Giaco Schiesser


Giaco Schiesser is a Zurich-based theorist of cultural and media studies. He is a professor for cultural theory and media theory at Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK.

Biography

Giaco Schiesser was born in Glarus. He studied philosophy, cultural studies and German literature studies at Free University in Berlin. Afterwards he became an associate lecturer at Free University and assistant lecturer at the Institute for German Literature, University of Basle.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s he mainly worked as a publicist and a scientific editor: For ten years he was co-publisher of the scientific-political-cultural journal Widerspruch, for five years in charge of the department Science & Humanities of the weekly WOZ Die Wochenzeitung, both published in Zurich. At the same time he was an associate researcher at the Hamburg-based Institute for Research of Migration and Racism with a research focus on contemporary constitutions of the subject.
Since the mid-1990s he has been working at Zurich University of the Arts. First, as a lecturer of the theory and history of visual communication, then he conceptualized and realized the establishment of the department New Media at the University of Art and Design Zurich as head of that department, which he directed from 1999 to 2002 Ph.D. programmes and the problematics of Artistic Research as well as to the problematics of authorship, of psychoanalysis and of Bob Dylan as DJ.
In December 2019 he was honoured with the award «Top 100 Leaders in Education». The purpose of the award, awarded by the “Global Forum for Education & Learning is «to honor the relentless efforts and zeal of individuals, who have played a prominent role in changing the face of education at the global as well as the local level.”
In addition, since 2009 he holds a permanent visiting professorship for artistic and scientific Ph.D. at University of Art and Design Linz. In this capacitiy he conceptualized and founded a joint PhD-programme in Artistic Research, run by Zurich University of the Arts and University of Arts and Design Linz, which he has been heading since 2012. From 2009 to its closing down in 2017 by ETH Zurich he also was a member of the board of interdisciplinary Cortona-Week, organized by ETH Zurich and ZHdK, from 2013 to 2020 a member of the Executive Board of the international Society for Artistic Research and he has been a member of the advisory council of Entresol, a network for the sciences of psyche .
His work and his publications focus on theories of cultures, of media and of subjects / epistemology / aesthetics, art research / democracy, public spheres, every day culture.

Publications

; Author
; Editor