UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Auerbach Lecture | 26.06.2024 | 6 pm

Francesco Casetti (Media Studies, Yale): Media, Fears, Protection

Many contemporary media function as filters that protect us against the dangers from the exterior, rather than tools that help appropriate the world. Consequently, mediation becomes a process in which contact with the world relies on some kind of distancing, and in which grasping reality also means recognizing the threats it may pose – threats that are, more often than not, the result of human action on the world. The lecture explores the widespread presence of protective media in our contemporary media landscape, with a particular focus on the ways they reshape our environment and elicit new forms of governmentality.