Contributions by Gertrud Koch, Bruce Mau. Text by Aleida Assman, Jan Assman, Gabriele Brandstetter, Friedrich Kittler, Andra Lepecki, C. Nadia Seremetakis.
BIOGRAPHIES
Aleida Assmann, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Constance since 1993; studied English and Egyptology in Heidelberg and Tubingen; doctorate in Heidelberg and Tubingen, 1977; habilitation in Heidelberg, 1992; publications (selection): Die Legitimitat derFiktion (1980), Arbeitam nationalen Gedachtnis. Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Bildungsidee (1993), Zeit and Tradition (1999), and Erinnerungsraume (1999); editor of anthologies of comparative literature and cultural studies, including Vlleisheit (1990), Mnemosyne (1991), and Texte and Lekture (1996).
Jan Assmann, born in 1938, has been a professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg since 1976. The main subjects of his research are Egyptian religion and literature in theoretical and comparative perspectives, theology, and cultural theory; and Egypt's reception in European intellectual history. Recent books of more general content are Das kulturelle Gedachtnis (3rd ed., Munich 1999), Agypten. Eine Sinngeschichte (2nd ed., Frankfurt 1998), and Moses der Agypter (Munich 1998).
Gabrielle Brandstetter, professor of German literature at the University of Basle; studied German literature, history, and theatre studies in Munich, Regensburg, Vienna; doctorate in Munich, 1984; habilitation in Bayreuth, 1993; from 1993 to 1997 professor at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies, University of Giessen. Publications on literature, theatre, dance, and performance from the 18th century to the present. Special focuses: theory of representation, concepts of body and movement in writing, image, and performance; research on theatricality and gender difference. Book publications (selection): Lore Fuller. Tanz * Licht-Spiel *ArtNouveau (1989, co-author Brygida Ochaim), Tanz-Lekturen. Korperbilder and Raumfiguren derAvantgarde (1995).
Allen Feldman, PhD, is a cultural and medical anthropologist specialising in the political anthropology of the body, violence, and human rights. He is currently a Guggenheim Foundation Senior Fellow writing an ethnographic analysis of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission with a focus on the militarisation and failed demobilisation of youth. His second book, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terrorin Northern Ireland (University of Chicago Press), now in its third printing, has been praised as a cutting edge ethnography of political terror as a symbolic system. Feldman has published numerous articles on political violence, the body, the senses, and visual culture in essay collections and journals such as Public Culture, American Ethnologist, and American Anthropologist. He is also a practitioner, deeply involved in the design and evaluation of harm reduction interventions for the homeless, sex-workers, substance-misusers, and people affected by AIDS.
Friedrich Kittler has held the chair of aesthetics and media history at the Department of Aesthetics, Humboldt University of Berlin since 1993. He studied German, Romance languages, and philosophy at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. Publications (selection): Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 (Munich 1985, 3rd ed. 1995); Gramophone Film Typewriter (Berlin 1986); DichterMutterKind (Munich 1991); Draculas Vermachtnis. Technische Schriften (Leipzig 1993).
Gertrud Koch is a professor of film studies at the Free University of Berlin. She has been guest professor and had research residencies at numerous international institutions, most recently at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Co-editor and advisor of Constellations, October, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Women and Film, and Babylon. Book publications on Siegfried Kracauer, film theory, perception theory, and the Holocaust.
Andre Lepecki is an essayist and dance dramaturge based in the US. His writing on dance and performance has appeared in Mouvement,ArtForum, Balletlnternational, Contact Quarterly, Performance Research, and the Drama Review, among others. He has contributed to anthologies in the field of dance studies and Portuguese studies. He has a master of arts degree from New York University, and is currently preparing his doctoral dissertation in performance studies at NYU. He has received grants from the Portuguese Institute of Scientific Research, and the Gulbenkian and Luso-American Foundations. Since 1992 he has collaborated as dramaturge with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods. He has also done dramaturgy for Vera Mantero, Joao Fiadeiro, and Francisco Camacho. In 1999-2000, he co-created STRESS with designer Bruce Mau.
Bruce Mau founded his design company in 1985. Since then, Bruce Mau Design has worked with a list of international artists, publishers, architects, and cultural institutions. From 1991 to 1993, Bruce Mau served as Creative Director of /.D. magazine. In 1996, he launched the much anticipated book S,M,L,XL in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas. Presently he is the design director of Zone Books and an editor (with Sanford Kwinter and Jonathan Crary) of Swerve Editions, a Zone imprint. He is also the Associate Cullinan Professor at the Rice University School of Architecture in Houston, Texas. He has lectured widely throughout North America and Europe, and in 1998 was awarded the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation.
Peter Moeschl, professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Vienna. Founder of the discussion forum and cultural-political magazine derstreit. Art theoretical works and collaboration with the philosophical circle Neue Wiener Gruppe (Lacan Group). Numerous publications in the medical field, as well as diverse publications on questions in cultural studies, including "Bedeutung and Ansinnen -Tendenzielles zu Gronius/Rauschebachs Dramen", in edition echoraum, ed. Josef Hartmann and Werner Korn, Vienna 1992; "Asthetik and Kunst - Differentieller Prozef3 gesellschaftlicher Wortbildung", in Texte. Beitrage zurpsychoanalytischen Forschung im interdisziplinaren Austausch, vol. 14, no. 4, 1994; "Asthetik and die stille Sprache der Ideologie", in Texte, vol. 14, no. 4, 1994; "Die Form als Prozef3. Zum generativen Verhaltnis von Asthetik and Kunst", in Martin Strauss and Eveline List (eds.), Partizip Perfekt Form in der Gegenwartskunst, Vienna 1999.
C. Nadia Seremetakis, published/translated, award-winning author in cultural anthropology and literature, C. Nadia Seremetakis is best known for her ethnography The Last Word, based on long term fieldwork in rural and urban Greece, and her book The Senses Still, both published by The University of Chicago Press and in Greek by Livanis Publishing Co. (Athens). She has taught extensively in major universities in the US and Greece, and she has done comparative field research in areas such as New York (minorities), Mexico, Ireland, and Albania.
Gerald Siegmund, born 1963, studied dramaturgy, English, and Romance languages in Frankfurt am Main. He received his doctorate in 1994 on the subject of "Theatre as Memory" (Tubingen 1996). He is an assistant at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen and is also a freelance writer in the area of dance for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and for dance magazines in Germany and abroad. He has published numerous papers and essays on contemporary dance aesthetics. Gerald Siegmund lives in Frankfurt am Main.
