What Is Media Archaeology? Quotes

“We need to ask ourselves: how do we keep such a transdisciplinary spirit of curiosity and intellectual radicality alive and updated in a situation in which university degrees are being reduced to only being ‘qualifications’ for particular jobs?”
― Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?

“The aesthetic tactics and various ‘minor’ methods such as circuit bending, hardware tinkering and so forth are important links to a wider activist stance towards technical media.”
― Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?

“In this spirit, one key methodological guideline would be: if you want to understand contemporary media technological culture, look at its science and military contexts, instead of the content of what is consumed as entertainment media.”
― Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?

“In other words, media critique is not only about saying things, it is about design and materiality – doing critique in an alternative fashion, against the grain, so to speak (see Lovink 2003: 11). Through such material existence, the media-archaeological work puts the spectator/user/viewer into a new relation with the imaginary, and hence forces us to engage creatively with the presence of media – new and old, imagined and real.”
― Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?

“Archaeology here means digging into the background reasons why a certain object, statement, discourse or, for instance in our case, media apparatus or use habit is able to be born and be picked up and sustain itself in a cultural situation.”
― Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?

“Steam punk is also a good symbol for the media-archaeological spirit of thinking the new and the old in parallel lines, and cultivating enthusiasm for media, technology and science through aesthetics, politics and other fields of critical inquiry.”
― Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology?