NORMAN
M. KLEIN is
a cultural critic, media historian and novelist. His work concentrates
on how
consumer spectacle and confused urban planning hide social conditions.
In
addition to over a hundred articles, he has expanded these interests
into two
series of books, one on cultural histories of forgetting, another on the
history
of special effects environments. Among his best-known work: The
History of
Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory; The Vatican to Vegas:
The
History of Special Effects; Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the
American
Animated Cartoon. Since 2002, he has also
converted these
series into works of fiction (and museum exhibitions), like the media
novel,
Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-86, and the collection
Freud in Coney Island and Other Tales. This summer, he is
completing a science-fiction media novel, on how the twentieth century
was
imagined before it began (1893-1925). Entitled The Imaginary
Twentieth
Century, it has already been exhibited in Europe and the US,
particularly at ZKM (The Center for the Arts and Media, in Karlsruhe,
Germany,
2007-2009). This summer, it will be published through ZKM and Verso
Books, with
a DVD-ROM interface of 2,200 words, audio, music composition,
illustrated
interpretive maps. For more information as it proceeds, see www.imaginary20thcentury.com.This
summer, he will also complete a “history of the present since 1970),
entitled Fifty Years in Violet:Origins of Our Present
Condition (Verso, 2011). He will speak briefly about the future of
forgetting, with excerpts from his new work.
Klein
is a professor in the School of Critical Studies at Cal Arts, and the
Masters in
Politics and Aesthetics program. He also is graduate adjunct faculty in
The
Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design.
For more informations: Biography
