Medium, Medium

When thinking of media, most people envision their form in technical devices, from the first telegraph to today’s communication and storage media. What is often overlooked is that the concept of media also has a meaning that existed before technology, referring to those who can mediate between heaven and earth, between the living and the dead, and between those present and absent. While mediality can be understood as a practice that connects humans and non-humans over millennia, a rupture occurs in modernity: media become synonymous with technology, and the diverse strangeness of media transforms into an interplay of prosthesis and remote control. In his groundbreaking study, Erhard Schüttpelz shifts the perspective of media studies: from weapon to container, from writing to language, from magic to ritual. He poses the question of what media truly are, given that we have always lived in media societies.