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ERKKI HUHTAMO TALKS ABOUT HIS WORK ON FORGOTTEN FAIRGROUND HISTORY

Date Posted
10.06.22

In September 2022, Professor Erkki Huhtamo visited the university of Antwerp in Belgium, where he lectured about his current research with his collaborator Thomas Weynants in the framework of the "Science at the Fair" research project.

Huhtamo's research projects take a long time, because they require detailed and painstaking media archaeological 'detective work'. Currently he is reconstructing the past of a forgotten medium, the mechanical theater, which is part of fairground history but also an important element of media culture in the making.

The research was triggered by the unexpected discovery of a complete nineteenth-century mechanical theater, forgotten in a derelict warehouse in the city of Ghent. Read from the link below how Huhtamo and Weynants describe the reconstruction of this lost and found attraction, the Theatre Morieux de Paris.

When finished, the result will be another big media archaeology book, a follow-up to Huhtamo's acclaimed Illusions in Motion (2013), a seminal work of scholarship on its way to becoming a modern classic.

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/projects/science-at-the-fair/blog/18-oct-2022/