The Seminar on Media and Paranoia (2018-19), co-lead with Volkswagen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow Clemens Apprich, examines the paranoid potentialities of digital media technologies and the computational imagination. The reading group, lecture and screening series, and conference explore both canonical texts related to paranoia as well current research related to machine learning, attention economies, and political imaginaries. By highlighting new attentional forms, which correspond to the creative and productive side of paranoia, the seminar investigates strategies of coping and making do within an increasingly complex world. How might the productivity of paranoiac knowledge provide entry points for grappling with current crises in cognitive and imaginative forms, as well as larger technological, financial, or political flows? How can we contribute to or reframe debates about digital cultures and their politics by investigating the technological mechanisms at the heart of contemporary paranoia: from data-violence and algorithmic segregation to new attention economies and uncertain futures. 

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Media & Paranoia Working Group

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Conference: Media & Paranoia: New Attentional Forms