The Goethe-Institut Washington and guest speaker Dr. Siegfried Zielinski invite you to experience a one-of-a-kind lecture in a unique way: by traveling in a specific type of time machine. This machine has two time arrows - one directs us into the deep time of the past, and the other one directs us into the future. Both are connected by the Now.
Prospective Archaeology is a method in which media thinking and media acting are coupled. One of the field studies Dr. Zielinski will present is a universal musical automaton, which had been invented and described in the "House of Wisdom" in Baghdad around 850 AD. With a group of young artists in Berlin, Dr. Zielinski has reconstructed this complex machinery and made it functional and playable again. More than a millennium later, we can consult the oracle to find out what progress of civilization might hold. “Mind blown” yet?
The lecture will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Zielinski.
RSVP
Siegfried Zielinski is the chair of media theory, with a focus on archaeology and variantology of the media, at Berlin University of the Arts, where he served as director of the Vilém Flusser Archive until 2016. He is also the Michel Foucault Chair at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he teaches as a professor of mediology and technoculture. At the Budapest University of Arts, he is an honorary professor for art and media, and at the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media (ZKM) he is a curator. Zielinski is founding director (1994–2001) of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and was rector of the Karlsruhe University of Arts & Design (2016-2018).
Zielinski has published numerous books and essays, mainly focusing on archaeology of the media. He has coauthored, edited, or coedited a number of anthologies. As curator for large format exhibitions at the ZKM Karlsruhe, his work includes
Allah’s Automata (2015),
Ramon Llull & the Ars Combinatoria, and
Art in Movement - 100 Master Pieces of Art With and Through Media (both together with Peter Weibel, 2018).
Back
