The work of acclaimed German artist Christoph Schlingensief spans three decades and a diverse range of fields, including, film, television, activism, opera, and theatre. "Christoph Schlingensief: Art Without Borders" is the first book to be published in English on Schlingensief's groundbreaking, politically engaged body of work. Leading scholars in the field offer a critical assessment of Schlingensief's hybrid practice, and an interview with Schlingensief himself provides the reader with insight into past and present projects. The book will be an essential resource for artists, curators, students, and academics in the fields of theater and performance studies, film studies, cultural studies, German studies, political activism, and art history.

Realism as Protest draws on the "realistic method" developed by Alexander Kluge to counter the limited image of reality generated by the mainstream media. Focusing on innovative productions produced by Kluge, Schlingensief and Haneke, this groundbreaking study explores how the experimental form of their work in film, television and theatre facilitates thinking, discussion and debate about the possibilities for cultural and political change.

This book explores Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Alexander Kluge's analyses of the role that a rejuvenation in the capacity for imagination can play in encouraging us to reconceive the possibilities of the past, the present, and the future outside of the parameters of the status quo. The concept of imagination to which the title of the book refers is not a strictly defined, stable concept, but rather a term which is employed to refer to a capacity that facilitates both an active, creative relationship to one's environment, and a process of mediation between the outside world and one's own experiences and memories. Through a detailed analysis of their engagements with subjects that span a broad range of historical and thematic contexts (including topics as diverse as literature, children's play, film, photography, history, and television) the book charts the extent to which the concept of imagination plays a central role in Benjamin, Kracauer, and Kluge's explorations of a mode of perception and experience which could serve as a catalyst for the creation and sustenance of a desire for a different kind of future.