Situating the Media Archaeology Lab: Research, Art and the Public

Abstract

Media archaeology has not been confined to theoretical and archival excavations to old media and media art history. Increasingly we have witnessed the emergence of media archaeological labs where analysis of media objects has been developed into new pedagogical contexts relevant for contemporary media and humanities studies. The panel offers a roundtable discussion on theoretical ideas, institutional settings and best practices for humanities and media archaeology labs in contemporary academic culture. Such labs can address the new institutional opportunities in media studies and more widely humanities to engage with practice­based knowledge creation and extend their mission to include new tools, techniques and curatorial scope in ways that are more than vocational skillset training. What sort of practices of knowledge do such terms borrowed from the sciences enable in the context of humanities? What kinds of claims do they make on institutional resources (e.g. space, funding, personnel)? Our discussants will open up the panel with short position papers that situate their institutional and personal research agendas in relation to the idea of labs in media archaeology and the humanities. It will be followed up by a roundtable debate. We have curated a specifically international take with input from Germany, Sweden, UK, Denmark, Canada and the US. The panel includes representation from art schools, curation and different academic fields such as media theory and literature studies. The roundtable panel will include input from already established media archaeology labs in Boulder (Colorado) and Berlin (Humboldt University).