Medium, Message, Transfer

What is a medium? Contemporary debates on media typically reconstruct media in terms of technical means of communication and apparatuses and (trans)figures them as the Archimedean point of our relationship to the world. Sybille Krämer's new book attempts to bring about a shift in perspective: What does it mean when we define media not as a means, but as a middle and a mediator? The response to this question takes the form of what Krämer refers to as the »messenger model«, which singles out transmission and transfer as key concepts in cultural philosophy. In this context, the messenger appears as the figure of a third party who is positioned between heterogeneous worlds, enabling communication and exchange.

The culture-fostering power of transmission and transfer is analysed using the example of the imaginary figure of the angel, the transmission of illness and disease through viruses, the transfer of property through money, the transfer of language in translation, the transmission of feelings in psychoanalysis, and finally the transmission of perception and knowledge through the act of witnessing. Through this line of argument, the notion of »Aisthetisation« – referring to the process of making something absent or nonsensical perceptible – is revealed as the elementary task of media.

With this book, Sybille Krämer wants to prepare the ground for a critical interrogation of our demiurgic self-image as homo faber or homo generator. What does it mean when we begin to see ourselves as messengers rather than makers and constructors?