Das Medium vor den Medien oder Der Lange Weg nach Toronto

Presentation of Erhard Schüttpelz: Medium, Medium. Elemente einer Anthropologie [Medium, Medium. Elements of an Anthropology] (Matthes & Seitz Berlin 2025)

At some point in the 1950s, Marshall McLuhan is said to have invented media theory, along with one of its most important schools, the Toronto School. In his new book Medium, Medium. Elemente einer Anthropologie [Medium, Medium. Elements of an Anthropology], media scholar Erhard Schüttpelz (Siegen) shows that this is not the whole story. In fact, media (and their theory) have a long history: Before they were identified with technical apparatuses, media mediated between heaven and earth, between the living and the dead, between the present and the absent. For thousands of years, mediality referred to practices that connected humans to non-humans. Only with the onset of modernity did media become synonymous with its technologies, in an effort to pocket that uncanny strangeness that has always characterized media and continues to do so to this day. Thus, if humans have always lived in a media society, we need a new anthropology to at all articulate what media are and what they are capable of.

Together with culture and media scholar Karin Harasser (Linz/Vienna), who wrote the preface to the book, Erhard Schüttpelz will present his book and put his far-reaching theses up for discussion: The long path to Toronto stops over at Meierottostraße 8.

Moderation: Patrick Eiden-Offe (ZfL)

This event is kindly supported by Matthes & Seitz Berlin.

Fig. above: © Matthes & Seitz Berlin