Geert Lovink on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 04:54:37 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> Farewell Friedrich Kittler


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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