Helmut Draxler
Ecstasy in Mediation
Mediation, in its theological form, tries to mediate in between the immediate on the one hand and social actors on the other to whom it wants to guarantee exclusive access towards the immediate. But neither the immediate nor the social actors remain neutral and passive towards mediation. They are constantly looking for direct contact to each other and/or to overcome mediation at all. But of course, they will not succeed. On the contrary, mediation takes command, against all prophecies of its coming disappearance. Yet our problem today is not to save the immediate from the all encompassing reality of mediation, but to understand mediation as its own immediate. As an immediate mediation it can be analysed in the tradition of Hegel and Marx as a precondition for any understanding of the Curatorial in between the Institutional and the Critical.
Helmut Draxler lives in Berlin and works as Professor for Aesthetic Theory at Merz Academy. University for Art, Design and Media in Stuttgart. He is author of Gefährliche Substanzen. Zum Verhältnis von Kritik und Kunst (Berlin, 2007) and Die Gewalt des Zusammenhangs. Raum, Referenz und Repräsentation bei Fareed Armaly / Coercing Constellations. Space, Reference, and Representation in Fareed Armaly (Berlin, 2007); he edited Film, Avantgarde, Biopolitik (together with Sabeth Buchmann and Stephan Geene) (Vienna, 2009) and Shandyismus. Autorschaft als Genre / Shandyism. Authorship as Genre (Vienna, Dresden, Stuttgart, 2007).
www.merz-akademie.de/cms/index.php?id=51
Ecstasy in Mediation
Mediation, in its theological form, tries to mediate in between the immediate on the one hand and social actors on the other to whom it wants to guarantee exclusive access towards the immediate. But neither the immediate nor the social actors remain neutral and passive towards mediation. They are constantly looking for direct contact to each other and/or to overcome mediation at all. But of course, they will not succeed. On the contrary, mediation takes command, against all prophecies of its coming disappearance. Yet our problem today is not to save the immediate from the all encompassing reality of mediation, but to understand mediation as its own immediate. As an immediate mediation it can be analysed in the tradition of Hegel and Marx as a precondition for any understanding of the Curatorial in between the Institutional and the Critical.
Helmut Draxler lives in Berlin and works as Professor for Aesthetic Theory at Merz Academy. University for Art, Design and Media in Stuttgart. He is author of Gefährliche Substanzen. Zum Verhältnis von Kritik und Kunst (Berlin, 2007) and Die Gewalt des Zusammenhangs. Raum, Referenz und Repräsentation bei Fareed Armaly / Coercing Constellations. Space, Reference, and Representation in Fareed Armaly (Berlin, 2007); he edited Film, Avantgarde, Biopolitik (together with Sabeth Buchmann and Stephan Geene) (Vienna, 2009) and Shandyismus. Autorschaft als Genre / Shandyism. Authorship as Genre (Vienna, Dresden, Stuttgart, 2007).
www.merz-akademie.de/cms/index.php?id=51
