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Books

Powell's Books: A Baker's Dozen Special Edition
Adam Lehrer , August 22nd, 2020 08:03

Electronic music producer Powell picks favourite books by Baudrillard, Derrida, Kafka, and Susan Sontag

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Alexander Kluge, Learning Processes With a Deadly Outcome
I didn't know anything about Kluge until Marte, who worked with Kluge when he contributed some writing to a book of hers, recommended I check out Learning Lessons with a Deadly Outcome. It's just mad. It posits a post-apocalyptic scenario where the world blows up and we start excavating space and space becomes this world governed by bureaucratic laws and stupid ideas by nazi commanders pillaging planets for resources. A funny thing that happens is that in the absence of humans the value of labour goes up. Workers become the most important things in the galaxy. Kluge has a law background, so the style is dry and documentarian. Every page has all these citations and out of context pictures of space explosions and odd details, relabelled to make them part of the story. That’s the kind of approach I like taking with music, jumping from one point to another without a connective tissue. It’s exhilarating to just drop into something.