Cultures of Images in the Digital Era – Practices, Aesthetics, Genres

It is obvious that images have become omnipresent in social media today. Communication has never been so visual before. Accordingly, image practices, aesthetics and genres have emerged that are transnationally widespread and shape the visual culture of the digital age. Selfies, video activism and drone videos are striking examples of digital image phenomena whose aesthetic dimension is intimately linked to their social and political functions. This lecture series brings together international researchers who have taken on the challenge of exploring these new image phenomena in an innovative way. The lecture series is intended to offer a platform to systematise, theorise and historically perspectivise visual cultures of the digital. Possible precursors are to be identified and references to the past as well as present of art are to be elucidated. In this instance, the main question is which new configuration of image economies the structural conditions of social media produce, and how new image cultures of the digital emerge. Do we have to radically rethink the digital image in times of the social web?

This lecture series will be held online. Please register at