How political are collections and archives? And what does critical science on this topic look like? The exhibition “The Power in / of Collections” delves into these inquiries. The initiative involves scholars from the Technical University, Humboldt University, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

Archival theory and archival metaphor remain at the center of new interpretations of computational culture. Very little can be done in contemporary society without leaving a data trace. Extraction and manipulation of data have come to define contemporary capitalism. These accumulations of data constitute vast archives whose functions and impact…[Read more]

One important but under-considered aspect of the connection between television’s rise and the Cold War is the anxiety that the rapid growth in the cultural influence of television produced in its wake, most notably a concern about the older, traditional American culture ostensibly being left behind. Included within this “traditional” culture was…[Read more]

With the brazen privatization, if not pending chaotic collapse of Twitter, millions of people are looking for alternative spaces to share their work, thoughts, and ill-conceived memes. Among the many digital migrants are a significant number of academics who looking for guidance, and familiar faces, as they try to make sense of the many new…[Read more]

Im Zeitalter von Smartphones und Social Media sind digitale Netze ein allgegenwärtiger und zentraler gesellschaftlicher Raum geworden. Kulturvermittlung arbeitet oft in diesem neuen digitalen Kontext, trotz zahlreicher Enthüllungen über das skandalöse Geschäftsmodell der kostenlosen Social Media Plattformen. Darum müssen wir über Datenethik in der…[Read more]

The status of photo archives in art history and museum history has – for many years now – captured the attention of interdisciplinary researchers resulting, for example, in the re-evaluation of photographs as material objects and working tools. The scope of this paper is to connect this approach to the question of the use of photographs in the art…[Read more]