The volume presented here seeks to shift the concept of "media" from its traditional domain to the political field. Media are not merely to be understood as an intellectual or aesthetic game-whether communicative, linguistic, textual, technical, profit-rational, instrumental, hermeneutic, or mathematical-informational-but rather as a political state of emergency. This media theory therefore addresses the question posed by Adorno and Horkheimer: "Why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism?" According to our thesis, this is a medial question-one that arises from the original "inverse setting" (kata-strophen) of media and subsequently shapes their historical, societal, artistic, and political development. The central thesis of this book is that media can no longer be regarded as a theoretical, technical-aesthetic, or informational game. Rather, they must be understood as a political state of emergency, where the stakes are truth or falsehood within the polis and its prevailing laws. These are two fundamentally distinct domains-intellectual and aesthetic play on the one hand, and political emergency on the other, where the explosive potential of art is absorbed into the political-that must not be confused, because the latter is existential and concerns life or death.

The Author

PD Dr. Stavros Arabatzis teaches at the University of Cologne, at the Institute for Art and Art Theory, in the fields of design theory, art theory, and media theory. His research and publications focus on media theory, art theory, design theory, and the philosophy of media. Most recently, he developed a new media-theoretical approach in the field of media pharmacology. He is a member of the editorial board of the ITS Journal Art and Design (AD), based in Hong Kong and London. He has also recently authored expert reviews for doctoral scholarship programs on behalf of the Presidium of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content. This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.

Autorentext

PD Dr. Stavros Arabatzis teaches at the University of Cologne, at the Institute for Art and Art Theory, in the fields of design theory, art theory, and media theory. His research and publications focus on media theory, art theory, design theory, and the philosophy of media. Most recently, he developed a new media-theoretical approach in the field of media pharmacology. He is a member of the editorial board of the ITS Journal Art and Design (AD), based in Hong Kong and London. He has also recently authored expert reviews for doctoral scholarship programs on behalf of the Presidium of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.