The sounds of music and the German language have played a significant role in the developing symbolism of the German nation. In light of the historical division of Germany into many disparate political entities and regional groups, German artists and intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries conceived of musical and linguistic dispositions as the nation's most palpable common ground. According to this view, the peculiar sounds of German music and of the German language provided a direct conduit to national identity, to the deepest recesses of the German soul. So strong is this legacy of sound is still prevalent in modern German culture that philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in a recent essay, did not even hesitate to describe post-wall Germany as an "acoustical body." This volume gathers the work of scholars from the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom to explore the role of sound in modern and postmodern German cultural production. Working across established disciplines and methodological divides, the essays of Sound Matters investigate the ways in which texts, artists, and performers in all kinds of media have utilized sonic materials in order to enforce or complicate dominant notions of German cultural and national identity. Nora M. Alter is Professor of German, Film and Media Studies at the University of Florida. She is author of Vietnam Protest Theatre: The Television War on Stage (Indiana UP, 1996) and Projecting History: German Non-Fiction Film 1967-2000, (University of Michigan Press, 2002). Lutz Koepnick is Associate Professor of German, Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power (The University of Nebraska Press, 1999), for which he received the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures in 2000.

The sounds of music and the German language have played a significant role in the developing symbolism of the German nation. In light of the historical division of Germany into many disparate political entities and regional groups, German artists and intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries conceived of musical and linguistic dispositions as the nation's most palpable common ground. According to this view, the peculiar sounds of German music and of the German language provided a direct conduit to national identity, to the deepest recesses of the German soul. So strong is this legacy of sound is still prevalent in modern German culture that philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in a recent essay, did not even hesitate to describe post-wall Germany as an "acoustical body." This volume gathers the work of scholars from the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom to explore the role of sound in modern and postmodern German cultural production. Working across established disciplines and methodological divides, the essays of Sound Matters investigate the ways in which texts, artists, and performers in all kinds of media have utilized sonic materials in order to enforce or complicate dominant notions of German cultural and national identity.

The intersection between social, historical, and political developments in Germany and the emergence of a nonfiction mode of film production

In 1975, a small group of enterprising, discontented members of the international art community in Quebec posed the question: "What do we know of contemporary art outside of Quebec, in Canada or abroad? Do we even know what contemporary art exists in Montreal? How does information about art circulate?" By way of an answer, the artistically unconventional and theoretically cutting-edge magazine "Parachute" was launched, founded by Chantal Pontbriand and France Morin. Artists such as Jeff Wall, Bill Viola, Stan Douglas, Eija-Liisa Ahtila and many others had the first significant critical reception of their work in "Parachute." Similarly, figures such as Douglas Crimp, Thomas Crow, Thierry de Duve, Georges Didi-Huberman, Hal Foster and Laura Mulvey published important early essays in the journal. This second volume of writings from "Parachute" gathers texts around "Performance and Performativity."

This is the first comprehensive monograph devoted to New York and San Francisco-based artist Renee Green. Over the past 20 years, through film, video, sound art, photographs, prints, banners, texts, websites and ephemera, Green's work has comprised complex, multi-layered archive-like installations, employing a vast array of sources, which always urge viewers to become active participants. Included in this superbly illustrated volume are newly commissioned essays by a host of esteemed media scholars, art historians, critics and curators--Nora Alter, Diedrich Diederichsen, Kobena Mercer, Catherine Queloz, Gloria Sutton and Elvan Zabunyan--who engage issues central to Green's oeuvre, such as genealogy, archives and their reworkings, movements and displacements, site specificity and location.

Nora M. Alter argues that the essay film is a hybrid genre that fuses three major categories of film: feature, art, and documentary. Much like the written essay, its literary predecessor, the essay film draws on a variety of forms and approaches, fundamentally altering the shape of cinema. Alter traces the essay film's origins to early silent cinema, charting the genre's evolution with the advent of sound, its emergence as a recognized category of film in the postwar period, and the ways the genre developed in the later twentieth century. In addition to exploring the broader history of the essay film, Alter discusses the work of artists including Robert Smithson, Martha Rosler, Isaac Julien, John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki, and Hito Steyerl.

