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"Für eine Phänomenologie des Fernsehens" II: das Schicksal eines Texts und der Wechsel zur Fotografie

Although Vilém Flusser’s text „Für eine Phänomenologie des Fernsehens“ is only 21 pages long there is no other text in his oeuvre that shows the same concern  for philosophical and methodological reflection. A first, incompletely elaborated version for the New York symposium in January 1974 was published with a four years delay. However, the definitive version Flusser provided has not been published. A new object of research is superimposed onto the unlucky old enterprise of a theory of television.

"Für eine Phänomenologie des Fernsehens" I: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Immanuel Kant und Günther Anders

Although Flusser does not explain and develop his philosophical and methodological claims on the first three pages of his mini treatise „Für eine Phänomenologie des Fernsehens“ (1997 <1974>), there is enough evidence for Flusser’s fundamentally phenomenological credo. The philosophers of Flusser’s implicit references can be unmistakably detected: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Immanuel Kant and Günther Anders. On the one hand, Flusser appears to be strongly rooted in the phenomenological tradition. On the other, in a text on Husserl’s (late) philosophy written in 1986/87, Flusser reveals that he had changed his mind in the meantime turning to a sociology of media that dispenses with the phenomenological stance that was the main aim of his thinking on media in the 1970ies.

Vilém Flussers Fluß. Transkript der Videodokumentation von Gesprächen mit Vilém Flusser im Sommer 1991

In the last days of august 1991 Michael Bielicky visited Vilém Flusser at his residence in Robion, France. Several original conversations with Flusser were videotaped and published in 1994 as Vilém Flussers Fluß. Eine Dokumentation. The recordings include spirited statements by Flusser on key aspects of his work. These are presented here in written form for the first time. Flusser extemporises impressively on many of his favorite topics: the emergence and crisis of written culture and historical consciousness, the meaning of photography, film and computer-generated images as well as the prospect of a telematic society. A special gem in this transcript is Flusser's brilliant telling of the “history of mankind as a television drama,” unpublished thus far.

Flussers Fluß (PDF 459.43 KB)

Translations and Transcriptions from Bielicky’s Recordings with Flusser in Summer 1991

In August 1991, Michael Bielicky brought his video camera with him to spend a few days in Robion with Vilém Flusser and Edith Flusser. The resulting intimate video recordings would be among the last made with Flusser before he died. Beside formal interviews, Bielicky filmed Flusser giving an anthropological sightseeing tour of the area around his home, in addition to a somewhat awkward visit from some television producers. Though Bielicky’s trip was supported by the German television channel WDR, only one part of the video recordings was ever shown on television—the scenes in which Flusser speaks from a window of his house about the prospects for Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. The rest of the footage was edited into “Vilém Flussers Fluss” (Vilém Flusser’s Flow) released on video by 235 Media Verlag Köln. 

Recordings (PDF 245.65 KB)

Hacia una cultura crítica de la televisión – o los medios de comunicación masivos en V. Flusser y G. Anders

This paper focuses on theoretical analogies in the work of Günther Anders and Vilém Flusser. An aspect that is relevant for both writers is the growing importance of mass-media – especially radio and television – shaping more and more the cultural climate of the present era. Mass-media tend to restrict our everyday experience of reality, creating a phantom, matrix-like reality effacing and substituting the world. Unlike Günther Anders, Vilém Flusser believes in the democratic possibilities of dialogue that can turn media into a creative affair.

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