Political Reading Artifacts

A Conceptual Approach on Characterizing a Certain Way of Reading

In 2021, the German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (domestic intelligence services) classified the political magazine Compact—an unofficial organ of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) political party—as a right-wing, extremist publication that spreads conspiracy theories, as well as anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic content. The implication that reading Compact contributes to its readers refusing democratic principles, discriminating against minorities, and exhibiting racist nationalism reveals strongly incorporated norms regarding the necessity and influence of political reading in Western democracies.

On Self-Tracking as Surveillance Practice

Running, walking, climbing stairs.

[the surface of the earth rotates while I’m moving in the world]

Someone is watching my every move.

Even when I do not move – when I sit, when I wait at the bus station, when I eat, when I sleep – there is a constant recording of my activity of being alive.

Breathing in, breathing out. Someone, something is counting. […]

Does “Critical Composition” (Still) Exist?

Reflections on the Material of New Music

Critical and reflective compositional approaches to musical material are not a phenomenon of the 20th century. In fact, the theoretical examination and compositional expansion of possible material forms within concrete historical conditions of possibility are a necessity of art music production and have always had the potential to cause controversies between composers, music theorists, music critics, and listeners. […]

The Order of Things and People

Vertical Non-State Surveillance

The rise of the security paradigm marks one of the most crucial shifts in Western cultures, if not globally, of the past decades. [1], [2] In the course of this development, whose origins can be traced back to the economic crisis of the 1970s, [3] security has emerged as a key frame of intelligibility and organization of contemporary life, and has progressively become “a powerful diacritic of social relations, a key point of encounter between citizens, non-citizens, and states, […]