Diedrich Diederichsen



Diedrich Diederichsen (born August 15, 1957) is a German author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is an intellectual writer at the crossroads of the arts, politics, and pop culture.

Diedrich Diederichsen was born and grew up in Hamburg where he worked as a music journalist and editor of the German Sounds magazine in the heyday of punk and new wave from 1979 to 1983. Until the 1990s he was then the editor-in-chief of the influential subculture magazine Spex in Cologne. Diederichsen worked as visiting professor in Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Pasadena, Offenbach am Main, Gießen, Weimar, Bremen, Vienna, St. Louis, Cologne, Los Angeles and Gainesville. After teaching at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart for several years, he became Professor for Theory, Practice and Communication of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2006.

Diedrich Diederichsen is a prolific writer whose articles and texts are printed in a variety of periodicals and publications. Newspapers and magazines with contributions by Diedrich Diederichsen include Texte zur Kunst, Die Zeit, die tageszeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Theater heute, Artscribe, Artforum, and Frieze.

Diedrich Diederichsen's writing is influenced by Post-structuralism, Marxism, Cultural studies, New Journalism, Beat literature, Psychoanalysis, and Situationism. A main topic of his writing is the tension between subjectivity, identity politics, and culture industry in Post-Fordist society. In his writings he frequently refers to personal experiences and the links between zeitgeist, biography, and history.

Selected works

 * Sexbeat (1985), republished 2002
 * 1500 Schallplatten. 1979–1989 (1989), republished as 2000 Schallplatten. 1979–1999 (2000)
 * Freiheit macht arm. Das Leben nach Rock’n’Roll (1993)
 * Politische Korrekturen (1996)
 * Der lange Weg nach Mitte. Der Sound und die Stadt (1999)
 * Musikzimmer. Avantgarde und Alltag (2005)
 * Eigenblutdoping. Selbstverwertung, Künstlerromantik, Partizipation (2008)
 * Kritik des Auges. Texte zur Kunst (2008)
 * On (Surplus) Value in Art. Mehrwert und Kunst. Meerwarde En Kunst (2008)
 * The Sopranos (2012)
 * Über Pop-Musik (2014)
 * Aesthetics of Pop Music (2023)