Jacob Birken

Jacob Birken is a cultural historian interested in the representation or construction of history and historicity within visual arts and popular culture. After his studies at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe (HfG Karlsruhe), he worked at arts institutions like the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, as well as art schools and universities in Heidelberg, Kassel, Düsseldorf, and Cologne. In 2018, he completed a PhD in media theory, writing on depictions of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires. He is the author of two books on digital visual media, Videospiele (Wagenbach, 2022) and Vom Pixelrealismus (Schlaufen Verlag, 2023). Currently, he is working on a postdoc project on imaginary space(s) and spatial imagination in the early United States at the University of Cologne.