Thomas Thiede & Alexander Kluge

Dialog (2017–2022)

“The best thing about dialogue is the mistakes”

Thomas Thiede’s (b. Plauen, 1967; lives and works in Fischbachau and Hamburg) work has two major focuses: on the one hand, on drawings and installations that are partly site-specific and named after the place where they were created. On the other, collaborations, such as with the filmmaker, author, and philosopher Alexander Kluge (b. Halberstadt, 1932; lives and works in Munich), one of the most important intellectuals of our time. In recent years, Thiede’s collaborative works with Kluge have been exhibited at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Museum Folkwang in Essen, Kunsthalle Weishaupt in Ulm, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Belvedere 21 in Vienna, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, among others.

The book Dialog presents the artistic exchange between Kluge and Thiede. Since 2017 the two have been inspiring each other with a wide variety of topics and ideas, such as the “gravel road of modernity,” the “new alphabet,” an upright church pew, the “repair experience,” or a waterslide reaching into the heavens. They spin productive impulses out of each other’s artistic practices and perspectives. Literature thus converses with drawing, films discuss with installations, words with music. In two parts of the book, the two artists’ works are juxtaposed as reactions to each other, while the reader brings them into dialogue again.