politicaUeconomic situation was such that he could guarantee control over his program content. This situation came into being in 1984. Forces that had been building for almost thirty years had become irresistible. Since the 1950s the courts and the SPD had successfully blocked
7. From the days of the Oberhausen manifesto, Kluge had set up or participated in a number of entities that provided space for the promulgation of diverse ideas and aesthetics: Kairos, his own production company; the Kuratorium junger deutscher Film; the Film Institute of the Ulm Hochschule fur Gestaltung, the Arbeitsgemeinschaji neuer deutscher Spielfilmproduzenten; and the Film und Fernsehen Rahmenabkommen. Cf. also Hansen, "Cooperative Cinema" which discusses Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst, 1978), the first of three major collaborative feature-length film projects organized by Kluge, which addressed timely issues of public concern. 8. Alexander Kluge quoted in Wolfgang Michal, "Scheinheilige Unterschiede," Vorwarts 12 Mar. 1984.

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CDUICSU-backed efforts to establish private television in West Germany. Early arguments for increased diversity and more entertainment had not proven effective. The Social Democrats feared that the arrival of private systems funded by conservative publishing interests could threaten the character and very existence of the public stations. Market pressures might alter television's commitment to educational and cultural programming, cultivation of German producers, and programming with a distinctive national identity.9 In the late 1970s, however, the establishment of private television began to be justified based on economic/technological grounds rather than political and programming diversity. The development of "new media" (cable television, videotext, fiber optics, DBS) was seen both as inevitable and as essential to the growth of West Germany's high-tech industries. Moreover, direct broadcast satellite technology threatened complete disregard for national boundaries, which had already been encroached by conventional broadcasting from neighboring countries. lo In this mood, cable television experiments involving private companies were established in several locales in the early 1980s." Despite the very limited success of these experiments, it was clear, at least to Kluge, that there would be no turning back, and that an opportune moment for action, kairos, had arrived. While the situation was still in flux there was room to maneuver and create new positions.
Creating a Cultural Window in Private Television Kluge's first move into private television was to become involved with Springer's consortium of newspaper publishers in the formation of SAT1. I 2
9. Substantial declines in viewership might make justification of license fee revenues for the public networks more difficult. Moreover, advertising revenues could be adversely affected by the competition. 10. Cf., comment by Albert Scharf, president of the European Broadcasting Union, in 1987: "With DBS satellites, however, there can be no national control." Scharfcalled for cooperation among European nations to set minimum standards for program content and advertising. Variety (14 Jan. 1987): 154. 11. The first cable television experiment began in Ludwigshafen in January 1984, followed by others in Dortmund, Munich and Berlin later in 1984 and 1985. 12. The two major forces in founding SAT1 were Axel Springer and Leo Kirch. The two largest entities involved were PKS (PrograrnmgesellschaflfirKabel und Satellitenrundfitnk), which Kirch controls, and APF (Aktuelle Presse Femehen) comprised of 165 newspaper publishers, the most powerfbl of whom was Springer, with a thirty-five percent share. Variety (13 Feb. 1985): 65. Other publishers involved in SAT1 include Burda, Holzbrink, Bauer, Otto Maier and the Franl&rter Allgemeine Zeitung. Variety (13 Feb. 1985): 74.

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With Eberhard Ebner, publisher of the Siidwespresse newspaper in Ulm, Kluge formed Neue Medien Ulm, which acquired a one-percent interest in the new channel. This ownership position obligated Neue Medien Ulm to provide one percent of the programming for the service. Since the independent-minded members of the SATl coalition refbsed to yield editorial control to a central authority, Kluge, like other program providers, had complete artistic autonomy for his television series, Stunde der Filmemacher [TheFilmmakers 'Hour],which began airing in 1985. In 1987 Kluge was able to insure an even larger scope to his television operations. In return for terrestrial broadcast licenses in the densely populated (and SPD-controlled) state of North-Rhein Westphalia, RTL-plus and SATl agreed to broadcast the programs of another Kluge group, DCTP (Development Company for Television Programs). DCTP was given its own license to insure that cultural and informational programming would be broadcast on the two major private channels. Partners in DCTP included 144 theaters, operas, symphonies, book publishers, film directors, Spiegel publishing, and Dentsu, one of the world's largest advertising agencies.13 Kluge maintains controlling interest and Dentsu provides production funds of DM 1000 per broadcast minute in exchange for advertising slots.14 Part II: Kluge Makes Television Once Kluge completed the complex political and legal negotiations to guarantee his "cultural window" in television, he was faced with an even more prodigious task. As a film director, he had produced a total of thirteen feature films between 1964 and 1984, an average of about one hour of film per year. Now, he was committed to producing more programming than this each week. Instead of a film budget of several hundred thousand marks, he had less than DM 5000 per hour for his Stunde der Filmemacher. His initial solution to these temporal and financial pressures was to involve other New German Cinema directors in this project.
13. Der Spiegel has its own DCTP news magazine show (Spiegel-TV) as do stern magazine (stern-&) and Die Zeit (Die Zeit TV Magazine). Dentsu, a Japanese f r ,was im locked out of the German television market until the DCTP opportunity presented itself. 14. This breaks down as follows: Kluge (50%), Dentsu (37.5%), and Spiegel Publishing (12.5%). Kluge's fifty percent interest is in the entity Arheitsgerneinschaft Kabel-Satellit, an umbrella organization of film directors, theaters, book publishers, and musical institutions, but controlled by Kluge. Martin Peters, "Auch ein Quotenkiller versteht das Geschaft, Rheinischer Merkur 27 Mar. 1994, and Mark Siemons, "Die Welt zerspringt in tausend Stiicke," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1 1 June 1994.

