Jussi Parikka on Media Archaeology: Interview

Jussi Parikka, professor of Technological Cultures & Aesthetics at the University of Southampton and visiting professor of Media Archaeology at the University of Udine, discusses his book "Archeologia dei media" (Carocci, 2019), recently translated into Italian. Media archaeology, rooted in Michel Foucault's work, is a theoretical method to historicize contemporary media culture without falling into marketing-driven narratives of newness. Parikka emphasizes using the past to understand the present and future, citing the telegraph's 19th-century promises of global connection as a precursor to internet rhetoric. He explores concepts like deep time (from Siegfried Zielinski), which links media to geology and materiality—rare earth metals, energy consumption, and e-waste. His approach differs from Zielinski's by incorporating new materialism and feminist materialism, referencing Manuel Delanda and Donna Haraway. Artists like Paul Demarinis, Zoe Beloff, Rosa Menkman, Garnet Hertz, and Aura Satz have influenced media archaeology, creating works that investigate obsolescence and signal-based technologies. Parikka's curatorial work includes a 2016 Istanbul Design Biennial project on Middle Eastern automata with Ayhan Aytes, exploring alternative computational histories. He cites speculative fiction like Gibson and Sterling's "The Difference Engine" and films by Harun Farocki, John Akomfrah, and Chris Marker as media archaeology resources.