»The medium is the message«. This proposition, abstracted to the keyword and formulated by Marshall McLuhan in 1967, is still one of the most influential statements of 20^th century media theory.

Thus, the media that surround us every day are not neutral, they are not mere containers of a message, but shape it through their specific properties – a break with the media theory of the time. McLuhan concentrated on the effect of the medium on people and especially on the interaction between both parties.

According to Peter Weibel, the new digital technology has brought us to a historical point where we can step out of natural evolution and redesign the »world« as well as ourselves. Man leaves the Holocene and enters the Anthropocene – the new human age, in which man has the Earth and his destiny at his disposal - because: »What we experience today as nature is made by us.« (Peter Weibel's theory on exo-evolution)

To what extent can people still distinguish the technical from the »natural« in their perception? The latest technical means lose surprisingly quickly the character of the foreign and become second nature; the first or actual nature (evolution) vanishes more and more into the technology revolution (Jan Knopf).

Jan Knopf and Teresa Retzer discuss these questions, which are becoming increasingly fundamental as a result of Corona, with the filmmaker, writer, philosopher, and above all practical and theoretical media specialist Alexander Kluge, as well as with the artistic and scientific director of the ZKM | Karlsruhe, Peter Weibel.

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The event via live stream

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ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe