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
…).

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 there.'
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
internationalization 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