Monika Dommann

Young Bauhaus Research Colloquium

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Monika Dommann

Historisches Seminar, Universität Zürich

Monika Dommann (PhD) holds a Chair for Modern History at the University of Zurich. Previously she has taught at the University of Basel and has held research positions at the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophthe (IKKM) in Weimar, the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington DC, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, the McGill University in Montreal and the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) in Vienna. Her main areas of research include the relations between the old and the new world, the history of material cultures, the history of intellectual properties, the history of logistics, the history of the market and its margins, the history of images and sound as well as methodology and theory of history. Her recent publications include Autoren und Apparate. Die Geschichte des Copyrights im Medienwandel (Frankfurt, a. M.: S. Fischer Wissenschaft, 2014), “Die Klimakiste. X – Y”, in Franziska Koch, Daniel Kurjaković and Lea Pfäffli, ed., The Air Will Not Deny You (Zürich im Zeichen einer anderen Globalität, Zürich: Diaphanes, 2016), “Systeme aus dem Mittelland” in Laurent Stalder and Georg Vrachliotis, ed., Fritz Haller. Architekt und Forscher (Zürich: gta, 2015), “Zwischen Eisenbahn und Lager. Eine Archäologie der Rampe” in Kijan Espahangizi and Barbara Orland, ed., Stoffe in Bewegung. Beiträge zu einer Wissensgeschichte der materiellen Welt (Zürich-Berlin: Diaphanes, 2014).


Architectures of Material Flow.

Following on the development and construction of transport systems since the 19th century, engineers and designers developed loading platforms and warehouses, as well as new mobile artifacts (e.g. containers and pallets) and signage systems for mobile goods containers (e.g. pictograms, packaging symbols). This architecture, which exists at the intersections of transportation networks and is bound to motion, and a material culture that is itself highly mobile, require new critical and scientific approaches. The presentation will discuss theoretical and methodological approaches with which these anonymous architectures and artifacts – from which veritable logistics landscapes have arisen – might be analyzed and criticized.