Wolfgang Ernst

Wolfgang Ernst (1959) was full professor for Media Theories at the Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Medienwissenschaft at Humboldt University in Berlin until his retirement in autumn 2024, where he founded the seminar for Media Science and the Media Archaeological Fundus. He received his doctorate in history, then focused on media studies and cultural studies. Since his research turn towards media archaeology, he has devoted his writings and teaching primarily to theories of the archive, media temporalities and sonic media processes. He is currently exploring the intra-technical technológos of cultural knowledge. (2024)

Works

(in German unless noted otherwise)

Books

• M.edium F.oucault. Weimarer Vorlesungen über Archive, Archäologie, Monumente und Medien Weimar, 2000, 151 pp. Excerpt. Publisher.

• Das Rumoren der Archive. Ordnung aus Unordnung, Berlin: Merve, 2002, 141 pp.
  • Sorlet från arkiven: Ordning ur oordning, trans. Tommy Andersson, Göteborg: Glänta, 2008, 112 pp. Excerpt. Publisher. (Swedish)
  • Stirrings in the Archives: Order from Disorder, trans. Adam Siegel, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, v+101 pp. Reviews: Willey (Arch Issues), Thadani (RBM), Buchanan (Arch & Records). (English)

• Im Namen von Geschichte: Sammeln - Speichern - (Er)Zählen. Infrastrukturelle Konfigurationen des deutschen Gedächtnisses, Munich: Fink, 2003. Habilitation thesis; aiming at "uncovering the hidden agencies and nondiscursive mechanisms (the technological infrastructure) of constructing collective memory (archives, libraries, museums, inventories, source editions, and data banks)."

• Das Gesetz des Gedächtnisses. Medien und Archive am Ende (des 20. Jahrhunderts), Berlin: Kadmos, 2007. Publisher. Review: Zierold (H-Net).

• Gleichursprünglichkeit. Zeitwesen und Zeitgegebenheit technischer Medien, Berlin: Kadmos, 2012, 459 pp. Publisher. Review: Haase (MWS).
  • Chronopoetics: The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, 288 pp. Trans. of abridged version. Publisher. (English)

• Digital Memory and the Archive, ed. & intro. Jussi Parikka, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 265 pp. Reviews: Young (RiC), Ward (I&C). (English)

• Chronopoetik. Zeitweisen und Zeitgaben technischer Medien, Berlin: Kadmos, 2013, 428 pp. TOC. Publisher. Review: Powell (GSR, EN).
  • Chronopoetics: The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, 288 pp. Trans. of abridged version. Publisher. (English)

• Signale aus der Vergangenheit. Eine kleine Geschichtskritik, Munich: Fink, 2013, 211 pp. Publisher.

• Im Medium erklingt die Zeit. Technologische Tempor(e)alitäten und das Sonische als ihre privilegierte Erkenntnisform, Berlin: Kadmos, 2015, 256 pp. Publisher.

• Sonic Time Machines: Explicit Sound, Sirenic Voices, and Implicit Sonicity, forew. Liam Cole Young, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 160 pp. Publisher. Reviews: Cornford (TCS), Harle (Leonardo). (English)

• Technológos in Being: Radical Media Archaeology and the Computational Machine, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, 211 pp. Publisher. (English)

Edited books

• with Matthias Middell, Medien - Revolution - Historie, Leipzig: Pauselius, 1991.
• with Georg Trogemann and Alexander Nitussov, Computing in Russia. The History of Computer Devices and Information Technology Revealed, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 2001. (English)
• with Anselm Franke, Politik der Bilder. Visuelle Kompetenz und Kriegsbildrhetorik, Berlin: Kunst-Werke, 2002.
• with Stefan Heidenreich and Ute Holl, Suchbilder. Visuelle Kultur zwischen Algorithmen und Archiven, Berlin: Kadmos, 2003. [1]
• with Friedrich Kittler, Die Geburt des Vokalalphabets aus dem Geist der Poesie: Schrift, Zahl und Ton im Medienverbund, Munich: Fink, 2006.
• with Wladimir Velminski, Semën Karsakov: Ideenmaschine. Von der Homöopathie zum Computer, Berlin: Kadmos, 2007. [2]

Book chapters, Papers, Articles (selection)

in English

• "Between Real Time and Memory on Demand: Reflections on/of Television", South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp 625–637.
• "Telling versus Counting? A Media Archaeological Point of View", Intermédialités 2 (Autumn 2003), pp 31–44. [3] [4]
• "The Archive as Metaphor: From Archival Space to Archival Time", Open 7, 2004, pp 46-53.
• "Let There Be Irony: Cultural History and Media Archaeology in Parallel Lines", Art History 28, no. 5 (November 2005).
• "Dis/continuities: Does the Archive Become Metaphorical in Multi-Media Space?", in New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, eds. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan, New York and London: Routledge, 2006, pp 105–123. [5]
• "Cultural Archive versus Technomathematical Storage", in The Archive in Motion, ed. Eivind Røssaak, Oslo: Novus Press, 2010, pp 53–73.
• "Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media", in Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, eds. Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, pp 239-255.
• "From Media History to Zeitkritik", Theory, Culture & Society 30:6 (Nov 2013), pp 132-146.
• "Media, Hot & Cold. Fourier('s) Analysis: 'Sonic' Heat Conduction and Its Cold Calculation", International Journal of Communication 8 (2014), pp 2535-2539.
• "‘Electrified Voices’: Non-Human Agencies of Socio-Cultural Memory", in Memory in Motion: Archives, Technology, and the Social eds. Ina Blom, Trond Lundemo and Eivind Røssaak, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 2016, pp 41-59.
• More, [6], [7].

Lectures

• Medienwissen(schaft), zeitkritisch. Ein Programm aus der Sophienstraße. Antrittsvorlesung v. 21. Oktober 2003, Berlin: Humboldt University, 2004, 31 pp.
• "Archival Times: Tempor(e)alities of Media Memory", National Library, Oslo, 2010. (English)
• "Signals and Symbols: A Media-Archaeological Approach to 'Textuality'", Yale University, 2012. (English)
• Aura and Temporality: The Insistence of the Archive, Barcelona: MACBA, 2013, 25 pp. (English) [8]

Interviews (selection)

in English

• Geert Lovink, "Archive Rumblings. Interview with German media archeologist Wolfgang Ernst", 2003. [9]
• Interview with Wolfgang Ernst by Ràdio Web MACBA's Son(i)a, December 2012. Audio, 28 min.
• Lori Emerson, "Archives, Materiality and the “Agency of the Machine”: An Interview with Wolfgang Ernst", 2013.
• Ghislain Thibault, "What We Used to Call "Media History": A Feature Interview with Wolfgang Ernst", Amodern.net, 2015.

Literature

• Jussi Parikka, "Operative Media Archaeology: Wolfgang Ernst’s Materialist Media Diagrammatics", Theory, Culture & Society 2011, Vol. 28(5), 2011, pp 52-74.
• Moritz Hiller, Stefan Höltgen (eds.), Archäographien. Aspekte einer radikalen Medienarchäologie. Festschrift für Wolfgang Ernst, Basel: Schwabe, 2019, 354 pp. TOC & Foreword. (German),(English)

See also

• Media Archaeological Fundus
• Media archaeology
• Friedrich Kittler

Links

• Humboldt U
• Merely the Medium: Die operative Verschränkung von Logik und Materie, lecture, Weimar, 2005, video and audio. [10]
• Wikipedia-DE