Siegfried Zielinski


Siegfried Zielinski 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 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 :de:Friedrich Knilli|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 .
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 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 in Saas Fee, Switzerland, where he holds the Michel Foucault professorship.

Publications (selection)

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