BERND STIEGLER
The Machine Man – Introduced by Urs Stahel
Wednesday 18 October
Bernd Stiegler is a professor of Contemporary German Literature at the Konstanz University, specialised in 20th-century media contexts. He wrote several books on history and theory of photography, from the invention of the daguerreotype to the diffusion of digital technology, analysing the insights of philosophers and photographers, from Barthes to Derrida, from Foucault to Moholy-Nagy, from Baudrillard to Stieglitz, to Alexander Rodchenko, at the centre of Foto/Industria exhibition The Industrial World.
In his lecture at MAST Stiegler explores the relationship between photography and industrial modernity, identifying montage as defining cultural factor of the 20th century.
In the 1920s and 1930s, montage is the process that redefines a new era, from factories and cinema to magazines and everyday life. It pervades all fields of technology and aesthetics, it influences the new visual, technological, and psychological language and at the same time it mediates between political extremes.
