The Post-Media Lab of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg linked International Debates with the work of local Mediaartists and Internet campaigners.

The Post-Media Lab at Leuphana University of Lüneburg investigated the future-oriented critical potential of digital media, all the more so as they have extended far into our networked lives. The objective of the international research team was to analyze the changes underway in social processes of participation and organization and to allow new forms of intervention. The research results provide reflective and practical knowledge that can be used by both individuals and civil society agents.

The Post-Media Lab was collaborating with the London-based Mute magazine, which has been published under the slogan of “culture and politics after the net” since 1994. This collaboration formed the basis for the curatoric core of the Post-Media Lab. The project also collaborated with regional and international networks from the fields of media, art and science and involved civil society agents and extra-university media enterprises in the region. The Post-Media Lab was divided into three areas:

• Visiting researchers: Each semester, at least three visiting fellows from the fields of art, science and technology did research at Leuphana. The Post-Media Lab offered them the opportunity to critically reflect on issues relating to media and net culture.
• Translocal public: The Lab’s work was made accessible to the wider public through the joint website www.postmedialab.org as an environment for documentation as well as through regular discussions, art exhibitions and topic-related publications. A major focus lies on translating global knowledge into local fields of knowledge and praxis.
• International network: Within the scope of its activities, the Post-Media Lab established an international network comprising critical media and art projects as well as socially and politically relevant positions. This network was made accessible also to other research projects at Leuphana University of Lüneburg as well as to regional agents and interested persons.

Issues of Governance, Sociality, Organization, and Action

The Visiting Fellows program started in January 2012 and ran until December 2013. It was composed of four half-year cycles with a focus on the following topics:

• Connecting People Apart (January to June 2012).
• The Subsumption of Sociality (July to December 2012)
• The Question of Organization After Networks (January to June 2013)
• Life versus Object. Comrade Things and Alien Life (July to December 2013)

Fostering the Business of Creativity

The Post-Media Lab was established through MANEC, a media art module offered within the scope of the Lüneburg Innovation Incubator, a European regional development project. It also fostered the business of creativity in the project region by offering its research findings to artists, media enterprises and organizations in the former administrative district of Lüneburg which use digital network technologies in social communication with political organizations. In addition, the Lab saw itself as a regional contact point for all agents in civil society with a socio-political orientation.

The media art module was offered in close collaboration with the Moving Image Lab, the Kunstraum (Art Room) of Leuphana University of Lüneburg, the KIM project from the field of “Projects with the business of creativity” and the Leuphana Arts program. It also provided a great number of interfaces to other Leuphana institutions.

www.postmedialab.org