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By enlisting such figures as Edgar Reitz, Volker Schlondorff, Helke Sander, and Ula Stikkl, Kluge not only shifted a large production burden from his shoulders, but also gave the program a broader legitimacy. A rapid opening montage of still photos of New German Cinema directors at work, accompanied by the musical theme from Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, hrther emphasized a sense of collective authority. He soon had to abandon this anthology approach. The directors' unfamiliarity with the new medium, the low budgets, and the short deadlines yielded very uneven results and caused Kluge gradually to assume tighter control. Rather than commissioning works, he began to produce shows himself, relying mostly on interviews. Typically, Kluge conducted the interviews himself - often discussing films with other directors or actors and interspersing lengthy film clips throughout the program. For example, he interviewed Bernhard Sinkel about his film biography of Hemingway stamng Stacy Keach and interviewed Volker Schlondorff about his production of Death o a Salesman with Dustin f Hoffman and John Malkovich. He also interviewed other cultural figures, especially writers and musicians. The East German playwright Heiner Miiller discussed Tacitus in one program, while Karl-Heinz Bohrer, the editor of the prestigious periodical Merkur, expounded on the French Revolution and the use of the guillotine in another. Other programs were simply excerpts from films by Kluge or his associates. In general, the choice of subjects for these programs bore witness to Kluge's admiration for high culture: literature, classical music, theater, opera, and the newest "traditional art," cinema. With the advent of his new license in 1987 and a shift to shorter program formats (twenty-four or fourteen minutes) Kluge's television aesthetic also began to shift. Increasingly programs began to incorporate material from traditional high culture sources, in large part due to his alliance with theaters, operas, and book publishers.15 Access to sophisticated digital postproduction equipment at the Arnold and Richter (Arri) studios in Munich allowed Kluge to produce more sophisticated and faster-paced programming. A close examination of one particular program will allow us to understand the complexity, new techniques, and organizational principles that Kluge was able to develop.
15. In a newspaper interview Kluge announced DCTP's goal as the creation of "cultural multiplicity" in private television and a "concern for classical forms of expression from book, film and music theater." Arno Makowsky, "Der Pate als Quotenkiller," Siiddeutsche Zeitung 16 Oct. 93.

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16 Films in 24 Minutes A female RTL-plus announcer, clad in a red jogging suit and reclining on a giant foot-shaped couch, welcomes "friends of culture to 10 vor 11, [Ten to Eleven], our cultural broadcast under the direction of Alexander Kluge." She informs viewers that this material has never been shown before:
They are documents of their time, and several, via "trick of course, have been put in original theaters. Now, unfortunately, some of these no longer exist. 10 vor 1 1, Ten to Eleven. Good entertainment.
A tango starts up as four vertically squeezed shots of city traffic at night slide horizontally onto a blue screen: first the top and the third slide on from the left, then the second and fourth slide on from the right, turning the screen into a kaleidoscope of light and color. Then a tinted clip from the famous early film of the workers leaving the Lumiere factory is followed by footage of Louis Lumiere himself inspecting a strip of film. The image fades to black and then a page-turn wipe brings the white "10 vor 11" logo onto the screen. The tango fades abruptly. A white-on-green title, "16 Filme in 24 Min.," pops on inside a white and black rectangle. Ominous music by Luigi Nono begins and carries through the program's apparent subtitle: "The Mouse and Other Stories." The program itself is composed mostly of clips and still photos from old films manipulated in a variety of ways. In addition, computer animation, television announcers, time-lapse shots of a city at night, and shots of several symphony conductors in action are incorporated. Like Kluge's 1985 film, The Blind Director [Der Angriff der Gegenwart auf die iibrige Zeit], this program's theme is film history, but with an emphasis on action: trains, car wrecks, airplanes, speed, travel, and finally romance, which is often frustrated or tragic. However, this cinematic theme is developed here not within a feature film, but in the medium that has replaced cinema: television. Hence a nostalgic rather than suspenseful mood unifies much of what is to follow. Formally, the program is integrated by repetition, variation, rapid pacing, and musical selections that unite diverse images. The cinematic citations in this program span much of film history:
1. The Lumiere footage. 2. A clip from a 1930s sound film in which medieval soldiers besiege

