Jürgen Ploog

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Jürgen Ploog (born January 9, 1935 in Munich ; † May 19, 2020 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German writer and publicist . He studied commercial art and was for 33 years an airline pilot . Since 1993 he has devoted himself exclusively to writing. He lived in Frankfurt and Florida.

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overview

His literary work comprises around 20 monographs and over 50 shorter works, mainly published in the organs of the underground press, including the political-satirical magazine Der Metzger . It is all about the cut-up technique "discovered" by Brion Gysin and further developed by William S. Burroughs . It served Ploog as an adequate means of expression for his rhythm of life as a long-distance pilot. The constant change of location, the shifted time continuum, the disorientation and the constant déjà vus life created this cut-up feeling.

Jürgen Ploog's work can be roughly divided into three phases. The early phase around 1970 is characterized by highly fragmented cut-ups, which, in their bulk, clearly refuse to accept conventional reading. The second phase, from the mid-1970s, is characterized by formally more moderate works with a loose episode structure, with which Ploog experimented until the end. In the 80s Ploog opened up another field of work in the essay, in which he mainly dealt with writing and literature. Together with Carl Weissner and Walter Hartmann, he was co-editor of the alternative literary magazine Gasolin 23 .

Cut-up

An outstanding example of Ploog's first creative phase is his debut novel, Cola-Hinterland , published in 1969 by Melzer Verlag in Darmstadt. The cut-up method is consistently applied here. The result is a highly fragmented and open text, the causal-chronological references of which have largely been dissolved. A sketchy universe emerges, the Cola hinterland, the inhabitants of which are controlled and manipulated by a wide variety of communication media and channels. Compulsions, often of a sexual nature, exercised in grotesquely obscene scenes, are the result of media surveillance. The text as a whole is presented as a log book of a spaceman figure who drifts through foreign worlds as an explorer. This framework suggests that Cola Hinterland should also be understood as the record of an inner journey. Its aim is to sound out awareness under mass media bombardment. The diagnosis is dark: under the media conditions, personal freedom hardly seems possible.

Ploog's other cut-up publications include Die Fickmaschine (1970), Sternzeit 23 (1975) and RadarOrient (1976), in which the themes laid out in Cola Hinterland are varied.

Logbooks

In Ploog's later texts, such as Pacific Boulevard (1977), Nights in Amnesia (1980), and The Space Agent (1993), the cut-up takes a back seat in favor of an episode structure. With this, Ploog designed individual experience and processing of reality as a proliferating proliferation of memories, experiences, dreams and fantasies into private logbooks of introspective research trips.

Essays

Ploog continued this exploration of consciousness on another level in his essays. They mostly revolve around literature and his activity as a writer, as he called himself. In Strassen des Zufall (1983), for example, Ploog approached the American writer William S. Burroughs, who had an immense influence on his work. In Return to Coca & Cola Hinterland (1995), Ploog gave an account of his own writing, which he understood as exploring a “space behind words”. This was based on efforts to expand the linguistic possibilities of expression, to which he also attributed an expansion of mental abilities based on the formula "language = consciousness".

reception

Ploog's work has rarely received cultural and literary recognition. The exceptions include Die Cut-up-Connection (documentary 1998) and Ploog - Tanker (anthology, edited by Florian Vetsch with texts by and about Jürgen Ploog 2005). Despite these efforts, “Jürgen Ploog [...] has always remained a stranger in the German-language literature business; one, however, is worth getting closer to. ”(Arne Rautenberg: In the hinterland of words. Jürgen Ploog - Germany's last Beatnik poet . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (July 16, 2005))

Works (in selection)

