Tomislav Medak
 Tom Medak in Zagreb, 2017. | |
| Born | Zagreb, Croatia, Yugoslavia |
|---|---|
| Lives in | Coventry, United Kingdom |
Tomislav Medak (1973) is a doctoral student at Coventry University’s Centre for Postdigital Cultures, focusing on the political economy of technology and the planetary ecological crisis. He is also a member of the theory and publishing team of the Multimedia Institute/MAMA, Zagreb since 2000, a co-initiator of the Pirate Care project, and an artist in the performing arts collective BADco.
With his colleagues at the Multimedia Institute/MAMA, since 2000 he has organised talks, conferences and exhibitions, and edited publications in political economy, tactical media and the commons. His own research interests are in technology, capitalist development and post-capitalist transition, with a particular focus on environmental crisis, political economy of intellectual property and unevenness of techno-science. At times, he also writes on theatre, dance and politics.
He authored two short books: The Hard Matter of Abstraction – A Guidebook to Domination by Abstraction (V_____erlag für Handbücher, 2016) and Shit Tech for A Shitty World (Aksioma, 2015). He also co-authored several edited volumes: Public Library (with Marcell Mars, WHW/Multimedija Institute, 2015), Guerrilla Open Access (with Marcell Mars, Post-office Press, 2018), The Idea of Radical Media (with Petar Milat, Multimedia Institute/Arkzin, 2014), and Time and (In)Completion: Images and Performances of Time in Late Capitalism (with Goran Sergej Pristaš, BADco., 2014).
In parallel, he works as a performer, dramaturge and director with the Zagreb-based experimental theatre collective BADco. With the collective he has created a number of artworks, including performances Correcting Rhythm (2017), Spores (2016), A Pound of Histeria, Acceleration… melodrama (2014), The League of Time (2010) and 1 poor and one 0 (2008). Some of those have toured widely around Europe, while the interactive installation Responsibility for Things Seen was presented in 2011 Venice Biennal.
With Marcell Mars he organized a number of activities around the Public Library project, including HAIP festival (Ljubljana, 2012), the exhibitions at Württembergischer Kunstverein (2014), Galerija Nova (2015) and Raven Row (2019), as well as coordinated digitization projects Written-off (2015), Digital Archive of Praxis and the Korčula Summer School (2016) and Catalogue of Liberated Books (2013ff). (2021)
Publications
- "Multimedia Institute - mi2", ISEA Newsletter #93, Jun-Aug 2003.
- Medak, et al., zarez 7(146): "Sloboda stvaralaštvu", Zagreb, 2005, pp 21-28. Magazine section. (Croatian)
- Medak, et al., System.hack(), Zagreb: Mama, 2006, 96 pp. Exhibition catalogue. (Croatian)/(English)
- editor, with Petar Milat, Idea of Radical Media / Ideja radikalnih medija, Zagreb: Multimedia Institute, 2013, 256 pp. (English)/(Croatian)
- editor, with Petar Milat, Prospects of Arkzin / Izgledi Arkzina, Zagreb: Arkzin and Multimedia Institute, 2013, 48 pp. With DVD Arkzin Digital Archive / Digitalna arhiva Arkzina. (English)/(Croatian)
- with Marcell Mars and Manar Zarroug, "Public Library (An Essay)", Memory of the World blog, 27 Oct 2014. On the idea of public library.
- editor, with Goran Sergej Pristaš, Time and (In)completion: Images and Performances of Time in Late Capitalism, Zagreb: BADco, 2014.
- editor, with Marcell Mars, Javna knjižnica / Public Library, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, 144 pp. (Croatian)/(English)
- Shit Tech for a Shitty World, Ljubljana: Aksioma, 2016, 13 pp.