a fortress.

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3. A sequence from an early film where a couple in a car are too preoccupied with each other to see a train which smashes into them. 4. Silent film footage of stunt plane tricks. 5. A scene from a 1930s or 1940s German film about two elegant lovers. 6. A clip from a German newsreel about the closing of a movie theater. 7.Three sequences from Kluge's film The Middle of the Road is a Vevy Dead End [In Gefahr und gropter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod, 19741 about a romance between two Eastern bloc spies. 8. Documentary shots of World War I1 German aviators and planes. 9. A shot from a 1960s black and white film (woman drinking coffee). 10. A chase sequence from the 1910s where a race car halts a train by straddling the tracks. 11. The final car crash sequence from Godard's film Contempt [Le Mdpris, 19631. 12. Documentary footage of an orchestra performing at Bayreuth.

In organizing and presenting this material, Kluge constantly plays with viewers' expectations and mocks the conventions of the medium in which he is working. German television programs are normally preceded by an announcer who provides an introduction to the material which is to follow. But in addition to the RTL jogger, Kluge provides another announcer within the program, Sabine Trooger. Not only does she arrive late (five minutes into the program), she proves herself a most unreliable guide. Only after the train crash does she first appear in close-up to say smilingly "Number three." She returns a few moments later to announce "Number four," and then later "Number five." After the next film clip, she comes on again and says "Number nine," pauses a moment and says "Number 10," pauses again and says "Number eleven." A little later in the program her function is taken over by intertitles: "Nr. 14," "Nr. 15" and "Nr. 16." At the very end, Trooger reappears in a medium close-up, now with a different hairstyle and dress, to announce: "That was our window program, good night." Thus Kluge mimics the television style, but simultaneously flouts its conventions and reveals its constructedness. He does not set up the pattern until number three, skips six, seven, and eight, and then does not edit nine, ten, and eleven into their appropriate positions, but shows their original mode of production as one long take. He then skips to fourteen, which is presented not by Trooger but by an intertitle. Her final reappearance also stresses the artifice of the program because she now appears in a totally different guise. All of this undercuts her authority and reliability as the announcer and her organization of the material. Although we are

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promised sixteen films, we are given only twelve distinctive sections of these mini-films. Indeed upon closer inspection, one can see that the insertion of announcer and titles is arbitrary, sometimes corresponding to a major break between segments, other times not. Some segments contain excerpts from several films, others contain none. Rather than clarifying things, she interrupts, subverts, and deconstructs. The old film clips themselves are manipulated in a variety of ways. The most significant involves the use of a tinted drawing or still photo of an old movie theater as a framing device. In the position of the movie screen, Kluge inserts a moving image - usually a clip from an old film. He uses the stunt airplane footage in this way. First it is shown in a cinema where the screen is fairly large. The film image, about one-third of the television screen, is relatively easy to discern. The clip is shown twice more in different theaters, each time with a progressively smaller screen until the clip is almost too tiny to discern. This squeezing of the films (in both size and duration) is very self-conscious on Kluge's part. Unlike cable movie services, he apparently wants to emphasize that television does not and cannot duplicate the theatrical film experience. Cinema in Kluge's television programs is always a sample, a taste test, but also a transformation into something new, a fundamentally different kind of experience. And he wishes the viewer to be aware of both aspects of this process. The car crash from Contempt is also first shown squeezed into a mini-theater. The second time, it is shown full-screen, but with the image now enlarged so much that the whole sequence seems shot in medium close-up. The shots of Camille's farewell note, which Godard had spliced into the crash sequence, are now removed but the soundtrack has been left intact. Since the image track is now shorter, the soundtrack lags behind, out of sync. As the camera tracks past the wrecked car and dead bodies, the honk, screeching tires, and explosion are heard. This second sequence again bears the marks of its construction - it is very blurry and grainy, and the sound is obviously out of phase. By moving back and forth between the theatrical and other forms of presentation, Kluge again underscores the video medium and the process of manipulation. The sequence in which the race car chases the train reveals another type of repetition and manipulation. Here the film image is altered so that its mirror image is seen simultaneously - a double exposure. The train rushes towards itself, the car passes through itself, two sets of railroad tracks seem to converge, etc. Each image becomes a spectacle as

