Armin Medosch

Armin Medosch (1962, Graz – 2017, Vienna) was an artist, media theorist, curator, journalist, and one of the pioneers of net culture and net politics. He advocated for the democratization of technology and the freedom of the internet from state and economic dominance. In doing so, he always emphasized the potential of the internet to form local and global communities.

From 1982 to 1985, he studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz and, at the same time, philosophy and German literature at the Karl-Franzens-University. In the late 1980s, he began working as a media artist. He experimented with the medium of radio and co-founded »Radio-Subcom – Das etwas andere Radio.«

From 1992 to 1994, he was co-initiator of the »Kunst-Raum-Schiff Stubnitz« – a floating media laboratory and exhibition center with satellite connections for television and the Internet. Conferences, exhibitions, workshops, and concerts took place in the ports of Rostock, St. Petersburg, Malmö, and Hamburg. This project was linked to the vision of facilitating cultural encounters and networks in Europe beyond national borders.

The »Telepolis« project, an exhibition on the »interactive« city in Luxembourg, the European City of Culture in 1995, gave rise to the online magazine of the same name in collaboration with Florian Rötzer. It was one of the first, if not the first, purely online medium from a major German publishing house and had a significant influence on the discourse on European network culture.

Medosch completed his Master of Arts at the University of Sussex in 2005 and received his doctorate from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2012. In 2016, his book »New Tendencies: Art at the Threshold of the Information Revolution (1961–1978)« was published by The MIT Press.

Medosch has curated numerous exhibitions, organized symposia, and held various teaching positions, including at Ravensbourne College in London, Goldsmiths, University of London, and the University of Singidunum in Belgrade.

Since 2018, his personal estate has been housed at the ZKM | Karlsruhe. It comprises approximately 765 video and audio tapes as well as around a hundred folders containing books, magazines, printed matter such as invitation cards, posters, photos, documents, correspondence, typescripts, and documents relating to his projects.