- with Marcell Mars and Dubravka Sekulić, "Taken Literally", in We Need It - We Do It: Croatia at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition / La Biennale di Venezia 2016, eds. Emina Višnić and Miranda Veljačić, Split: Platforma 9.81, 2016, pp 228-235. (English)
- The Hard Matter of Abstraction, Stuttgart: Verlag für Handbücher, 2016, 80 pp. [1] (English)
- Technologies for an Ecological Transition, Zagreb: Institute for Political Ecology, 2017, 25 pp. (English)
- with Marcell Mars, "Against Innovation: Compromised Institutional Agency and Acts of Custodianship", Ephemera 19(2): "Repair Matters", May 2019, pp 345-368, PDF. (English)
- with Marcell Mars, "System of a Takedown: Control and De-commodification in the Circuits of Academic Publishing", in Andrew Lison, et al., Archives, Lüneburg: meson.press, and University of Minnesota Press, 2019, pp 47-68. (English)
- "Breaking the Camel’s Back: When an Earthquake and a Pandemic Converge", LeftEast, 23 Mar 2020. [2] (English)
- with Mladen Domazet and Andro Rilović, "Degrowth", in Encyclopedia of the World’s Biomes, Elsevier, 2020, pp 287-295. [3] (English)
Translations
- Sassen, Saskia. (2003). Protugeografije globalizacije. Trans. Danijela Sestrić, Jakov Vilović, Tomislav Medak. Zagreb: Multimedia Institute. 119 pp. (Croatian)
- Nancy, Jean-Luc. (2004). Dva ogleda. Razdjelovljena zajednica. O singularnom pluralnom bitku. Trans. Tomislav Medak. Zagreb: Multimedia Institute & Arkzin. 148 pp. (Croatian)
- Brunkhorst, Hauke. (2004). Solidarnost. Od građanskog prijateljstva do globalne pravne zajednice. Trans. Tomislav Medak. Belgrade: Belgrade Circle; Zagreb: Multimedia Institute. 280 pp. (Croatian)
- Critical Art Ensemble. (2005). Molekularna invazija. Trans. Tomislav Medak. Zagreb: Multimedia Institute. 144 pp. (Croatian)
- Wark, McKenzie. (2006). Hakerski manifest. Trans. Tomislav Medak. Zagreb: Multimedia Institute. 154 pp. (Croatian)
- Hardt, Michael; Antonio Negri. (2009). Mnoštvo. Rat i demokracija u doba Imperija. Trans. Tomislav Medak and Petar Milat. Zagreb: Multimedia Institute. 404 pp. (Croatian)
- Balibar, Étienne. (2011). Nasilje i civilnost. Wellekova predavanja. Trans. Tomislav Medak. Belgrade: Cetre for Media and Communication; Zagreb: Multimedia Institute. 196 pp. (Croatian)
- Deleuze, Gilles; Herman Melville. (2014). Bartleby ili formula; Perovođa Bartleby. Trans. Tomislav Medak and Maja Šoljan. Novi Sad & Zagreb: kuda.org & Multimedia Institute. 101 pp. 2-up version. (Serbo-Croatian)
Interviews
- "Multimedia Institute (mi2): Zeljko Blace, Marcell Mars & Tomi Medak interviewed by Joanne Richardson", subsol 2, Apr 2002. (English)
- Katarina Lovrečić, "Tomislav Medak: Knjižnice trebaju i onu nevidljivu masu knjižničara uvidjeti kao saveznika", GKR, 20 Aug 2013. (Croatian)
- "All Forms of Shadow Knowledge Exist in the Fault Lines of Officially Sanctioned Knowledge", Balcan Contemporary, 18 Dec 2015. (English)
- Petar Jandrić, Ana Kuzmanić, "Knowledge Commons and Activist Pedagogies: From Idealist Positions to Collective Actions: Conversation with Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak", in Jandrić, Learning in the Age of Digital Reason, Rotterdam: Sense, 2017, pp 243-269. (English)
- Felix Stalder, Cornelia Sollfrank, "Caring for the Public Library, Interview with Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak", Mar 2019, 33 min. Video. Transcript. Conducted Oct 2017 at HEK, Zurich. Part of the Creating Commons project. (English)
- with Jodi Dean and Petar Jandrić, "Embrace the Antagonism, Build the Party! The New Communist Horizon in and Against Communicative Capitalism", Postdigital Science and Education 1:1, Mar 2019.
- Miljenka Buljević, "'Svijet takozvanog društva znanja svijet je nejednakosti'", Booksa.hr, Zagreb, 13 Apr 2020. (Croatian)
