Installation by University of the Arts, Berlin, Fakultät Gestaltung - Institut für zeitbasierte Medien Class of Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski
Facilitated by Kristin Moellering and Philipp Tögel.

With its distinctive cultural and historical attributes the city of Berlin significantly coins the interplay between science, art and technology and thereby just the sort of nervous, high-tension field in which media can (probably most likely) be localized. In a first draft the Atlas of MediaThinking and MediaActing in Berlin presents the attempt to uncover these diverse origins and developments and to provide an an-archaeological perspective not only on the ways in which, since the late 1940s, media have been theorized here, but also on how they have been artistically, socio-culturally and technically negotiated. The title of the project is meant to be understood programmatically: the decision for the terms Thinking and Acting (as opposed to media science/studies and media art) opens the discussion for positions that have often been ignored in the academic discourse. It aims to genealogically trace out the lines of development along which a constructive engagement with media has been able to unfold.

Deliberately open and certainly incomplete, the cartographic installation explores the spatial dimensions of MediaThinking and MediaActing in Berlin, concentrating mainly on the emerging mediatheoretical discourses and artistic practices within the last decades. Localized primarily on a wall map, the atlas provides a real(istic) cartographic presentation of some of the most significant places from the genealogies of these fields, which are further investigated at several techno-physical stations. These micro-archaeologies present deep-time investigations and diversifications of the specific places, protagonists, and events. The artistic formats vary, including videos, soundtracks, found footage, extracts of interviews, printed research material from archives of the investigated places, and many more media, which enable our visitors to work and study with the material on display, thereby making the wall map accessible and tangible on a spatial level.In this way both map and the corresponding stations allow for a fragmentary, kaleidoscopic view into the tense, quasi-heterotopical laboratory situation, which emerged in Berlin and served as an experimental ground for thinking and acting with and through media, thereby exploring what media might have been, are, and can be. - Part of the idea is to motivate and initiate similar projects in other cities worldwide and create an analytical and poetical relation between the communicative islands.

The project room, a cooperation between University of the Arts Berlin and transmediale, is accompanied by the cartographic publication Atlas of MediaThinking and MediaActing in Berlin edited by Kristin Moellering & Leon Strauch in collaboration with Stefanie Rau.

Sound design: FM Einheit
Visual design: Stefanie Rau
Film editing: Nadja Krüger & Christin Wilke
Research and teaching project: Siegfried Zielinski

Contributions by:
Nicole Blacha, Ursula Block, Egon Bunne, Denise Brucker, Gerd Conradt, Alice Dalgalarrondo, Elena Dellasega, Nina Fischer, FM Einheit, Mário Gomes, Ingo Günther, Agnes Handwerk, Merle Ibach, Lara Iliev-Granow, Kristin Klander, Kilian Kottmeier, Christina Krämer, Lasse Kuhlmann, Paola Barreto Leblanc, Walter Lenertz, Laura Mattes, Alexander Meurer, Kristin Moellering, Dafne Narvaez, Aneta Panek, Eva Pedroza, Stefanie Rau, Ulrich Raulff, Marc Rentschler, Hannah Rumstedt, Maroan el Sani, Anika Schroeter, Bruno Siegrist, Daniel Sigge, Julian Spaan, Louise Stölting, Fillipp Vingerhoets, Simon Weckert, Herwig Weiser Alexander Wischer.