Son[i]a #168
Wolfgang Ernst
Wolfgang Ernst is professor of media theory at the Institute of Musicology and Media Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin, and an expert in archival science.
He is one of the pioneering scholars of media archeology, a branch of inquiry that he defines as “an archeology of the technological conditions of the sayable and thinkable in culture, an excavation of evidence of how techniques direct human or non-human utterances”.
His numerous books and articles include the recently published Digital Memory and the Archive, a collection of essays which uncovers the role of specific technologies and mechanisms in shaping contemporary culture and society. Ernst analyses archiving practice today, in a world that, he argues, has gone from an old-European culture that privileges storage towards a media-culture of constant transfer.
SON[I]A talks to Wolfgang Ernst about the possibility of going beyond the concept of the archive by exploring some of the practices around what is now being called the ‘anarchive’.
Maite Muñoz
Maite Muñoz, Head of MACBA Archive, talks about how the material in the Archive is organised, strategies for dissemination, and how it all contributes to redefining the boundaries between art and document.
Erick Beltrán
Mexican artist Erick Beltrán shares some prominent examples from his personal research into archives and libraries.
Nanna Thylstrup
Nanna Thylstrup talks about the digitalisation of the archive and its implications. She deeply analyses two consequences that both emerge in individual and collective spheres: first, the data shadow that big data contexts generates to each user; second, the politics behind the processes of mass digitalisation.