Giaco Schiesser (born 1953)[1] is a Zurich-based theorist of cultural and media studies. He is a professor emeritus for cultural theory and media theory and for artistic research of Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK (Switzerland).
Biography
Giaco Schiesser was born in Glarus (Switzerland). He studied philosophy, cultural studies and German literature studies at Free University in Berlin (Germany). Afterwards he became an associate lecturer at Free University and assistant lecturer at the Institute for German Literature, University of Basle (Switzerland).
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s he mainly worked as a publicist and a scientific editor: For ten years he was co-publisher of the scientific-political-cultural journal Widerspruch, for five years in charge of the department Science & Humanities of the weekly WOZ Die Wochenzeitung, both published in Zurich. At the same time he was an associate researcher at the Hamburg-based Institute for Research of Migration and Racism (Institut Migrations- und Rassismusforschung) with a research focus on contemporary constitutions of the subject.
From the mid-1990s till 2021 he worked at Zurich University of the Arts.[2] First, as a lecturer of the theory and history of visual communication, then he conceptualized and realized the establishment of the department New Media (since 2017: BA Art & Media / Digital Practices) at the University of Art and Design Zurich as head of that department, which he directed from 1999 to 2002 (together with artistic media group Knowbotic Research and media artist Margarete Jahrmann. Since then the focus of his work has been centering on the far-reaching economical, political and cultural impact of the digitalisation of today's post-Fordist society and on the conception of the Eigensinn of media,[3][4][5] an attempt to analyze more precisely the «mediality of media» and its impact and effects.
Since the beginning of the 2000s he served as a professor for the theories and media in the MFA programme (2002–2018) and as head of Department of Media & Art/HGKZ and of Department of Art & Media/ZHdK (2002–2017). In these capacities he assumed responsibility for the conception and realisation of novel artistic curricula–a New Media programme, novel BA and MA Fine Arts curricula–and, within the most recent years for the conception of novel artistic (practice based) Ph.D. programmes[6][7] and the problematics of Artistic Research as well as to the problematics of authorship, of psychoanalysis and of Bob Dylan as DJ.
In December 2019 he was honoured with the award «Top 100 Leaders in Education».[8] The purpose of the award (2019 was its first-time edition), awarded by the “Global Forum for Education & Learning (GFEL) is «to honor the relentless efforts and zeal of individuals, who have played a prominent role in changing the face of education at the global as well as the local level.”[9]
In addition, since 2009 he holds a permanent visiting professorship for artistic and scientific Ph.D. at University of Art and Design Linz (Austria). In this capacity he conceptualized and founded the first PhD-programme in Artistic Research at Zurich University of the Arts, run as a joint PhD-programme by Zurich University of the Arts and University of Arts and Design Linz (Austria), which he has been heading from 2012 to 2020 (since 2017 together with Florian Dombois).[10] From 2009 to its closing down in 2017 by ETH Zurich he also was a member of the board of interdisciplinary Cortona-Week,[11][12] organized by ETH Zurich and ZHdK, from 2013 to 2020 a member (from 2015 to 2020: vice-president) of the Executive Board of the international Society for Artistic Research (SAR).[13] Since 2013 he has been a member of the advisory council of Entresol, a network for the sciences of psyche (Zurich).[14]
Member of the board of directors of Kurhaus Bergün AG, Switzerland (since 2005).
His work and his publications focus on theories of cultures, of media and of subjects / epistemology / aesthetics, art research / democracy, public spheres, every day culture.
