Intelligence Is the Art of Remaining Faithful under Shifting Circumstances
9781803096001
Distributed for Seagull Books
Intelligence Is the Art of Remaining Faithful under Shifting Circumstances
A layered and lyrical collaboration between two great artists—Anselm Kiefer and Alexander Kluge—that explores what it means to remain faithful amid the shifting forces of power, love, truth, and money.
What holds us together in times of uncertainty? For decades, artist Anselm Kiefer and filmmaker-writer Alexander Kluge have explored this question—both as friends and collaborators. This latest volume is a bold and poetic exchange of images and texts in which they delve into the idea of reliability and its relationship to the four great forces that shape our lives: power, love, truth, and money.
Moving across history, myth, and the present day, Kiefer and Kluge ask: What is time? In a world of endless change, how do we hold on to what endures? Inspired by Hölderlin’s call “to remain faithful under shifting circumstances,” they use art to keep memory alive, invite the past into the present, and welcome the future before it arrives. Layered, provocative, and profoundly human, this new collaboration is a powerful meditation on what connects us—and what makes us endure.
What holds us together in times of uncertainty? For decades, artist Anselm Kiefer and filmmaker-writer Alexander Kluge have explored this question—both as friends and collaborators. This latest volume is a bold and poetic exchange of images and texts in which they delve into the idea of reliability and its relationship to the four great forces that shape our lives: power, love, truth, and money.
Moving across history, myth, and the present day, Kiefer and Kluge ask: What is time? In a world of endless change, how do we hold on to what endures? Inspired by Hölderlin’s call “to remain faithful under shifting circumstances,” they use art to keep memory alive, invite the past into the present, and welcome the future before it arrives. Layered, provocative, and profoundly human, this new collaboration is a powerful meditation on what connects us—and what makes us endure.
Table of Contents
Foreword
STATION 1: Tractate on Money, Love, Power and Truth / Four Currencies that Rule Our Lifespans
STATION 2: The House of Whispers / Anselm Kiefer’s Paintings Accompany Maurice Genevoix into the Panthéon, the Memorial of the Immortals / ‘Dedicated to Paul Celan’
STATION 3: Two Very Young Arts: Photography and Film
STATION 4: Stories of Exodus
STATION 5: Finnegans Wake and the Construction Site of Words
STATION 6: 30 Films for Anselm Kiefer
STATION 7: ‘Something that wants to be born already lives amongst us’ / Stories on the Occasion of Anselm Kiefer’s Block of Work / ‘The unborn. Les non-nès’
STATION 8: A as in Antaeus / D as in Daphne / ‘I’m going to paint someone from Altdorf’ / ‘Superstrings’
STATION 9: Hortus philosophorum / Dr Robert Fludd, Oxford
STATION 10: ‘Building a house of trust’ / Hölderlin’s Pindar Fragments / ‘Time tumbles down from the stars’
Acknowledgements
Image Credits
STATION 1: Tractate on Money, Love, Power and Truth / Four Currencies that Rule Our Lifespans
STATION 2: The House of Whispers / Anselm Kiefer’s Paintings Accompany Maurice Genevoix into the Panthéon, the Memorial of the Immortals / ‘Dedicated to Paul Celan’
STATION 3: Two Very Young Arts: Photography and Film
STATION 4: Stories of Exodus
STATION 5: Finnegans Wake and the Construction Site of Words
STATION 6: 30 Films for Anselm Kiefer
STATION 7: ‘Something that wants to be born already lives amongst us’ / Stories on the Occasion of Anselm Kiefer’s Block of Work / ‘The unborn. Les non-nès’
STATION 8: A as in Antaeus / D as in Daphne / ‘I’m going to paint someone from Altdorf’ / ‘Superstrings’
STATION 9: Hortus philosophorum / Dr Robert Fludd, Oxford
STATION 10: ‘Building a house of trust’ / Hölderlin’s Pindar Fragments / ‘Time tumbles down from the stars’
Acknowledgements
Image Credits