Katrin Köppert
Berlin
Host: Stephan Packard
Kulturen und Theorien des Populären
Research Project
Screenshot, Repost, Like: Digital Surveillance and Fascistization Desire
The repost as paratext, the screenshot as snapshot, the like as affective commentary: these objects, which are actually expressions of micrological bricolage in Internet cultures, are booming as media for generating evidence under the current conditions of fascistization. They are supposed to bear witness to politically unpopular attitudes and to prove facts relevant to criminal law. In the sense of this very function of evidence, they can be understood as surveillance media. The granularity of these media objects seems to cement control as a “microphysics of power” (Foucault). However, the subject that is to be disciplined and sorted on the basis of the observation, recording, and logging of these media objects is only addressed to a limited extent due to the infrastructures of the control society (Deleuze), which – similar to the microfascist logics (Guattari) – are determined by serial, post-psychological existences (Banaji) and lack an ideological metanarrative. Accordingly, the media microcultures of reposts, screenshots, and likes are to be considered in the context of data collections that can no longer be clearly assigned to individual subjects (Matzner). The algorithmically mobilized dispersion of individual data is intertwined with a microfascist culture of affect. In this culture, only the possibility – instead of the probability – of a nasty surprise or inflammatory gesture still prevails. The project aims to discuss the transition from a preventive (Davis) to a preemptive (Massumi) fascism in the context of the dehumanizing technologies of algorithmic prediction – also to understand the extent to which reposts, screenshots, and likes directly incite actions such as dismissals, disinvitations, and rejections, thereby in turn differentially producing subjects along the lines of categories of inequality.
Katrin Köppert
Vita
Katrin Köppert is an art and media scholar. She completed her doctorate as part of the DFG Research Training Group “Gender as a Category of Knowledge” at Humboldt University Berlin and Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. She is currently a substitute professor for media theories at Humboldt University Berlin and junior professor for art history/popular cultures at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. She co-directs the VW-funded project “Digital Blackface. Racialized Affect Patterns of the Digital” and the DFG research network “Gender, Media and Affect”. She also held the substitute professorship for Transformations of Audiovisual Media with a Special Focus on Gender/Queer Theory at the Ruhr University Bochum and worked as a research assistant and visiting fellow at Berlin University of the Arts, University of the Arts Linz, LSE London, USC Los Angeles, and University of Siegen.
Research Areas
- Digital Colonialism and Extractivism
- Post-/decolonial Theories of Computation
- Critical Theories of the Anthropocene in Art and Visual Culture
- Digital Memory Studies
- Queer Media Studies
- Queer Art History
Publications (Selection)
- 2025: digital:gender – de:mapping affects. Eine spekulative Kartografie, Leipzig: Spector Books (hg. mit Julia Bee, Irina Gradinari).
- 2025: Meme(tische) Gespenster, in: TFMJ – Journal for Theater, Film and Media Studies, 68 (3-4), 2025.
- 2024: Medientheorien der De/Kolonialität in der postdigitalen Gegenwart, in: Christoph Ernst, Kateřina Krtilová, Jens Schröter (Hg.): Handbuch Medientheorien im 21. Jahrhundert, Springer VS: Wiesbaden.
- 2024: Postdigital Camp. Zach Blas’ Too-Muchness, in: Daniel Berndt, Susanne Huber, Christian Liclair (Hg.): Ambivalent Work*s. Queer Perspectives and Art History, Zürich: diaphanes.
- 2023: dis/sense in der Anthropozänkritik, insert. Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries #4 (hg. mit Alisa Kronberger, Friederike Nastold).
- 2023: Patching and Hoarding: Recodings of Period Tracking Apps, in: Michael Klipphahn, Ann-Kathrin Koster, Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss (Hg.): Queer Reflections on AI. Uncertain Intelligence, London: Routledge.
- 2023: Queer Cuteness. Überlegungen zu einer queeren Theorie des Niedlichen, in: Kunstforum 289, Cuteness – Das Niedliche als ästhetische Kategorie, 98-105.
- 2022: Oprah Memes. Dis-articulations of Affect, in: Chloë Arkenbout, Geert Lovink, Laurence Scherz (Hg.): Critical Meme Reader #2 Memetic Tacticality, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
- 2021: Rifted Algorithms. Digitale Medienkunst postafrikanischer Zukünfte. Tabita Rezaire: Deep Down Tidal (2017), in: Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften 21,2. Zukünftige Medienästhetiken, 2021.
- 2021: Queer Pain. Schmerz als Solidarisierung, Fotografie als Affizierung. Zu den Fotografien von Albrecht Becker (1920er bis 1990er Jahre), Berlin: Neofelis.
Events
Contact
Prof. Dr. Katrin Köppert
Art and Media Theory
Department of Music and Media Studies
Humboldt University Berlin
Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies
Fellowship: 01.05.–30.06.2025
E-mail: katrin.koeppert(at)hu-berlin(dot)de