1.         Baudrillard

In 1978, Merve Verlag published Jean Baudrillard’s volume “Agonie des Realen” (The Agony of the Real). In the 1980s, his theses on the disappearance of the real through simulation and on the disappearance of the real from images were discussed to great effect. At first glance, these prognoses seem to hold true today in view of AI slop, deepfakes, and fake news. By contrast, the book “Praktiken des Realen” (Practices of the Real) presents itself as a fundamental critique of Baudrillard’s overly simple thesis that the real is in the process of disappearing. Rather, images and simulation are powerful tools for the production of the real.

2.         The Image and the Real

The complaint that the real has disappeared from the new images is as old as it is tiresome. As early as the beginning of the 1990s, it was said that digital photography would be the end of journalism. And now this complaint is being raised again with AI, usually while completely repressing photorealistic computer graphics, which remain important to this day. But the fact that one can lie with images is only half as interesting as the question of how one can analyze and control the real with images. Trace images, model images, and archive images are different types of images with which the real can be produced – in science and the military, in medicine and the state apparatus. Neither are only the images from social media of interest, nor can the real be reduced to a collection of illuminated objects.

3.         The Surfer Gabriel Medina – Between Waves and Internet Surfing

Using Gabriel Medina’s iconic surf photograph from the 2024 Olympics, Stefan Römer examines how the circulation of images on the “online screen” easily gave rise to the suspicion of a “fake.” A fake, in turn, can only be refuted through internet research in which different perspectives and discourses are examined discourse-critically. From the encounter between wave riding and internet surfing, Römer develops a critical epistemology of surfing that traces a line from Marshall McLuhan via John Fiske and Gilles Deleuze to Silicon Valley.

4.         Photo Series, Stefan

5.         Simulation and the Real

Baudrillard’s concept of simulation in particular has given rise to all sorts of misunderstandings. As a rule, it is understood as a pretense or deception. Although, with terms such as ‘model’ and ‘code,’ he seems to allude to computer simulation, this – probably the most important use of computers after 1945 (Licklider compared it to the invention of printing) – plays no really explicit role. Computer simulation, however, is the central technology for the production of the real after 1945, and today it is increasingly combined with machine learning.

6.         The Discourse on Fake News in Post-Truth: A Comparison with Art Forgery and

In view of the inflationary rise of “fake news” in the post-truth era, there are, strikingly, no comparisons with art forgeries to date. By comparing the criteria for exposing “fake news” with those for exposing art forgeries and art fakes, Römer investigates the effectiveness of fact-checking, source research, iconography, and material testing.

Instead of a final loss of the real, simulation techniques and analyses of fake news allow us to grasp dynamic transformations of our current understanding of reality.

On 29.10. at the Medientheater der Humboldt-Universität Berlin (Georgenstrasse 47) our book was presented alongside the books of Anna-Verena Nosthoff and Shintaro MIyazaki. 

Here is the link to the event!

In November Prof. Schröter will have a visiting professorship at the Masaryk University in Brno!

(Image: Official logo of the university)

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: BAUDRILLARD RECONSIDERED

This journal collection (c. 90,000 words) will be published as a theme issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities in January 2029 (34.1). Angelaki (established 1993, based in Oxford, UK) is an internationally known journal of European philosophy and literary and cultural theory and criticism published by Routledge. Since 2025 the journal is online only. Open access material allowing, all Angelaki theme issues are considered for publication as books in the

Angelaki: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/cang20

Issue Editors: Stefan Höltgen and Jens Schröter (University of Bonn, Germany)

Here is the Call! Abstracts until 15.11.2026, the selected abstracts should be developed into full papers until 1.8.2027.

https://arthist.net/archive/54521

(Image: Wikimedia Commons,  By en:User:Europeangraduateschool - File:WikipediaBaudrillard20040612-cropped.png, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49487283, processed with Claude Opus 5.5)

Yue Yixin

Yue Yixin is a PhD candidate in Aesthetics at the School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai. Her research interests include media philosophy, film and moving-image theory, intermediality, visual culture, and German critical theory. From November 2026 to November 2027, she will conduct research at the University of Bonn under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter, supported by a fellowship from Fudan University.

Her research project, Messages and Their Echoes: A Study of Alexander Kluge’s Media Philosophy investigates the relationship between media, public experience, and critical knowledge in the works of German filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge. Focusing on his films, television productions, interviews, and writings, the project examines how montage, repetition, and transformations across media reorganize images, narratives, and historical materials. By connecting Kluge´s artistic practices with his theoretical work on the public sphere and the institutional conditions of media production, the project explores how media can create spaces for critical reflection and public discourse.

Qiren Wang 

In the era of algorithmic capitalism, the video game industry offers countless examples of how algorithms shape labor relations and market dynamics. This PhD-research examines the “Banana Game” a click-based game that has rapidly garnered significant attention since its release on April 24, 2024. By analyzing the “Banana Game”, it aims to explore how algorithms reshape labor relations and exacerbate labor alienation within platform capitalism, providing insights into algorithmic resistance strategies.

Here is the link to the book!

Once-obscure connections between reactionary thought and the tech world have moved from subcultural margins into policy, institutions, and the infrastructures of everyday life. This issue approaches technofascism as a contested constellation in which technical systems and technological imaginaries are mobilised in the service of hierarchy and exclusion. Its contributions examine this constellation across infrastructures, epistemologies, affects, political economy, race and gender, colonial extraction, and attacks on democratic institutions, testing both the analytical force and the limits of the term "technofascism“.

Einst kaum bekannte Verbindungen zwischen reaktionärem Denken und der Tech-Welt haben sich von den Rändern der Subkulturen in die Politik, in Institutionen und in die Infrastrukturen des Alltags verlagert. Diese Ausgabe betrachtet den Technofaschismus als umstrittene Konstellation, in der technische Systeme und technologische Vorstellungswelten im Dienste von Hierarchien und Ausgrenzung mobilisiert werden. Die Beiträge untersuchen diese Konstellation unter den Gesichtspunkten von Infrastrukturen, Erkenntnistheorien, Affekten, politischer Ökonomie, Rasse und Geschlecht, kolonialer Ausbeutung sowie Angriffen auf demokratische Institutionen und prüfen dabei sowohl die analytische Kraft als auch die Grenzen des Begriffs „Technofaschismus“.

ALL 49 PAPERS NOW PUBLISHED! 

Printversion including a foreword in preparation!

The English translation is in the works!