COMING SOON...
1. Baudrillard
In 1978, Merve Verlag published Jean Baudrillard’s volume “Agonie des Realen” (The Agony of the Real). In the 1980s, his theses on the disappearance of the real through simulation and on the disappearance of the real from images were discussed to great effect. At first glance, these prognoses seem to hold true today in view of AI slop, deepfakes, and fake news. By contrast, the book “Praktiken des Realen” (Practices of the Real) presents itself as a fundamental critique of Baudrillard’s overly simple thesis that the real is in the process of disappearing. Rather, images and simulation are powerful tools for the production of the real.
2. The Image and the Real
The complaint that the real has disappeared from the new images is as old as it is tiresome. As early as the beginning of the 1990s, it was said that digital photography would be the end of journalism. And now this complaint is being raised again with AI, usually while completely repressing photorealistic computer graphics, which remain important to this day. But the fact that one can lie with images is only half as interesting as the question of how one can analyze and control the real with images. Trace images, model images, and archive images are different types of images with which the real can be produced – in science and the military, in medicine and the state apparatus. Neither are only the images from social media of interest, nor can the real be reduced to a collection of illuminated objects.
3. The Surfer Gabriel Medina – Between Waves and Internet Surfing
Using Gabriel Medina’s iconic surf photograph from the 2024 Olympics, Stefan Römer examines how the circulation of images on the “online screen” easily gave rise to the suspicion of a “fake.” A fake, in turn, can only be refuted through internet research in which different perspectives and discourses are examined discourse-critically. From the encounter between wave riding and internet surfing, Römer develops a critical epistemology of surfing that traces a line from Marshall McLuhan via John Fiske and Gilles Deleuze to Silicon Valley.
4. Photo Essay
5. Simulation and the Real
Baudrillard’s concept of simulation in particular has given rise to all sorts of misunderstandings. As a rule, it is understood as a pretense or deception. Although, with terms such as ‘model’ and ‘code,’ he seems to allude to computer simulation, this – probably the most important use of computers after 1945 (Licklider compared it to the invention of printing) – plays no really explicit role. Computer simulation, however, is the central technology for the production of the real after 1945, and today it is increasingly combined with machine learning.
6. The Discourse on Fake News in Post-Truth: A Comparison with Art Forgery and
In view of the inflationary rise of “fake news” in the post-truth era, there are, strikingly, no comparisons with art forgeries to date. By comparing the criteria for exposing “fake news” with those for exposing art forgeries and art fakes, Römer investigates the effectiveness of fact-checking, source research, iconography, and material testing.
Instead of a final loss of the real, simulation techniques and analyses of fake news allow us to grasp dynamic transformations of our current understanding of reality.
On 29.10. at the Medientheater der Humboldt-Universität Berlin (Georgenstrasse 47) our book was presented alongside the books of Anna-Verena Nosthoff and Shintaro MIyazaki.
