H-ART. Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte

hart. Rev. Hist. Teor. Crit. Arte | eISSN 2590-9126 | ISSN 2539-2263

Passing the future through the eye of a needle

No. 8 (2021-01-01)
  • Andrés Burbano
    profesor asociado en la Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño en la Universidad de los Andes en Colombia y tiene un doctorado en Artes, Medios y Tecnología de la Universidad de California, es profesor invitado de la Universidad del Danubio, Austria.
https://doi.org/10.25025/hart08.2021.10

Abstract

This brief text operates as a prologue to the essay "Prospective Archaeology" by Siegfried Zielinski (Germany, 1951). Is a succinct portrait of the most significant gestures of Zielinski’s intellectual work in the last three lustrums. In particular, the metamorphosis or transduction of the concept of media archaeology is tuned to its expanded version, the concept of variantology. That is, the study of the deep time relationships between the arts, sciences and technologies. In this period of time one of the most important distinctive features is the transition from the figure of the solitary author to that of the organizer of complex conferences that turn into collaborative editorial projects, a transition from the individual voice to that of the chorus. In particular, attention is paid to the author’s attempts to disassociate the deep time perspective from the past by opting for a speculative vision that points to the future, where the question of how such archaeology can function in the face of the future at an operational level is put on the stage. The author emphasizes the need to enrich intellectual projects through praxis - both at a performative and curatorial level - understood as a methodological tool without which philosophical activity can become arid. Zielinski is an avid explorer of spaces that are just taking shape, seeing extelligence where others see intelligence or finding the materialogy where others see material culture. The text exposes some points that articulate the question of variantology and the concept of decoloniality.

Keywords: media archaeology, variantology, prospective archaeology, decoloniality

References

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