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important as the chase being depicted, more complex and with an internal tension that augments the emotional tension of the plot, even as it destroys the verisimilitude. On the Luftwafe footage, Kluge performs different manipulations (squeezing and stacking the images and adding animation layers), but achieves similarly spectacular and distancing results. Interspersed with these complex fabrications are other unaltered film clips, intertitles, and animations accompanied by contrasting bits of music often cut off abruptly.
Part 111: Making Sense - The Video In The Viewer's Head How does this distinctive montage style hnction for the viewer? Unlike most television shows, Kluge's programs do not fit into any familiar genre or pre-existing schema. The program guides and on-air announcers refer to them as "cultural programming," but they are not complete performances. Kluge has argued, "One can only bring the a t into televirs sion as fragments, as trace elements. A drastic cure is necessary in order to let them revive in this medium."16 His programs are also much more complex and unpredictable than "cultural magazines." Although appealing to the German respect for high culture, Kluge's productions carry out a modernist aesthetic of radical experimentation, critique, and interaction with popular culture and everyday life. Formally, Kluge's programs are more akin to two genres that have been developed specifically for the television medium: commercial advertisements and music videos. Both genres are normally fast-paced, highly edited, and visually rich, but both are easier to understand than Kluge's constructions. Commercials typically tell a very simple story about a product's qualities or effects and contain a behavioral imperative, either explicit or implicit: buy me! Whatever radical formal elements may be present in the shooting and editing styles of the commercial, their disruptive effects are blunted by the clear and unambiguous purpose which recuperates them. Similarly, the fragmented style, radical cutting, and diverse images of music videos are organized by the songs and the personalities of the performers. Kluge's fragments are somewhat more difficult to interpret. Although in some ways mimicking MTV - or perhaps simply looking to it as the most highly developed instance of a specifically television-oriented style - Kluge does not use the visuals to explain or illustrate the music.
16. Kluge quoted in Giinther Wolf, "RoDkur f~ die Kiinste," Hamburger Abendblatt 3 June 1991.

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Rather, the music is secondary to and largely independent of the visuals, often starting or stopping abruptly. Second, Kluge's individual fragments are not a predictable three minutes in length. Some units are much shorter, others longer; indeed, it is often difficult to distinguish where one unit stops and the next starts. Each unit is not discrete, separated from the previous one, but is felt to be related to the others thematically (although these themes may seem obscure) and stylistically. Although Kluge's units lack closure and coherence, they nevertheless interrelate on a fundamental level by being the expression of a single artist, an organizing intelligence. Nevertheless, in Kluge's television programs as in his films, it is not always easy to interpret the relationship between one picture or series of pictures and the next. In this particular program, the use of the cinema theater as a framing device rather strongly urges at least the one preferred reading mentioned earlier: television diminishes cinema, both aesthetically and as an institution. Nevertheless, it is difficult to understand how, if at all, the subjects of the individual clips support this larger meaning. Are the crashes, for example, to be interpreted metaphorically as a cataclysmic encounter between the two media? Or is Kluge developing a totally separate second theme? Is the viewer's job to keep searching for more plausible explanations or does one simply conclude that the content is incidental or was chosen simply as characteristic of the film medium? Or does one simply appreciate the rapid-fire sensory stimulation and not try to make sense of it? Kluge's response to such questions would probably be non-committal: do with it what you will. Kluge has often spoken of the pleasures to be gotten from the media, which include intellectual stimulation: "The cinema is an institution of pleasures. Above all for the pleasures of ideas."I7 But he also suggests that imagination and sensory pleasures are equally important: "The spectator must simply rely on his sensibilities, allow his fantasy free reign." He opposes the "imperialism of consciousness":
I cannot understand a puddle on which rain is falling -I can only see it; to say that I understand the puddle is meaningless. Relaxation means being alive for a moment, allowing my senses to run wild: for once not to be on guard with the police-like intention of letting nothing escape me."
17. Kluge quoted in Manfred Liigenhorst, "Wir werden uns rachen," Abendzeitung, 13 - 14 July 1968 16. 18. Kluge, "On Film and the Public Sphere," New German Critique 24-25 (Fall/ Winter 1981-2): 210-1 1.

