Dear nettimers,
it is with great sadness that I have to announce here the death of
German media theorist Friedrich Kittler. He died yesterday, in Berlin.
There is already to be found on the Net about this tragic loss. I know
some of you studied with him, worked together in Berlin, experienced
him as a supervisor or like me, as a co-presenter at many conferences
and events where we used to me.
What do you think? What are your memories?
I ran into his work for the first time around 1986 and his work
(together with that of Klaus Theweleit, who also lived in Freiburg
like FK at the time) had a major influence on me, giving me the
confindence to become a media theorist (extra-academic in my case). I
have studied his media theories works extensively and in particular
enjoyed his perculiar (harsh, complex, dark) style of writing. One
weekend I decided to htichhike from Amsterdam to Kassel to attend one
of their conferences and this is where I felt very much at home, and
this is also where my long-lasting affection for German media theory
started.
Back in June, over at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, where
we both used to teach, Friedrich Kittler was barely able to teach and
we all feared that he would not able to live much longer.
Maybe someone who smokes can light up a sigarette for me, and smoke
one on my behalf, to commemorate Friedrich's passage to elsewhere.
Geert
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