[ecrea] New book: Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048

For those of you interested in media art history, archives, sound art 
and technology, our new book Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: 
Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 is out and available from MIT Press!

https://mitpress.mit.edu/writing-unwriting

You will find info about the book through that link above and below a 
quick overview as well. We are planning some launch events, including 
one in London probably in January, but more on those at a later date.

Best wishes
Jussi
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Dr Jussi Parikka
Professor in Technological Culture & Aesthetics
Winchester School of Art/University of Southampton

Docent in Digital Culture Theory (University of Turku, Finland)

Machinology-blog: http://jussiparikka.net

Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048, eds 
Joasia Krysa and Jussi Parikka
Overview

Over the past forty years, Finnish artist and technology pioneer Erkki 
Kurenniemi (b. 1941) has been a composer of electronic music, 
experimental filmmaker, computer animator, roboticist, inventor, and 
futurologist. Kurenniemi is a hybrid—a scientist-humanist-artist. 
Relatively unknown outside Nordic countries until his 2012 Documenta 13 
exhibition, �In 2048,� Kurenniemi may at last be achieving 
international recognition. This book offers an excavation, a critical 
mapping, and an elaboration of Kurenniemi’s multiplicities.

The contributors describe Kurenniemi’s enthusiastic, and rather 
obsessive, recording of everyday life and how this archiving was part of 
his process; his exploratory artistic practice, with productive failure 
an inherent part of his method; his relationship to scientific and 
technological developments in media culture; and his work in electronic 
and digital music, including his development of automated composition 
systems and his “video-organ,� DIMI-O. A “Visual Archive,� a 
section of interviews with the artist, and a selection of his original 
writings (translated and published for the first time) further document 
Kurenniemi’s achievements. But the book is not just about one artist 
in his time; it is about emerging media arts, interfaces, and archival 
fever in creative practices, read through the lens of Kurenniemi.


Endorsements

“Sex, annotation, and verité totale: Kurenniemi is a missing mixing 
desk between so many interesting aspects of late-twentieth-century 
culture. No wonder he ends up offering us a new archival futurism!�
—Matthew Fuller, Professor, Director of the Centre for Cultural 
Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London

“Providing a long-overdue critical and historical introduction to the 
amazingly multifaceted work of media pioneer, visionary thinker, and 
self-archivist Erkki Kurenniemi, this book becomes both a 
media-archaeological excavation and engaging reflection on the 
challenges of writing media art history. The range of Kurenniemi’s 
fascinating practice—including electronic music composition, 
experimental filmmaking, robotics, and curation—defies traditional 
classifications, and calls for new historical narratives of media art. 
Started as a compilation of the long-term research that went into the 
exhibition of Kurenniemi’s work at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, 
the volume combines highlights of his own writings and interviews with 
excellent contributions by scholars, contextualizing his archives, art, 
music, and vision.�
—Christiane Paul, Associate Professor, School of Media Studies, The 
New School; Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum

“This book is a major contribution not only to the unprecedented 
scientific and artistic imagination of Erkki Kurenniemi, but also to the 
whole research on media and ‘real time.’ The text unveils and 
critically presents the reader with a series of complex technological 
and artistic systems exploring the man-machine relationship under the 
assumption both do have consciousness. Kurenniemi’s work provides us 
with one of the most solid grounds to examine perception, the brain, the 
will to speculate and travel back and forth between several realms of 
knowledge. Kurenniemi is bold; this text is bold and a great 
contribution to new forms of studying risk taking in art and science.�
—Chus Martínez, Head of the Institute of Art, FHNW Academy of Art and 
Design

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