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But perhaps his real purpose is to allow, or even force, the viewer to use all of these viewing strategies, moving back and forth among them as seems appropriate. These difficulties of interpretation are both intriguing and discouraging for audience members. Kluge refuses completely to organize the viewer's experience, but this reluctance can easily be mistaken for a lack of organization. Many of his programs utilize this technique of combining fragments of heterogeneous but loosely associated material. Often he refers to these as "magazines" in the program titles ("Kurzmagazin," "Minuten Film Magazin," "Musikfilm-Magazin"), which underscores the diversity of components. Many shots recur in different programs, each time edited into a slightly different context. This associative montage finds a place for everything. Even the older, hour-long television shows get reduced to shorter versions of themselves.
On TV, says Kluge, one can repeat everything, fetch back whatever was developed in the pictorial form of expression, the technique of painting and of the silent film, the film of the earlier and the later years. On TV, he says, one could even create a new cinema, a cinema for the middle-aged group. . . . Television as a reagent tube, in which the accumulated experiences of millennia mix together. Repeat e v e r y t h ~ n ~ . ' ~

Yet this repetition is a variation, a transformation of the component images and sounds into new units and a new aesthetic.
Transitionfrom a Film Aesthetic to a Television Aesthetic Kluge's television work does not embody an abrupt stylistic rupture from his previous film aesthetics. The principles of associative montage, open construction, and reliance on an active spectator are still the dominant elements. The use of interruption, irony, visual and aural citation, and intertitles are all familiar to viewers of Kluge's films. Nevertheless, certain aesthetic adaptations and new emphases are notable in Kluge's television. First of all, the digtal video technologies provide Kluge with a whole new array of aesthetic possibilities, which provide new pleasures and pains for the viewer. Kluge's films frequently utilized montage sequences of still photos, drawings, and brief film clips. Now Kluge is able to create this sequential montage (between frames) into montage within the frame: collages of multiple exposures, superimposed words,
19. Andreas Kilb, "Der lange Abschied des H e m K.," Die Zeit 24 June 1988.

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and figures. While Kluge's films had featured irised images - the image within a black circle or double circle (as if through binoculars) now he can squeeze, tilt, invert, mirror, or wrap images. Instead of expensive and uncertain optical effects, Kluge can play with a series of options until he finds the appropriate effect for a particular context.
All these possibilities are fractures of pre-existing genres, each of which obeys different laws. When I put this all together, a bit of information results, an invention, made not by me, but by the computer editor, to his own amazement. The mistakes that we or the electronics make in this juxtaposition are in any case rich in invention: seven pieces are rubbish, but one is absolutely thrilling. I would say that more than half of the miniatures that we make we have not invented, but they have just turned up.20

The results of these experiments on the small screen frequently run counter to traditional television aesthetics of visual clarity. Kluge's cluttered and fast-paced images often are virtually illegible. At this point the distancing device functions so powe&lly that it may discourage rather than encourage an active viewer. Some effects are so irritating that they become almost painful. One such trick favored by Kluge is a hard wipe, where a live action shot is pushed off frame by a continuation of the same image, which comes to rest for just a beat before being pushed off by its continuation. When repeated for thirty to sixty seconds, with occasional changes in wipe direction and alternations between black and white and color images, the cumulative effect can be extremely disturbing. A second important factor in Kluge's television aesthetics is the extreme minimalization of narrative. Kluge was never ve comfortable with traditional scripted film narratives involving acton.2rFor his television shows he is producing no new fictional dramatizations. Narrative is now described rather than enacted, stripped to its bare bones of plot and character motivation. Often stories are discussed in interview situations, sometimes presented in titles or occasionally described in voice-over narration. Clips from narrative films, plays, or operas are still shown, but these constitute just fragments rather than full presentations
20. Gertrude Koch and Heide Schliipmann, ""Nur Triimmem trau ich. . .': Ein Gespr2ch mit Alexander Kluge," Kanalarbeit: Medienstratagien im Kultununndel, ed. Hans Ulrich Reck (Basel, Frankfurt1 Main: Stri)mfeld/RoterStem, 1988) 23. 2 1. Kluge's films employ two techniques to minimize the role of scripted dialogue: the frequent use of a voice-over narrator to describe the actions of the characters and the use of improvised dialogue by the actors in developing a scene.