The essay-with its emphasis on the provisional and explorative rather than on definitive statements-has evolved from its literary beginnings and is now found in all mediums, including film. Today, the essay film is, arguably, one of the most widely acclaimed and critically discussed forms of filmmaking around the world, with practitioners such as Chris Marker, Hito Steyerl, Errol Morris, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Rithy Panh. Characteristics of the essay film include the blending of fact and fiction, the mixing of art- and documentary-film styles, the foregrounding of subjective points of view, a concentration on public life, a tension between acoustic and visual discourses, and a dialogic encounter with audiences. This anthology of fundamental statements on the essay film offers a range of crucial historical and philosophical perspectives. It provides early critical articulations of the essay film as it evolved through the 1950s and 1960s, key contemporary scholarly essays, and a selection of writings by essay filmmakers. It features texts on the foundations of the essay film by writers such as Hans Richter and Andre Bazin; contemporary positions by, among others, Phillip Lopate and Michael Renov; and original essays by filmmakers themselves, including Laura Mulvey and Isaac Julien.

Nora M. Alter argues that the essay film is a hybrid genre that fuses three major categories of film: feature, art, and documentary. Much like the written essay, its literary predecessor, the essay film draws on a variety of forms and approaches, fundamentally altering the shape of cinema. Alter traces the essay film's origins to early silent cinema, charting the genre's evolution with the advent of sound, its emergence as a recognized category of film in the postwar period, and the ways the genre developed in the later twentieth century. In addition to exploring the broader history of the essay film, Alter discusses the work of artists including Robert Smithson, Martha Rosler, Isaac Julien, John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki, and Hito Steyerl.

..". a thoughtful and important treatment of the international tensions of the period as they were embodied in theatre practice. It is the only book of its kind on the subject, and a valuable source of production information." Theatre Journal

..". an excellent discussion of the aesthetics of theater." Choice

The escalation of the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s unleashed worldwide protest. Playwrights grappled with the complexities of post-imperialist politics and with the problems of creating effective political theatre in the television age. The ephemeral theatre these writers created, today little-known and rarely studied, provides an important window on a complex moment in culture and history."

The essay-with its emphasis on the provisional and explorative rather than on definitive statements-has evolved from its literary beginnings and is now found in all mediums, including film. Today, the essay film is, arguably, one of the most widely acclaimed and critically discussed forms of filmmaking around the world, with practitioners such as Chris Marker, Hito Steyerl, Errol Morris, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Rithy Panh. Characteristics of the essay film include the blending of fact and fiction, the mixing of art- and documentary-film styles, the foregrounding of subjective points of view, a concentration on public life, a tension between acoustic and visual discourses, and a dialogic encounter with audiences. This anthology of fundamental statements on the essay film offers a range of crucial historical and philosophical perspectives. It provides early critical articulations of the essay film as it evolved through the 1950s and 1960s, key contemporary scholarly essays, and a selection of writings by essay filmmakers. It features texts on the foundations of the essay film by writers such as Hans Richter and Andre Bazin; contemporary positions by, among others, Phillip Lopate and Michael Renov; and original essays by filmmakers themselves, including Laura Mulvey and Isaac Julien.

Best known in the United States for his visionary short film La Jetee, Chris Marker spearheaded the bourgeoning Nouvelle Vague scene in the late 1950s. His distinctive style and use of still images place him among the postwar era's most influential European filmmakers. His fearless political cinema, meanwhile, provided a bold model for other activist filmmakers. Nora M. Alter investigates the core themes and motivations behind an unpredictable and transnational career that defies easy classification. A photographer, multimedia artist, writer, broadcaster, producer, and organizer, Marker cultivated an artistic dynamism and always-changing identity. ""I am an essayist,"" Marker once said, and his 1953 debut filmic essay The Statues Also Die (with Alain Resnais) exposed the European art market's complicity in atrocities in the former Belgian Congo. Ranging geographically as well as artistically, Marker's travels led to films like the classic Sans Soleil and Sunday in Peking. His decades-long struggle against global injustice involved him with Night and Fog, Le Joli Mai, Far from Vietnam, Le fond du l'air est Rouge, and Prime Time in the Camps. Insightful and revealing, Chris Marker includes interviews with the notoriously private director.