Heartbeat Art & Transitive Media

Join us Friday, August 21, at Medientheater for the double book presentation of Claudia Arozqueta’s “Heartbeat Art” (MIT Press), and Wolfgang Ernst’s “Transitive Media [Philosophy]: Think(er)ing Technologies in Real-Time” (University of Exeter Press). With a closing sound performance by artist Juan Duarte.

Arozqueta’s Heartbeat Art is the first study of how artists have engaged with heartbeats from the 1960s to the present, creating sophisticated and technological works that project in unique ways the circulatory processes of the body beyond its physical limits. Drawing on a long history of scientific and artistic experimentation, the book offers detailed case studies of heartbeat works by a wide range of international artists and composers.

Ernst’s Transitive Media [Philosophy] argues for a media engagement that instead stays close to the mechanism and becomes conscious of its knowledge value in real time. Rejecting symbolic abstraction, the book argues for a ‘transitive’ engagement, in the grammatical sense of an immediate relation between verbal expression and its objects where the actor remains entangled in the action.

Date: Friday, 21 August 2026
Time: 18:30 – 19:30
Location: Medientheater HU, Georgenstraße 47, 10117 Berlin

Claudia Arozqueta is an interdisciplinary historian, curator, and writer. She investigates the use of vital signs in the arts and their relationship with nature, science, politics, and technology. She is the author of Heartbeat Art, published by MIT Press in 2025. Her writing and research have appeared in publications such as Leonardo, Artforum, e-flux, and others. Arozqueta holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of New South Wales, Australia. From 2011-2013, she was Director of Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand. She has been a writer and curator-in-residence at Fogo Island Arts, Newfoundland (2025); Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Montréal (2023); Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2019); among others..

Wolfgang Ernst was full professor for Media Theories at the Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Medienwissenschaft at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin until his retirement in autumn 2024, where he founded the seminar for Media Science and the Media Archaeological Fundus. He received his doctorate in history, then focused on media studies and cultural studies. Since his research turned towards media archaeology, he has devoted his writings and teaching primarily to theories of the archive, media temporalities and sonic media processes. He has been exploring the intra-technical technológos of cultural knowledge and working on a transitive media theory.

Juan Duarte is an artist-researcher from Mexico City based in Helsinki and a PhD candidate at Aalto University. His research focuses on the relationship between the atmosphere, the act of listening, and the concept of attunement. His work has been showcased at PACT Zollverein, Essen; Medialab Matadero, Madrid; Valssaamo-Cable Factory, Helsinki; Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg; Spiral Garden, Tokyo; and the Goethe Institute, Beijing, as well as in prominent international forums such as the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA), Media Art Histories, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, NIME, and Xcoax.