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and are often visually distorted or altered. Rather than providing a video replay of a fill, illusionistic drama, Kluge gives us a critical commentary, which may or may not be verbal. A third difference between Kluge's television and film work is his own presence. In his films he was often aurally present as the omniscient, ironic author whose sotto voce narration explained and critiqued the on-screen action. In his television programs, he has almost completely relinquished any voice-over narration. Kluge interprets the shift as follows:
The contact with the viewer in television cannot be as private as it still remains in the cinema. . .. The pace of television is too rapid to allow a whispering voice to generate intimacy.22

Rather than narrating, Kluge has taken up another off-screen role: the unseen interviewer. Rarely is he actually pictured and nowhere in the programs is he identified, not even in the credits. While this apparent minimalization of his own personality is in keeping with Kluge's modest mien, it may in fact enhance rather than reduce his authority. Interviewees continually look for approval to this off-screen presence who repeatedly interrupts, finishes thoughts, demands precision of expression, and catches them off guard with personal questions designed to get behind the newsy, public-relations f a ~ a d e all talk show habitues exhibit. that Instead of the informative commentary of the voice-over narration, Kluge's programs now frequently employ both intertitles and a running band of words at the bottom of the screen. The intertitles are no longer his cinematic white-on-blue words in simple and uniform typeface, but increasingly use multiple fonts in various sizes arranged at skewed angles on the screen. A 1995 program interviewing author Heiner Miiller presented a number of screens filled with written excerpts from a Miiller poem, arranged to emphasize particular words and phrases. The running strip of words is an even more common Kluge device, especially at the beginning of programs, to contextualize or raise questions that will be dealt with in the program. They normally run beneath a series of complex visual images at a speed that makes it very difficult to read them while still deciphering the pictures. The last, but perhaps determining, aspect of Kluge's television aesthetic is time. As mentioned above, Kluge must produce a great deal of
22. Marcus Hertneck, "Die Unterwanderung des Bildes," Siiddeutsche Zeitung 1 1
May 1992.

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television very quickly: eighty-four minutes each week. "10 vor 11" and "Prime Time Spat Ausgabe" run on RTL and "News & Stories" on SAT^.*^ Since Kluge produces virtually all of them himself and has significant administrative tasks as well, he must work very rapidly. A normal work week for Kluge involves two days in the office and four days shooting and editing. This means less than two days per program. These production conditions have a significant impact on his aesthetic options. Most of the reserve material in his own archives - old Kluge films and outtakes - has been used up long ago. New footage is commissioned (shots of the Eiffel tower for his series of programs on Walter Benjamin and the "iron age") and book illustrations, photographs, postcards, and other images are collected. Many programs include clips from theatrical and musical performances, honoring his commitment as a "cultural window" to provide for the traditional arts and utilizing the resources of his consortium (AKS). Nevertheless, interviews have remained the staple of his programming, and have in fact become more predominant in the last several years. The complex visual products such as "16 Filme in 24 Min." are now the exception rather than the rule. Interviews can be shot fairly quickly, in a couple of hours, and combined with performance footage or a few illustrations and intertitles to make a program. The editing is relatively straightforward. Even these programs, however, bear the unmistakable stamp of Kluge: jump cuts, intrusive "amateur" elements (microphones poking into the frame, a bare light bulb right beside the interviewee's head, shadows across the face, poor sound quality), interruptions, and Kluge's unique, intimate, and intelligent interviewing style. As interviewer, Kluge is both the expert and the canny innocent who can ask the obvious question: "Why did you hesitate when I asked how old you are?'The low production values and ad hoc nature of the interview locales contrast sharply with the more elaborately designed sets and lighting of standard television studio interviews. Even within Kluge's own programs, the unpolished quality of these interviews (most
23. The inclusion of English in Kluge's program titles not only is consonant with current trends in German media, but also reflects the international composition and aspirations of DCTP. Kluge has sought production participation from foreign entities (Paper Tiger TV in New York, Great Britain's Channel 4 and BBC and the International Herald Tribune) and envisions the possibility of a European or possibly global cultural channel. Spiegel-TV has already achieved Europe-wide exposure through Britain's Superchannel. Birgit Weidinger, "Der Partisan aus Deutschland: Alexander Kluge wirbt in London ftir mehr Programmaustausch," Siiddeutsche Bitung 13 Dec. 1992.

