Zsolt Miklósvölgyi: Spectral Materialism and Paleohauntology

Room No.: 165, Drotárska cesta 44 AFAD

This lecture introduces paleohauntology as a conceptual framework for exploring the intertwining of deep time, spectral philosophy, and contemporary technological culture. Developing Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology, it focuses on how prehistoric and ancestral temporalities persist in the present and "haunt" cultural imaginations and speculative posthuman futures.

At the center of the lecture is the metaphor of the bone, understood both as a material remnant of ancient life and as a philosophical figure connecting the physical and the metaphysical. Echoing Hegel's claim that "spirit is bone," the lecture explores how archaeological finds and cultural excavations reveal repressed histories and reformulate our understanding of the relationship between past, present, and future.

The lecture places these ideas within the broader framework of spectral materialism and addresses topics such as phrenology, disturbing technologies, cursed artifacts, and hyperstitional thinking—cultural attempts to interpret the lingering traces of ancestral life. Particular attention will be paid to the artistic and research projects of the collective and the para-academic publishing initiative Technologie und das Unheimliche (T+U), of which the lecturer is co-founder and co-editor, including the exhibition and zine project Palæhauntology. Connecting theoretical reflection with contemporary artistic practice, the lecture proposes paleohauntology as a way of relating to the spectral residues of deep time and the speculative futures that grow out of them.

Zsolt Miklósvölgyi is an editor, curator, and art writer based in Budapest. He currently works as a curator at acb Gallery in Budapest. In 2014, he co-founded the art collective and publishing project Technologie und das Unheimliche (T+U) based between Berlin and Budapest with Marek Fridvalszki and Mário Z. Nemes. He received his PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies and worked as a visiting researcher at the Humboldt University in Berlin (2013–2014) and at the Wirth Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton (2016–2017). In 2021, he participated in the MeetFactory residency program in Prague and in 2020 he was a literary fellow of the International Visegrad Fund in Prague. Together with the T+U collective, he recently presented a solo exhibition at Trafó Gallery in Budapest (2024) and at the Július Koller Society in Bratislava (2022), as well as at the group exhibition ISKRA DELTA: 34th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana (2021). He also co-curated projects within the OFF-Biennale Budapest (2021).

The event is held as part of the three-year educational and research project KEGA "When you find it, we'll let you know. Sustainable models of intermedia art practices" (2024 - 2026).

We thank the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava @vsvu_afad for the opportunity to implement this project.