This PhD project examines the technological conditions of contemporary live streaming, focusing on a media-philosophical and power-critical examination of human modes of existence.
The focus lies on a (post) phenomenological and media-ontological description of the nature of the socio-medial, technological environment and the conceptual development of the term 'being-in-stream' (Heidegger 1967; Hörl 2003a). This is accompanied by a relational-material, anthropomedial investigation and conceptual development of the terminology of 'live-streamed existences,' which addresses the entangled, fluid, relational, mediatized modes of existence and processes of subjectivation through which the figuration of streamers is produced (Barad 2007; Haraway 1995; Voss, Engell, and Othold 2023). In a power-critical and feminist analysis, the technologically conditioned environment of 'being-in-the-stream' and processes of 'live-streamed existence' will be critically discussed, classified, and evaluated. To support this analysis, excerpts from livestreams and interviews with streamers will be used as examples.
The aim of this dissertation is to develop a well-founded media-philosophical and power-critical description of the conditions, environments, and processes of the human mode of existence of 'being-live' and to gain insights into the areas of tension between technology, subjectivation, and power structures in the digital context of contemporary live streaming.
Artist Statement:
Katharina Kücke is an academic staff member at the Chair of Audiovisual Media Studies and mainly researches media philosophical and feminist theories.
In 2013, Katharina completed a Bachelor's degree in Media and Theatre Studies at Ruhr University Bochum and then studied the binational Erasmus Mundus Master Journalism, Media and Globalization at the Danish School of Journalism, Aarhus Universitet and the University of Hamburg.
After completing their Master's degree, for five years Katharina worked as a journalist (including for ZDF, NDR, Funk, Watson, L-Mag) and pursues a second Bachelor's degree in Philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin on a part-time basis since 2021.