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conducted in the kitchen of his ofices amidst shelves full of film canisters) proves a stark juxtaposition to the more sophisticated visual sequences he creates through digital video manipulations. While the overall objectives of Kluge's aesthetic seem to have carried over from his film work, the new possibilities and limitations of the electronic medium result in new emphases. Viewers are still asked to create new relationships among fragmentary parts, to recontextualize uprooted materials, and to insert their own experiences into the process of meaning-making. But the provocations for this active viewership have altered: a miniaturization of narrative and image, the inclusion of more nonfictional material, a greater preoccupation with high cultural concerns, an increased visual complexity.
Critical and Public Reception As with Kluge's film work, the response to his television work has been mixed. Although he has increased his viewership immensely by moving to television, his shows still attract a rather small audience when measured alongside more conventional programming. Executives of the private channels on which his shows air refer to him as a "Quotenluller" - a ratings killer. The assert that ratings drop dramatically when Kluge's programs come on.2'Helmut Thoma, head of RTL until 1998, has called Kluge as a "parasite" whose programs suggest that he "bought out the black-and-white stock of the People's Republic of China: Stone-age televiion."^' His objections are a res onse to Kluge's intentionally jagged constructions and rough textures!' Thoma finds it ridiculous that RTL has to broadcast these programs: "as if in the middle of a circus performance suddenly one presented twelve-tone music."27
24. According to one source, RTL viewership drops from 3 million to 0.6 million and SAT1 numbers fall from 3 million to 0.2 million. Even this figure, the private channels claim, is probably too high, because a lot of people forgot to turn off their televisions or have fallen asleep. Tilmann P. Gangloff, "Saboteur im Zirkus," Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt 21 Jan. 1994. Other sources suggest that the viewership for Kluge's RTL programs are closer to 1 million viewers per show. Kluge himself claims that 280 million viewers have watched the 250 "10 vor 11" programs he has produced. Mark Siemons, "Die Welt zerspringt in tausend Stiicke," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1 I June 1994. 25. Bettina Huhndorf, "Inseln im bunten Einerlei,"Der Tagesspiegel 13 Sept. 1994. 26. Kluge, however, opposes works with a smooth surface: "For a long time I haven't put enough scrap material into my broadcasts." Siemons, "Die Welt zerspringt in tausend Stiicke." 27. Gangloff, "Saboteur im Zirkus."

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In defense of his programming, Kluge has pointed out that he regularly gets around a million viewers and for some programs of topical interest about twice that many.28 These figures, he claims, compare favorably to many other shows on private television and constitute a sizable portion of the population, whose viewing preferences deserve accomodation. According to Kluge, the demographics for his programming indicate an audience composed not primarily of media experts nor academics, but of adults interested in self-improvement and continuing education programs. Despite the intellectually demanding nature of these programs, such viewers might well be attracted to Kluge's blend of personal life experience, social critique, and diverse cultural forms of expression. The reception among critics is also far from unanimous. Some find his programs pretentious, overly difficult, and ultimately, despite his rhetoric about the active viewer, didactic.29 In addition some critics have scrutinized the financial aspects of these programs, suggesting that his compensation is excessive, and that some of these revenues could be used to support the work of younger visual artists.30Other critics, however, have been very impressed by his work. Kluge's cultural programs, according to one critic, "stand out from their surroundings of gameshows and erotic films like a literary bookshop in a redlight district. . . . With their bold contents as well as formal risk-taking, these television feuilletons are the pepper and salt in the program stew of the private br~adcasters."~' Another critic compares Kluge's work to that of Walter Benjamin:
"Ten to Eleven" is not Kluge's audiovisual Arcades, but it is proof of the potential endlessness and the depths of a fantastic production situation. One is able to use the whole pictorial universe of film and television, as Benjamin utilized the Paris National Library: to pull together material for a work that would describe and conceptualize an entire century.32
28. Tilman Baumgartel, "'Wir sind keine Untermieter:' dctp-Chef Alexander Kluge zu emeuten Vorwiirfen, seine Programme seien 'Quotenkiller,"' die tageszeitung 23 Oct. 1993 and Astrid Deubner-Mankowsky and Giaco Schiesser, "Die Schrift an der Wand," WochenZeitung 2 1 Jan. 1994. 29. For example, one critic compares Kluge's media techniques to the authoritarianism of the ostensibly anti-authoritarian German schoolteachers of the 1970s. Kluge, he argues, baflles the viewers and thereby holds them in thrall. Jessen, "Vom Elend der DenkanstoOe." 30. Helmut Thoma claims that the media laws have simply granted Kluge "a license to collect money." Peters, "Auch ein Quotenkiller versteht das Geschaft." 3 1. Schrader, "Das etwas andere Autoren-Femsehen." 32. Klaus Kreimeier, "Ten to Eleven oder: Kann man Zeit abbilden?'Die Zeit 27 Nov. 1992.

