Archive
On Air, Inhale
I had the pleasure of contributing to Tomas Saraceno’s new show On Air at Palais de Tokyo with a short text for the publication as well as with a talk as part of the seminar on December 14th, which was organized by Filipa Ramos. The show itself moves from spiders and webs to air and balloons, from entanglements of the Anthropocene to the light materials of the Aerocene combining speculative design, investigation of materials and beautiful installation structures.
My short text for the catalogue was titled “Inhale”:
Inhale and you engage with history, not metaphorically, nor poetically but literally. Inhale the air of a city and you inhale its industrial legacy, its current transport system, its chemistry built at the back of technological progress. There’s more in the air and the sky than meets the eye. On the level of eyes, nostrils and skin, the city and its surroundings, it becomes a touch. It is inhaled, enters the body as haptic environment. It is the haptic environment in which one sees and encounters the surroundings as a large scale Air-Conditioning Show. It is history carried forward as chemistry. It is technology breathed in as minuscule particles. The air is the environment we have to somehow learn to address as one way to invent a breathable future.
French Interview: “Écrire autrement l’histoire des médias “
A new interview with me in French is out now in the (exciting) online magazine AOC. With the writer, journalist Sylvain Bourmeau we had a pleasant conversation about media archaeology, contemporary culture and theory, my earlier books and the new French translation of What is Media Archaeology – Qu’est-ce que l’archéologie des médias?
Encore mystérieux pour beaucoup, l’archéologie des médias s’avère un nouveau champ de recherche passionnant, au croisement de nombreuses disciplines et méthodes, qui vise à écrire une histoire alternative des medias au sens le plus large du terme. Alors qu’il est enfin traduit en français, Jussi Parikka, l’un de ses représentants les plus éminents, a accordé un entretien à AOC.
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Né et formé d’abord en Finlande, professeur de culture technologique et d’esthétique à la Winchester School of Art de l’Université de Southampton, Jussi Parikka est l’un des principaux chercheurs d’un courant transdisciplinaire relativement récent des sciences humaines et sociales : l’archéologie des médias. Parmi son œuvre, riche de plusieurs livres marquants, Qu’est-ce que l’archéologie des médias ? qui vient de paraître en français, nous offre l’occasion d’un entretien.
Read the full interview here – AOC is free but requires to create an account (which is easy).
A Parisian Affair: Archéologie des médias et histoire de l’art
France has not really been known for any particular warm academic embrace of media studies despite the otherwise interesting legacies of theories of technology. However, Sorbonne at Paris 3 is running now a seminar on media archaeology, more specifically called “Archéologie des médias et histoire de l’art” convened by Larisa Dryansky together with Antonio Somaini and Riccardo Venturi.
Their list of speakers is very exciting and for its own part demonstrates that there is a body of really interesting work on new technologies and media archaeology in France. A lot of scholars all around the country are working actively on philosophical and historical themes that pertain to media histories and contemporary culture. The Sorbonne series is part of the National Institute of Art History (INHA) and you can download the full programme (as PDF) here.
Besides individual researchers’ work and the recent MCD special issue, also future translations of work such as Friedrich Kittler’s is bound to have an impact on the conversations happening in French. Two Kittler translations are expected to come out in 2015.
Machinology 