  • Cola hinterland (Darmstadt: Melzer Verlag 1969)
  • The fucking machine. A contribution to cybernetic eroticism (Göttingen: Expanded Media Editions 1970)
  • Sternzeit 23 (Göttingen: Shark Editions / Verlag Udo Breger 1975)
  • RadarOrient (Berlin: Verlag Jakobsohn 1976)
  • Pacific Boulevard (Bonn: Expanded Media Editions 1977)
  • Motel USA, American diary (Nachtmaschine Verlag Basel 1979)
  • Nights in amnesia. Stories (Basel: Sphinx Verlag 1980)
  • Streets of chance. About William S. Burroughs & for a literature of the 80s (Bern: Lichtspuren 1983)
  • Facts of Fiction. Essays on contemporary literature (Frankfurt: Paria Verlag 1991)
  • Black Maria or The Real Time Endgame - Notes on Virilio (Ostheim: Verlag Peter Engstler 1992)
  • The space agent. Stories (Berlin: Druckhaus Galrev 1993)
  • Return to the Coca & Cola hinterland (Ostheim: Verlag Peter Engstler 1995)
  • Streets of Chance (revised version) (Berlin: Druckhaus Galrev 1998)
  • The dead zone (Ostheim: Verlag Peter Engstler 1998)
  • The last dimension (Ostheim: Verlag Peter Engstler 2002)
  • Tanker. Texts by & about Jürgen Ploog . Edited by Florian Vetsch. (Herdecke: Rohstoff Verlag 2004)
  • Undercover. Episodic novel (Wolfenbüttel: GP German Publishing 2005)
  • Simulative writing (Ostheim: Verlag Peter Engstler 2008)
  • Santa Muerte (Ostheim: Verlag Peter Engstler 2011)
  • Being on the move is everything - Diary Berlin-New York (Aachen / Zurich: [SIC] - Literaturverlag 2011)
  • Traces of lust or the execution of the senses (Schönebeck: Molokoprint Verlag 2012- ISBN 978-3-943603-03-3 )
  • Nights in Amnesia (Schönebeck: Molokoprint Verlag 2013- ISBN 978-3-943603-08-8 )
  • Word is Virus - Essays. 100 years WSB (Lucerne: The collaborator 2014)
  • Radar Orient and tapes on the go 1971-1976 (Schönebeck: Molokoprint Verlag 2015- ISBN 978-3-943603-17-0 )
  • Distant routes (Schönebeck: Molokoprint Verlag 2016- ISBN 978-3-943603-21-7 )
  • Jürgen Ploog: Tangier diary. In: Florian Vetsch & Boris Kerenski (eds.): Tanger Telegram. Journey through the literatures of a legendary Moroccan city. bilgerverlag , Zurich 2004/2017
  • Small pornography of traveling (Schönebeck: Molokoprint Verlag 2017 - ISBN 978-3-943603-40-8 )
  • Flesh Film (Schönebeck: Molokoprint Verlag 2018 - ISBN 978-3-943603-48-4 )
  • The double horizon (Ostheim: Verlag Peter Engstler 2018 - ISBN 978-3-946685-18-0 )
  • Dillinger in Dahlem (Schönebeck: Molokoprint Verlag 2019 - Chapbook No. 6)

Reviews (in selection)

  • Martin Jankowski : Half-sleep fantasies. Jürgen Ploog, the master of clear sentences, skillfully continues literary traditions . In: Junge Welt . June 21, 2006.
  • Matthyas Jenny: Cut-up author Jürgen Ploog . In: Basler Magazin . October 21, 1978, p. 11.
  • Matthias Penzel : Behind the words. An extensive collection of texts pays tribute to the underground writer Jürgen Ploog . In: Rolling Stone . 01/2005, pp. 74-75.
  • Arne Rautenberg : In the hinterland of words. Jürgen Ploog - Germany's last beatnik poet . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . July 16, 2005.
  • Mark Tus: Jürgen Ploog - Streets of Chance . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . March 4, 1998, p. 30.
  • Jamal Tuschik: Flaneur in flight. A memorial event for Jörg Fauser with Jürgen Ploog . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . October 1, 1997.
  • Uwe Wandrey: Ozone Shield and Underground. On an Atlantic flight with LH captain and author Jürgen Ploog . In: TAZ . May 9, 1992.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Florian Vetsch : Always hard on Sexus , Friday , January 9th, 2015
  2. ↑ Jan Herman: Jürgen Ploog, RIP In: Straight up Herman, an artsjournal blog. May 21, 2020, accessed May 23, 2020 (American English).
personal data
SURNAME Ploog, Jürgen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH 19th May 2020
Place of death Frankfurt am Main