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Recognition of the programs from other quarters has been equally mixed. His program on Anseim Kiefer's Das goldene Vlies, received a great deal of notoriety when it became the subject of a legal case. The fifteen-second depiction of a castration caused church and state authorities to accuse Kluge of glorifying violence and of pornography. The courts ultimately found that the program was not censurable and, moreover, it was awarded the prestigious Adolf Grimrne gold prize as one of the outstanding television programs of 1991.33

Conclusion
Kluge's entry into television marks a major shift in his career. Since his first television broadcasts in 1985, Kluge has produced only one feature film, Odds and Ends [Vermischte Nachrichten, 19861, itself a hodgepodge of outtakes and miscellany from previous productions, more fragmented and less successful than any previous Kluge film. Although he speaks of teievision as providing resources for a return to film, he has shown no serious inclination to return to the larger format. His work in video has, however, become increasingiy sophisticated and visually impressive. As someone who did not enjoy working with large-scale production crews or constructing traditional narratives, he is now able to work in a much more artisanal fashion - in a small video-editing suite with one or two technical assistants. He has used this complete artistic control to create beautifully complex, handcrafted objects that incorporate contemporary and historical images and sounds. His imaginative innovations have resulted in programs far different from standard television fare: mini-essays full of sensual pleasures, wit, and the interplay of ideas and historical perspectives. Although the pace of production is relentless, television provides Kluge with ample financial rewards and artistic satisfaction. The "cultural window" has not, however, subverted private television, won broad audiences, or achieved great critical acclaim. While Kluge's television perhaps makes a small contribution to a counter-public sphere, its engagement with contemporary and historical social issues is distanced, abstract, and peripheral. It does not provide a forum for new film and videomakers, the 1990s equivalent of the Oberhausener outsiders, for
33. Marcus Hertneck, "Die unterschiedlicheWirkung einer Gartenschere,"Siiddeutsche Zeitung 30 Mar. 1992. Kluge discussed the situation in some depth in an interview, "Personlichpriide," epd/Kirche und Rundfunk 65 (2 1 Aug. 1991).

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whom Kluge spoke in the 1960s. Although the other DCTP magazine shows, particularly Spiegel-TV, have generated considerable public attention and excitement, Kluge's have not had this kind of impact. Nevertheless, Kluge does provide yet another model for guerrilla action against powerful institutions. The contemporary artist cannot wait for a patron, but must make space for her own work. Like capitalism, the mass media must expand or die, and this imperative will create opportunities for financing and exhibiting innovative work that has its own integrity. Ironically, he has found an ally in the most thoroughly commodified aspect of the media, advertising:
According to Kluge, the AKS (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kabel-Satellit) proceeds now as before to produce a public sphere that is as independent of cartels and big business as it is of the public television stations. The great advertising budgets of the world are the only capital that have the financial scope and an interest in attractive, cultural productions.34

Aesthetically, Kluge suggests that all experience can be organized into art and that film and video have much greater potential than has thus far been tapped. While his own works have not hlly realized this potential, and he himself admits they may be a bit too "academic," they are nevertheless noteworthy attempts to bridge the distance between high and popular culture without denigrating either.35 They serve as both models and encouragement to experimental video producers. If Kluge is actually able to realize his dream of a Europe-wide cultural channel, with a multiplicity of offerings, he may indeed provide a significant public forum for a broader group of producers - including less established artists - and engage a far larger audience than he is now reaching.36 Whether he still has the energy, intrepidity, and commitment for such a collaborative enterprise remains to be seen.
34. "Kluge-Dentsu TV," die tageszeitung 25 Nov. 1986. Kluge has also explained why advertisers are interested in more up-scale cultural programming: "One cannot advertise the new generation of quality computers or a champagne in the commercial ghetto from six to eight p.m. among laundry detergent and junk food commercials." "Eine 'Spielwiese' im privaten Femsehen: Alexander Kluges Kulturprograrnm bei RTL plus," Neue Ziircher Zeitung 2 June 1988. 35. Quoted in an interview by Ingrid Scheib-Rotbart, "Alexander Kluge in New York," Prisma Akzente 1 (1989): 61. 36. A major setback to these plans occurred with the 1994 demise of VOX, a channel in which DCTP held an eleven percent interest and which Kluge hoped would expand throughout Europe. After single-handedly trying to save the channel, he finally sold his share to the U.S. bank Goldman-Sachs. Huhndorf. "Inseln in bunten Einerlei."

[Footnotes]
2

Cooperative Auteur Cinema and Oppositional Public Sphere: Alexander Kluge's Contribution to Germany in Autumn Miriam Hansen New German Critique, No. 24/25, Special Double Issue on New German Cinema. (Autumn, 1981 Winter, 1982), pp. 36-56.

18

On Film and the Public Sphere Alexander Kluge; Thomas Y. Levin; Miriam B. Hansen New German Critique, No. 24/25, Special Double Issue on New German Cinema. (Autumn, 1981 Winter, 1982), pp. 206-220.

NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.