Intercultural Dialogue and Interdisciplinary Convergence:
Toward Plural Media Studies

Wu Jingwei, Jens Schröter, Song Sijing (Translator)

Journal of Communication Innovation Research, 2, 2025, p. 1-13 + 238.

This article conducts an in-depth interview with Jens Schröter, a German media studies scholar. It attempts to define and explore the characteristics, boundaries, current significance and limitations, as well as future developments of media studies. Taking as its starting point the study of the technologies and associated institutions and practices that are necessary to store, transmit, process and display information, media studies is both distinct from other fields of study and also has possibilities that allow for dialogue and integration, presenting itself as a plural discipline. On the one hand, media studies emerge based on the overlapping of different developments, focusing on a specific object (media) with various approaches and perspectives. On the other hand, media studies, which for historical reasons focuses more on technology, can in the future incorporate economic and political issues into its research framework through dialog and integration with other fields, such as economics; German media studies can likewise engage in a dialog with media studies in other countries, such as China and France. In our current technological society, we are dependent on technological infrastructure all the time, and media studies are helping to answer the question of what is happening around us and society.

Here is the link to the paper!

It is an honour to be included in the last book Achim Szepanski, the founder of legendary music label MILLE PLATEAUX, could edit before his death in 2024.

Rest in peace dear Achim.

Here is the link to the book!

Here is the website of the Gastdozentur!

Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter organized together with Prof. Dr. Mersmann, Institute of Art History Bonn and Dr. Svea Bräunert, ZEM Brandenburg (and subsitute Prof. in Bonn in WS 25/26) a lecture series ABSTRACTION TODAY!

VIRTUAL LECTURE SERIES! YOU CAN JOIN VIA ZOOM!

Here is more information and the ZOOM LINK! (the videos of the lectures so far can also be found there, open up the corresponding date)

From automated navigation to weather forecasts, data visualizations, and painting, abstraction has an undeniable presence in the contemporary world. Yet, it not only represents but also creates worlds. It is an operative concept that likewise possesses an imaginary thrust for perceiving things otherwise. As such, abstraction comes in many different forms: It is an aesthetic, a technology, an epistemology, and a practice. Therefore, it is also a political attitude, a mode of description, a tool of complexity reduction, and an instruction for intervention. Depending on its context and use, it can take on radically different connotations, ranging from dehumanizing to appealing, from affirmative to critical, from incorporated to autonomous.
Taking its cue from the different meanings and applications of abstraction, the international lecture series “Abstraction Today: The Real and the Imaginary” is designed as an interdisciplinary endeavor with a focus on visual media and digital culture. Most digital technologies (like networks, computer simulation or artificial intelligence) and correlated practices are closely connected to different forms of abstraction on different levels. To do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, the series brings together a group of international scholars, artists, and curators who speak on abstraction today as it unfolds in fields such as art, photography, film, design, image science, visual culture studies, philosophy, and more. Grounding the inquiries into the contemporary conditions of abstraction are contributions focusing on its historical lineage, most importantly its emergence within the discourse of modernism to be understood in its global and postcolonial plurality.

A new text by Jens Schröter is exhibited in the framework of a conceptual art installation by Emma Rüther. The text is on a painting by Gerhard Taubert (as shown on the right) and is exhibited side by side with the painting.

Exhibition opening  17.10.2025, 18 00, Off Space by Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf, Steinstraße 17, 40212 Düsseldorf.

(right: Gerhard Taubert, Spätsommer, 1970, Acryl on canvas, 110 * 110 cm)

Here is the link to the gradually ONLINE FIRST publication of the handbook!

ALREADY 39 PAPERS PUBLISHED! SOME MORE TO COME!

Our book with the results of our workshop last year (and even more invited papers), 20 in total... in English and first in print and then in Open Access...

(Preliminary Cover, thanks to Seba)