This working group theorizes contemporary media beyond the normative horizons of “media theory.” The initial phase of our collective project (2023–2025) focuses on the critical role of mediation in the constitution of the present.

We begin from the assumption that a multi-sited media theory must be attuned to cultural, social, and political dynamics in a global frame. The fascination with new technologies, geographies of value, as well as teleological histories take media preoccupations of the Global North as their orienting anchors, reproducing such experiences across the media metropoles. Pushing beyond these limits, we understand global processes as neither universalist, additive, nor simply outside the center but rather as complex relations between diverse bodies, technologies, and organizing structures.

This collective research traces how media intervene in, arbitrate or suture social and political forms. Our basic assumption is that understanding the contemporary requires rigorous and relational understandings of media(tion). Over the course of the next year we plan to examine mediation by structuring our working group around a series of key concepts, including: emergence, circulation, relation. These discussions will culminate in a summer 2024 conference and serve as the starting point for a collaborative open-access book project, The Mediation Primer.