Wolfgang Ernst

Wolfgang Ernst (1959) is Professor for Media Theory at the Institut für Musik und Medienwissenschaft at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he co-runs the Media Archaeological Fundus.

Works

(in German unless noted otherwise)

Books

• M.edium F.oucault. Weimarer Vorlesungen über Archive, Archäologie, Monumente und Medien Weimar, 2000, 151 pp. Excerpt. Publisher.

• Das Rumoren der Archive. Ordnung aus Unordnung, Berlin: Merve, 2002, 141 pp.
  • Sorlet från arkiven: Ordning ur oordning, trans. Tommy Andersson, Göteborg: Glänta, 2008, 112 pp. Excerpt. Publisher. (Swedish)
  • Stirrings in the Archives: Order from Disorder, trans. Adam Siegel, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, v+101 pp. Reviews: Willey (Arch Issues), Thadani (RBM), Buchanan (Arch & Records). (English)

• Im Namen von Geschichte: Sammeln - Speichern - (Er)Zählen. Infrastrukturelle Konfigurationen des deutschen Gedächtnisses, Munich: Fink, 2003. Habilitation thesis; aiming at "uncovering the hidden agencies and nondiscursive mechanisms (the technological infrastructure) of constructing collective memory (archives, libraries, museums, inventories, source editions, and data banks)."

• Das Gesetz des Gedächtnisses. Medien und Archive am Ende (des 20. Jahrhunderts), Berlin: Kadmos, 2007. Publisher. Review: Zierold (H-Net).

• Gleichursprünglichkeit. Zeitwesen und Zeitgegebenheit technischer Medien, Berlin: Kadmos, 2012, 459 pp. Publisher. Review: Haase (MWS).
  • Chronopoetics: The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, 288 pp. Trans. of abridged version. Publisher. (English)

• Digital Memory and the Archive, ed. & intro. Jussi Parikka, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 265 pp. Reviews: Young (RiC), Ward (I&C). (English)

• Chronopoetik. Zeitweisen und Zeitgaben technischer Medien, Berlin: Kadmos, 2013, 428 pp. TOC. Publisher. Review: Powell (GSR, EN).
  • Chronopoetics: The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, 288 pp. Trans. of abridged version. Publisher. (English)

• Signale aus der Vergangenheit. Eine kleine Geschichtskritik, Munich: Fink, 2013, 211 pp. Publisher.

• Im Medium erklingt die Zeit. Technologische Tempor(e)alitäten und das Sonische als ihre privilegierte Erkenntnisform, Berlin: Kadmos, 2015, 256 pp. Publisher.

• Sonic Time Machines: Explicit Sound, Sirenic Voices, and Implicit Sonicity, forew. Liam Cole Young, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 160 pp. Publisher. Reviews: Cornford (TCS), Harle (Leonardo). (English)

• Technológos in Being: Radical Media Archaeology and the Computational Machine, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, 211 pp. Publisher. (English)

Edited books

• with Matthias Middell, Medien - Revolution - Historie, Leipzig: Pauselius, 1991.
• with Georg Trogemann and Alexander Nitussov, Computing in Russia. The History of Computer Devices and Information Technology Revealed, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 2001. (English)
• with Anselm Franke, Politik der Bilder. Visuelle Kompetenz und Kriegsbildrhetorik, Berlin: Kunst-Werke, 2002.
• with Stefan Heidenreich and Ute Holl, Suchbilder. Visuelle Kultur zwischen Algorithmen und Archiven, Berlin: Kadmos, 2003. [1]
• with Friedrich Kittler, Die Geburt des Vokalalphabets aus dem Geist der Poesie: Schrift, Zahl und Ton im Medienverbund, Munich: Fink, 2006.
• with Wladimir Velminski, Semën Karsakov: Ideenmaschine. Von der Homöopathie zum Computer, Berlin: Kadmos, 2007. [2]

Book chapters, Papers, Articles (selection)

in English

• "Between Real Time and Memory on Demand: Reflections on/of Television", South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp 625–637.
• "Telling versus Counting? A Media Archaeological Point of View", Intermédialités 2 (Autumn 2003), pp 31–44. [3] [4]
• "The Archive as Metaphor: From Archival Space to Archival Time", Open 7, 2004, pp 46-53.
• "Let There Be Irony: Cultural History and Media Archaeology in Parallel Lines", Art History 28, no. 5 (November 2005).
• "Dis/continuities: Does the Archive Become Metaphorical in Multi-Media Space?", in New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, eds. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan, New York and London: Routledge, 2006, pp 105–123. [5]
• "Cultural Archive versus Technomathematical Storage", in The Archive in Motion, ed. Eivind Røssaak, Oslo: Novus Press, 2010, pp 53–73.
• "Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media", in Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, eds. Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, pp 239-255.
• "From Media History to Zeitkritik", Theory, Culture & Society 30:6 (Nov 2013), pp 132-146.
• "Media, Hot & Cold. Fourier('s) Analysis: 'Sonic' Heat Conduction and Its Cold Calculation", International Journal of Communication 8 (2014), pp 2535-2539.
• "‘Electrified Voices’: Non-Human Agencies of Socio-Cultural Memory", in Memory in Motion: Archives, Technology, and the Social eds. Ina Blom, Trond Lundemo and Eivind Røssaak, Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 2016, pp 41-59.
• More, [6], [7].

Lectures

• Medienwissen(schaft), zeitkritisch. Ein Programm aus der Sophienstraße. Antrittsvorlesung v. 21. Oktober 2003, Berlin: Humboldt University, 2004, 31 pp.
• "Archival Times: Tempor(e)alities of Media Memory", National Library, Oslo, 2010. (English)
• "Signals and Symbols: A Media-Archaeological Approach to 'Textuality'", Yale University, 2012. (English)
• Aura and Temporality: The Insistence of the Archive, Barcelona: MACBA, 2013, 25 pp. (English) [8]

Interviews (selection)

in English

• Geert Lovink, "Archive Rumblings. Interview with German media archeologist Wolfgang Ernst", 2003. [9]
• Interview with Wolfgang Ernst by Ràdio Web MACBA's Son(i)a, December 2012. Audio, 28 min.
• Lori Emerson, "Archives, Materiality and the “Agency of the Machine”: An Interview with Wolfgang Ernst", 2013.
• Ghislain Thibault, "What We Used to Call "Media History": A Feature Interview with Wolfgang Ernst", Amodern.net, 2015.

Literature

• Jussi Parikka, "Operative Media Archaeology: Wolfgang Ernst’s Materialist Media Diagrammatics", Theory, Culture & Society 2011, Vol. 28(5), 2011, pp 52-74.
• Moritz Hiller, Stefan Höltgen (eds.), Archäographien. Aspekte einer radikalen Medienarchäologie. Festschrift für Wolfgang Ernst, Basel: Schwabe, 2019, 354 pp. TOC & Foreword. (German),(English)

See also

• Media Archaeological Fundus
• Media archaeology
• Friedrich Kittler

Links

• Ernst's profile at Humboldt University
• Merely the Medium: Die operative Verschränkung von Logik und Materie, lecture, Weimar, 2005, video and audio. [10]
• Ernst at German Wikipedia