A Media History in n+1 Sources
École Polytechnique de Lausanne, 13-14 November 2025
Thursday, November 13th
Archizoom Gallery – Building SG
15:30 – 16:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Alfredo Thiermann, EPFL
16:00 – 16:45 Letters, Correspondence
Chair: Markus Krajewski, University of Basel
Clara Richard, EPFL
The Correspondence Between the Architecture and Art Historians Rachel Wischnitzer and Ernest Namenyi
Riccardo Ferrigato, USI
Who repairs the Swiss telegraphs. A letter from the Département des Postes et des Travaux public (1854)
Nanda Nugraha, EPFL
Staging Modernity: Colonial Uncertainty and Diplomatic Media in Rural Housing Transformation
17:00 – 17:45 Forms, Indexes
Chair: Anne-Katrin Weber, UNIL
Eliseo Galli, UNIBAS
Card Index Systems, Files and Secrecy: The Material Backbone of Swiss Cold War Surveillance
Stefan Sauter, EPFL
Botanical Samples Collected by Henri Pittier in the Archive of the National Museum of Natural History of the U.S.
Béatrice Benvenuti, Alexandre de Montmollin, Daniela Zetti, UNIL
“Our needs will therefore be limited”: The Five-Year Plan for Technical Equipment for Radio Lausanne, 1958–1962
18:00 – 19:30 Keynote Address
Foyer Giacometti – Batiment SG
Irina Podgorny (Paris VII, CONICET)
From Trash to Treasure: Extinction, Refuse, and the History of Prehistoric Archaeology
20:00 – 22.00 Dinner at Simplon — An informal dinner will follow the day’s sessions. Attendees are responsible for their own meals.
Friday, November 14th
Archizoom Gallery – Building SG
09:00 – 9:45 Pamphlets, Journals
Chair: Marie Sandoz, UNIL
Ellen Luginbuhl, UNIBAS
Swiss Post-Modernity: PTT at the Landesausstellung 1939
Eva Oustric, EPFL
“Je m’appelle Liberté”: The Utopia of Postwar Homes
Frederike Maas, ETH
Traces of the Ether: Radio Magazines as Interfaces of Early Broadcasting
9:45 – 10:00 Coffee Break
10:00 – 11:00 Plans, Surveys
Chair: Gabriele Balbi, USI
Yannick Nepomuk Fritz, UNIBAS
Orientation Attempts in Promptology. A Map and the Field (of Critical AI Studies)
Agustina Labarca, EPFL
Eighteenth-century Custom Houses in Colonial Latin America
Jared Fantasia, Universidade do Porto
Plan for the Maison de la Radio Tropicale: Transimperial Histories of Broadcasting Architecture Across Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds
Andrea Bordoli, UNIBE
Aerial Cartographies of Extraction: Settler Colonial Visualities and the Geological Archive
11:00 – 12:00 Photos, Tapes
Chair: Daniela Zetti, ETHZ and UNIL
Eloise Vo, EPFL
Observation at a distance. A scrapbook of John Lilly’s Dolphin Dissection in Marineland Studios, Florida in 1955
Jolanda Delvalle, EPFL
“Ibiza, Architecture without Architects”: Raoul Hausmann’s Anthropological Reflections on Ibizan Dwellings
Ella Neumaier, EPFL
Das Blumenwunder (1926), written and directed by Max Reichmann, with music by Eduard Künneke and film sequences by BASF
Ulrike Kiessling, UNIBAS
A “Buttersong” by Zacheus Namuhuya and Recorded by Ernst Dammann at Oniipa, Namibia, in 1953
12:00 – 13:00 Media History I CH General Assembly
13:00 Lunch