Siegfried Zielinski looks at ladders and staircases in legends and found images, developing a

visual essay in the manner of an etude in which a dialogue occurs across a range of different fields,

taking in philosophy and theology, art and media, rock music, jazz, cinema, science, technology,

and architecture. The book gives an ardent account of the routines and dramas that are acted out

between the gradual processes of ascent and descent. The ladders and staircases usually asso-

ciated with hierarchy and power are deconstructed in perspectival terms and playfully stripped

of purpose, defamiliarized, and levitatedin the Anarchitecture and aberrations of Buster Keaton,

Jacques Tati, and Charlie Chaplin, in Arnold Schönbergs Jakobsleiter, and in pictures and sculp-

tures by VALIE EXPORT, Daniel Libeskind, Maria Reiche, the Stenberg brothers, and Liao Wenfeng.



Siegfried Zielinski helped devise the concept of media archaeology and about researching the

dynamic relationships between art, science, and technology.