Siegfried Zielinski

Siegfried Zielinski (born 1951) is a German media theorist. He held the chair for Media Theory: Archaeology and Variantology of the Media at Berlin University of the Arts, he is Michel Foucault Professor for Techno-Culture and Media Archaeology at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, and he is director of the International Vilém-Flusser-Archive at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2016 until March 2018, he succeeded Peter Sloterdijk as head of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

Biography Siegfried Zielinski studied theatre, modern German literature, linguistics, semiotics, sociology, philosophy, and political theory in Marburg and Berlin, at the Free University and the Technical University. The major focus of his studies were on the field of advanced technical media, with Friedrich Knilli, whose institute had developed out of Walter Höllerer's Institute of Language in the Age of Technology.

In 1979 he wrote and directed the documentary film "Responses to HOLOCAUST in Western Germany" which is collected at Paley Center for Media in New York. He graduated in the same year with a thesis on Veit Harlan, which was also his first monograph published in 1981. His Ph.D. dissertation in 1985 on the History and Cultural Technique of the Video Recorder became the book "Zur Geschichte des Videorecorders". His habilitation, in 1989, was on high-definition television.

In 1989 he took up his first full professorship in audiovisual studies at the University of Salzburg in Austria, where he set up a department for teaching, research, and production of "Audiovisions". "Audiovisions" was also the title of his first book translated into English. In 1993, Zielinski was appointed professor of communication and audiovisual studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne; where, in 1994, he became its founding director. In mid-2001, he returned to teaching and research, concentrating on history and theory, developing his multi-dimensional (or non-linear) approach to diverse genealogies of media he would call an-archaeology or variantology of media.

From 2007 until 2015, Zielinski held the chair in media theory and archaeology/Variantology of media at Berlin University of the Arts. From 2016 until March 2018, he was rector at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. He also teaches techno-aesthetics and media archaeology at the European Graduate School (EGS) in Saas Fee, Switzerland, where he holds the Michel Foucault professorship.

2006: Zielinski, Siegfried, Rong Zhenhua and Xigefulide Qilinsiji (Translators). 媒体考古学 = Archäologie der Medien /Mei ti kao gu xue (Shang wu yin shu guan). .

2006: Zielinski, Siegfried and Carlos D. Szlak (Translator). Arqueologia da mídia em busca do tempo remoto das técnicas do ver e do ouvir (Annablume). .

2002: Zielinski, Siegfried (Co-Editor). Goodbye, dear pigeons (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung König). . 2000: Zielinski, Siegfried and Reiner Matzker. Medienwissenschaft: Teil 5: Fiktion als Fakt. "Metaphysik" der neuen Medien (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang). . 1997: Zielinski, Siegfried, William Mitchell, Stephen Perrella, and Stacey Spiegel. V2 Interfacing Realities. Together with Knowbotic Research. Initiated by V2 (Andreas Broeckmann) (Uitgeverij De Balie). . 1994: Zielinski, Siegfried and Angela Huemer (Editors). Keith Griffiths The Presence (Edition Blimp). . 1992: Zielinski, Siegfried. Video – Apparat, Medium, Kunst, Kultur: Ein internationaler Reader (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang). . 1989: Zielinski, Siegfried. Audiovisionen: Kino und Fernsehen als Zwischenspiele (Reinbek: Rowohlts Enzyklopädie). .

TRANSLATIONS OF Audiovisionen:

1999: Zielinski, Siegfried and Gloria Custance (Translator). Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr'actes in History (Amsterdam University Press) .

2009: Zielinski, Siegfried. Audiovíziók - A mozi és a televízió mint a törrténelem közjátékai, translated into Hungarian by Schulz Katalin & Kurucz Andrea (Budapest: C3 Alapítvány – Condola).

1989: Zielinski, Siegfried and Friedrich Knilli (Editors). Germanistische Medienwissenschaft. Teil 1: Die Rolle der Medien in der Auslandsgermanistik (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang). . 1989: Zielinski, Siegfried. Germanistische Medienwissenschaft. Teil 2: Fernsehspielforschung in der Bundesrepublik und der DDR 1950-1985 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang) . 1989: Zielinski, Siegfried and Friedrich Knilli (Editors). Germanistische Medienwissenschaft. Teil 3: Comicforschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1945-1984 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang). . 1986: Zielinski, Siegfried. Zur Geschichte des Videorecorders (Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Volker Spiess). . 1983: Zielinski, Siegfried, Erwin Gundelsheimer, Frank Ostermann, Heino Mass, Friedrich Knilli. Betrifft: Holocaust. Zuschauer schreiben an den WDR (Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Volker Spiess). . 1982: Zielinski, Siegfried and Friedrich Knilli. Holocaust zur Unterhaltung. Anatomie eines internationalen Bestsellers (Berlin: Espresso). . 1983: Zielinski, Siegfried. Televisionen - Medienzeiten. Beiträge zur Diskussion um die Zukunft der Kommunikation (Berlin: Express Edition). . 1983: Zielinski, Siegfried, Friedrich Knilli, Thomas Maurer and Thomas Radevagen. Jud Süss. Filmprotokoll, Programmheft und Einzelanalysen (Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Volker Spiess). . 1981: Zielinski, Siegfried. Veit Harlan: Analysen und Materialien zur Auseinandersetzung mit einem Film-Regisseur des deutschen Faschismus (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer). .

Publications on Zielinski

Thresholds Journal, issue 2: Traces (2018). Zur Genealogie des MedienDenkens, ed by Daniel Irrgang and Florian Hadler (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2017). Objects of Knowledge, of Art and of Friendship, A Small Technical Encyclopaedia, for Siegfried Zielinski; ed. by David Link and Nils Röller (Leipzig: Institut für Buchkunst, 2011).

Public Lectures Siegfried Zielinski. “Artificial Extelligence: Transformation and Projection…” 22.08.2019 Siegfried Zielinski. A Trilogy of Time. A Keynote at transmediale 2010. Siegfried Zielinski. On An-Archaeology. Interview 2007. Siegfried Zielinski. Interview for Imagenes del Rojas, UBA TV. Buenos Aires 1999. Siegfried Zielinski. Is New Media really new? Interview for The Lounge in 1999.

Memberships Siegfried Zielinski is elected member of, amongst others, the European Film Academy (EFA), the Academy of Arts, Berlin , the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste Nordrhein-Westfalen and the Magic Lantern Society of Great Britain .