As a thought exercise, the contrarian position can offer unique insights into further research directions, poke fun at established orthodoxies, and in the process study the economies of cultural influence and soft power politics that dominate so much of today’s mediascape. However, a critical posture towards self-presentation and professionalization rituals is discouraged and has remained underdeveloped. Throughout these notes, which I approach as applied ethnographic work, I make a case that it is important to continuously imagine counter-positions and to offer alternative visions, in order to test current perspectives and to deepen our understanding of how media shapes us. These fieldnotes are a point of departure for further discussion. They tend towards experimental probabilities, alternative analysis, and commentary that frequently deviates from the original source. As Marshall McLuhan once noted, “Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.” Because media reflects our psychic and physical reality, it is critical to peek behind the scenes and to examine how these environments are organized, by whom, and how the ideas that pervade and to become the common sense of the era come to be so.
Beyond Engagement
A bubbly and cheerful presenter, Dr. Bonk describes the instructor as entertainer and learning as audience-centered reception activity. This view, however, conceals the complexity of the interaction between the “keeper”…
Parasitic knowledges
A kind of manifesto The parasitic knowledge producer aims for dissidence. There is no time to entertain the musings of established fellow intellectuals who can afford to stretch out into…
End of History / Endless Summer: Akira Mizuta Lippit
Filednotes: Toward an Ecology of the Super Flatline: Murakami Takashi at the End of HistoryAkira Mizuta Lippit (USC)Workshop on Media Ecologies | Keynote Akira Mizuta Lippit has written on Lynch,…
Urban Sounds: Acoustic Transformations in the 21st Century City
A recent conference at Goethe Institut, Montreal, entitled “Urban Sounds: Acoustic Transformations in the 21st Century City” featured a conversation with sound artists Sam Auinger (DE/AT) and Carsten Stabenow (DE).…
The Fog of War: Yuriko Furuhata
The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. It is a psychological condition directly contingent on the availability of information and the…
La Biennale de Montréal 2016: Recording “Free Exercise” by Marina Rosenfeld
Marina paces around the armoury space and pauses, listening. The dress rehearsal is well under way. She gives only minimal direction, letting the piece play out as a collective interpretation.…