23.06.2008, at 6 p.m.

 

Curator: Katarzyna Woźniak

 

Contemporary concepts of media are either under-determined to the point of complete triviality or, from a historical perspective, much too narrow. We have become accustomed to viewing the origin of the media in connection with technical reproducibility of visual and acoustic phenomena; that is, in connection with the development of photography and phonography in the nineteenth century, or to connect the origins of media arts with the Fluxus movements after World War II. Yet since classical antiquity in Europe and before — in the Byzantine, Arabic, and Chinese civilisations — there have been both artistic and scientific praxes of technical experimentation realised with and through apparatuses. Code systems, channels for transmitting and receiving messages, apparatus for producing special visual or acoustic effects, devices for generating, transforming, and modulating texts, images, and sounds are part of the rich legacy of generations of philosophers, medical doctors, engineers, physiologists, and mathematicians before their categorical split from the performing and fine arts. Only then these praxes were not labelled media, or media practice, because the latter did not yet exist as prestigious, politically, culturally, and economically attractive institutions. – Jumping again and again through the presence and into the future the lecture will organize exciting excursions through media before they became media.

 

  

 

 

SIEGFRIED ZIELINSKI studied philosophy, theatre, German philology, media studies, political sciences, and linguistics at Marburg University, Free and Technical University Berlin. In the 1980s he was assistant lecturer and assistant professor at the Department for Media Studies, Technical University Berlin. 1990-1993 Professor for audiovisual studies at the University of Salzburg, Austria, founded the department of >Audiovisions<. As of 1993, Chair of Communication and Audiovisual Studies at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany; from 1994-2000 Founding Director and Rector of this Academy.

Siegfried Zielinski teaches and researches on the history, theory, and praxis of audiovision; his special field of interest is media archaeology. He gave seminars and lectures in around 25 different countries around the world.

Since 1979 he realized numerous Film, Video and exhibition projects, including "Responses to HOLOCAUST in Western Germany", "Channel Four — Fernsehen zwischen Kultur und Kommerz", "Einhundert — Kurzfilme zur Archäologie der Audiovision", "Museum Hermeticum", "Wie man sieht". He was director of the Cologne based festival "Digitale" (1995-2000).

Siegfried Zielinski is a member of the European Film Academy (EFA), the Academy of Arts Berlin, the Faculty of the European Graduate School, Saas Fee, the Budapest Center for Culture and Communication (C3) and the Magic Lantern Society of Great Britain.