dr. Marek Jancovic

I am Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. My current research is centered around the materialities of the moving image, film preservation practices, media and the environment, and format studies.

I am the author of A Media Epigraphy of Video Compression: Reading Traces of Decay (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). This archaeology of video compression techniques explores the historical interrelationships between mathematics, medicine and media. It situates compression in a nexus of epistemic, technological and visual practices spanning from late 18th-century mathematical techniques to the standardization of electrical infrastructure and the development of neurology throughout the 1900s. Bringing into conversation science and technology studies, media archaeology, disability studies and queer theory, the book introduces the notion of media epigraphy, a materially-informed method for the study of media histories. This manuscript builds on my award-winning doctoral project Misinscriptions, conducted at the University of Mainz, Germany.

Together with Axel Volmar and Alexandra Schneider, I am the co-editor of Format Matters: Standards, Practices, and Politics in Media Cultures (Meson Press, 2020).

From TIFF files to TED talks, from book sizes to blues stations—the term “format” circulates in a staggering array of contexts and applies to entirely dissimilar objects and practices. How can such a pliable notion meaningfully function as an instrument of classification in so many industries and scientific communities? 

Comprising a wide range of case studies on the standards, practices, and politics of formats from scholars of photography, film, radio, television, and the Internet, Format Matters charts the many ways in which formats shape and are shaped by past and present media cultures. This volume represents the first sustained collaborative effort to advance the emerging field of format studies.

In collaboration with Jimi Jones (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), my latest book project - The Future of Memory: Lossless Standards in Moving Image Preservation - investigates the standardization of digital video formats across audiovisual archives in West Africa, Europe and North America, focusing especially on the social, political and material factors affecting the development and adoption of standards.

My wider research interests include the politics of infrastructure, electricity and the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the interstices between queer studies, disability studies and STS. I have published on topics ranging from the history of film frame rates to the preservation of web video formats, animal spectatorship and animal media practice, the violence of media-technological standards, the environmental ramifications of streaming video, or the mediality of Covid-19. My writing has been translated into Spanish, Finnish and German. Apart from this, I spend an unreasonable amount of my free time thinking about historical phenomenology. 

I am a member of SCMS, necs, RMeS, GfM, SMPTE and the Europeana Network Association. I was a guest researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (2018-2019) and associate member of the German Research Foundation research group Configurations of Film (2017-2020).

As a documentary film producer, I have produced several award-winning films, dealing primarily with community, freedom, and systems of oppression and resistance. Among others, the documentaries Mama Agatha, I'm Not Afraid and 26 de Diciembre have been shown at hundreds of festivals worldwide. My own audiovisual works have been exhibited by art institutions such as the Finnish Museum of Photography, the Fotomuseum Wintherthur in Switzerland, Frascati Theater in the Netherlands, and others.

I teach in the MA program Arts & Culture: Comparative Arts and Media Studies and the BA program in Media, Arts, Design and Architecture. I have taught a wide range of classes in media studies and media archaeology, film studies, cultural analysis, film production practice, and dramaturgy. Some of the recent ones include:

• Transmedia Storytelling (MA)
• Filming Animals: Media Practices After the Human (MA)
• Agnès Varda and the Essay Film (MA)
• "Data-driven Storytelling"? Algorithmic Cultures of Narration (MA)
• Ludwig Berger and German Cinema in Exile (MA)
• Approaching Visual and Material Culture (BA)
• Formats (BA)
• Research Methods in Media, Arts, Design and Architecture (BA)

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