Siegfried Zielinski

Siegfried Zielinski (1951) is a German media theorist. Studied philosophy, theatre, German philology, media studies, political sciences, and linguistics at Marburg University, Free and Technical University Berlin. His M.A. thesis was on the film director Veit Harlan, who was tried for crimes against humanity because of his film "Jud Süß" (1942). In the 1980s he was assistant lecturer and assistant professor at the Department for Media Studies, Technical University Berlin.

Biography

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; 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). Together with the musician and composer Anthony Moore he developed a new accoustic format called "expanded lectures". CD-Rom productions amongst others with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Amsterdam located deBalie ("Permanent Flux") and the Budapest Kunsthalle (Mucsarnok), "The Butterfly Effect".

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.

He also worked as co-editor of various series like Preprints zur Medienwissenschaft and Germanistische Medienwissenschaft; and consultant editor of Balkan Media (Sofia, 1991-1999) and Ctheory (Montreal, Canada).

Works

Books

(in German unless noted)

• Veit Harlan. Analysen und Materialien zur Auseinandersetzung mit einem Filmregisseur des deutschen Faschismus, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1981. [1]
• with Friedrich Knilli, Holocaust zur Unterhaltung — Anatomie eines internationalen Bestsellers, Berlin: Espresso/Elef.Press, 1982, 515 pp. [2]
• with Friedrich Knilli, T. Maurer and T. Radevagen, Jud Süß, 1983. (in German)
• Tele-Visionen — Medien-Zeiten, 1983. [3]
• Zur Geschichte des Videorecorders, Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Volker Spiess, 1986. New edition, Potsdam: Polzer Media Group, 2010. [4]
  • "Audiovisuelle Zeitmaschine. Schlußthesen zur Kulturtechnik des Videorecorders", pp 431-437.
• Audiovisionen: Kino und Fernsehen als Zwischenspiele in der Geschichte, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989.
  • Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr’actes in History, Amsterdam University Press, 1999. (English)
  • Hungarian trans., 2003.
• with E. Reiss, Grenzüberschreitungen, 1992.
• Video — Apparat/Medium, Kunst, Kultur, 1992. [5]
• Keith Griffiths — The Presence, 1993.
• with Knowbotic Research, William Mitchell, Stephen Perrella and Stacey Spiegel, Interfacing Realities. Buchprojekt zur Schnittstelle, Rotterdam: V2_, 1997. (English)
• with H. U. Reck, W. Ernst, T. Hensel and N. Röller, Lab — Jahrbuch für Künste und Apparate, 1995/96, 1996/97, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002.
• Archäologie der Medien: Zur Tiefenzeit des technischen Hörens und Sehens, Reinbek: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 2002. Introduction.
  • Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means, trans. Gloria Custance, MIT Press, 2006, IA. (English)
  • Arqueología de los Medios. Hacia el tiempo profundo de la visión y la audición técnica, trans. Alvaro Moreno-Hoffmann, Bogota: Uniandes, 2011, 432 pp. (Spanish)
• Entwerfen und Entbergen. Aspekte einer Genealogie der Projektion. 10 Jahre International Flusser Lectures, Cologne: König, 2010.
• [... nach den Medien]: Nachrichten vom ausgehenden zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, Berlin: Merve, 2010. [6]
  • [... After the Media]: News from the Slow-Fading Twentieth Century, trans. Gloria Custance, Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, August 2013, IA. [7] (English)

Edited books (selection)

• With Silvia M. Wagnermaier (eds.), Variantology – On Deep Time Relations Of Arts, Sciences and Technologies, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2005. [8] [9]
• With David Link (eds.), Variantology 2 – On Deep Time Relations Of Arts, Sciences and Technologies, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2006. [10]
• With Eckhard Fürus (eds.), Variantology 3 – On Deep Time Relations Of Arts, Sciences and Technologies in China and Elsewhere, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2008. [11]
• With Eckhard Fürus (eds.), Variantology 4 – On Deep Time Relations of Arts, Sciences and Technologies in the Arabic-Islamic World and Beyond, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2010.
• With Eckhard Fürus (eds.), Variantology 5: Neapolitan Affairs, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König, 2011.

Book chapters, papers, articles (selection)

• "Studiengang Kultur- und Technikvermittlung", medienmagazin, Berlin (Oktober 1978), pp 4–7. (in German)
• With Gabriele Bock, "Britain’s Channel 4: A TV provider caught between private sector funding and its cultural mission", trans. Corina Holzherr, Media Perspektiven (1/1987), pp 38–54.
• "Holocaust. Auschwitz als Fernsehfiktion in deutschen Wohnzimmern", Unsere Medien – Unsere Republik. No. 7, Mediengeschichte als Geschichte der Bundesrepublik, ed. Adolf-Grimme-Institut des Deutschen Volkshochschul-Verbandes e. V., Marl (November 1990), p 33ff. (in German)
• "Nomadentum und Disziplinlosigkeit. Zur Identität von Medien-Wissenschaftlern im Transit, agenda. Zeitschrift für Medien, Bildung, Kultur, Bonn (July/August 1993), pp 44–46. (in German)
• "For a Praxis of Kairos Poetry", in Kunst.nrw.nl. New Media Logbook, 1999, pp 34-35.
• "Time Machines", in Annette Balkema and Henk Slager (eds.), Screen-Based Art, Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000.
• "Gegenwartseffekte: Nach 'Ich denke, also bin ich' kommt 'You tube – therefore you are'", Berliner Gazette, 29 October 2012. (in German)

Interviews (selection)

• Petr Szczepanik, Pavel Skopal, Jakub Kučera, "Za anarcheologii médií. Rozhovor se Siegfriedem Zielinskim", Kino-ikon 6:1 (2002), pp 159-173. (in Czech)

Links

• Forum on the Genealogy of MediaThinking, facilitated by Zielinski, University of the Arts Berlin, October 2012-June 2013.
• Zielinski's profile at UDK Berlin
• Zielinski's profile at NRW Düsseldorf
• Zielinski's profile at EGS
• Zielinski on Wikipedia