Foreword

-

This summer semester, Kunstraum Lakeside will focus on artistic and theoretical contributions to an analysis of media effects as well as forms of critical media use. In his installation “Hard Spell: A Promise to Generations” Zeigam Azizov devotes himself to the educative role of television and considers the aspect of its importance in the functioning of the individual in global capitalism. Using the example of a BBC programme in which children compete against each other in a spelling competition, Azizov reflects on the media manufacture of competitive, “self-confident” and pressure-resistant subjects who experience the filling out of an economically-determined role model as being freedom of selfexpression. Azizov’s interest is focussed on the significant interaction between entertainment and education, freedom and subjection as it appears in diverse reality shows as well as in the subjective internalisation of apparently objective demands of living and acting correctly.

Media do not only function as consciousness machines which permit ideological formations in the guise of games, spectaculars and public participation to appear natural. They also form spaces and tools of resistance against prevailing economic and political praxes or the common sense of their basic assumptions. … >>