Andreas Broeckmann on Sun, 7 Sep 1997 12:29:02 +0100 |
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Syndicate: German language media theory and history: Konfigurationen & Lab 3 |
German media theory and history: Konfigurationen & Lab 3 On the way back from two short days in Kassel, reading on the train Kassel is this summer not only host to the documenta X and the Hybrid WorkSpace where a large number of people from the nettime archipelago pass through (of whom some will meet next week for the 'making of the nettime bible', which is more likely going to be its further preparation ...), and where we held the Syndicate's Deep Europe workshop at the beginning of August. This weekend (4.-7.9.), the University there holds the 'Konfigurationen. Zwischen Medien und Kunst' congress, in cooperation with several partner organisations. config.media.art has more than 50 speakers, historians, media theoreticians, artists, activists, and many hybrids of these. It is one of those medium-size congresses which have panel sessions in the mornings and four parallel seminars in the afternoons, with varied subjects ranging from photo theory and hypertext to Shannon's machines and electronic music. The seminars are generally put together with philological accuracy, while some panels are thematically very diverse. There is clearly enough to shop around here and find a few interesting things, though there is a sometimes painful lack of focus in these kinds of gatherings. (http://www.uni-kassel.de/wz2/config.media.art) Anyway. More importantly, this is maybe one of the biggest public meetings ever of the German academic media theory 'mafia' that has evolved around a project financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, "Theorie und Geschichte der Medien." They have brought together people like photo historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau, theoretician and artist Victor Burgin, media theoretician Georg Christoph Tholen (the main organiser), media historian Siegfried Zielinski, feminist art and media historians Marie Luise Angerer and Sigrid Schade, pop critic Diedrich Diedrichsen and electronic musician Achim Wollscheid, media artists Valie Export and Knowbotic Research, net-sociologist Herbert A. Meyer, a whole gang of young men who are working with Friedrich Kittler on the history of hardware and early cybernetic games, and a host of other people working on or within media/theory/art. The fact that there is a small number of mainly French, British and North American speakers does not make this an international conference. Presentations and discussions are generally in German, translation is provided only for the presentations of the foreign speakers, which means that they cannot follow most of the conference, nor can the other foreigners who try to participate - I talked to Russians, Brits, Americans, Japanese. This is a pity, because some of this is genuinely interesting theory production which hardly gets outside of the German and Austrian circles. The work, for instance, that is being done by the Kittler-group about "Shannon's Toys" is really interesting, but some of these researchers might have to wait until their professorships and the transatlantic invitations before their ideas are going to find their way 'out their'. The same is probably also true of other countries - how much do we hear about the media theoretical discourses amongst Brazilians, Japanese, Hungarians, Fins? -, I just currently experienced this problem of internationalisation with regard to the German discourse. 'Lab 3 - Jahrbuch 1996/97 fuer Kunst und Apparate' The important work that is being done in and around the Kunsthochschule fuer Medien in Cologne/Germany has a similar fate. The art school dedicated to teaching the history, theory and practice of media publishes this yearbook which this year brings together texts by, amongst others, Jaroslav Andel (about Zdenek Pesanek), Nils Roeller (about mathematics and philosophy), Hans Ulrich Reck (about media art theory), Hinderik Emrich (about logocentrism and psychosis), Otto Roessler (about chaos and ethics), the school's director Siegfried Zielinski (about metaphors and machines), by Friedrich Kittler (about hardware) and Miklos Peternak (about the history of the telephone). Only three texts are printed in English (Timothy Druckrey, Myron W. Krueger, Yaroslav A. Khetagurov), which is both understandable - after all, this is a German publication - and a pity, because there are a number of substantial contributions to the history and the theory of media which will not easily be noticed by the international community. (By the way, this is a well-made, well-designed book with 400 pages and many b/w illustrations. The designers, Uta Kopp and Alexandra Ohlenforst, just recently won a big design prize in New York.) Lab: Jahrbuch fuer Kuenste und Apparate. Edited by the Kunsthochschule fuer Medien Koeln. Cologne: Walther Koenig, 1997 http://www.khm.de