Inhaltspezifische Aktionen

Morgner, Christian

Kontakt
Christian Morgner

christian.morgener@unilu.ch



Kurzbiographie

Studium der Soziologie in Jena, Colchester und Berlin.
2003 Magister Artium (Thema der Arbeit: “Zur Begriffsgeschichte von Vertrauen/Misstrauen")

Promotion 2008 abgeschlossen

 

Projektskizze

2004 - 2007 "World media events: a case study on the assassination of John F. Kennedy"

 

 

The thesis of this project presupposes that the present-day society is a world society. Society is defined as the encompassing system which is based on communications. This concept is not far from the Aristotelian position. Society is therefore the highest order social system which encloses all communications and all further possible communicative horizons. „Modern society is, therefore, a world society in a double sense. It provides one world for one system; and it integrates all world horizons as horizons of one communicative system.” (Luhmann, Niklas: The World Society as a Social System, in: Geyer, Felix E.; Johannes van der Zouwen (eds.): Dependence and Inequality. A Systems Approach to the Problems of Mexico and other Developing Countries, Oxford 1982, p. 298.) The last boundary of society is that between communication and non-communication. Some evolutionary universals play an important role regarding to this structure like functional orientated systems, formal organisations and telecommunication. The main structure of modern society is described as functional differentiation. That means world society is differentiated into dissimilar subsystems such as world politics, world economy, world education, world religion or the world system of mass media. These function systems tend to cross spatial or national boundaries. Because of that all boundaries depend upon the self-organization of subsystems they are internal structures. In case of mass media world media events are a form that is mediated around the globe. They are singular in their appearance but not in a chaotic shape. World media events are a dissipative structure.

 

The project focuses on their genesis and specific form (narration, responses, and themes) in context of the social system of mass media. Mass media is not simply defined as a specific technology such as TV, radio or newspapers. It is a social system which organizes its communication processes around special functions. Nevertheless, what is the function? What is the internal structure? How is selectivity organized? Which role do media organizations play? According to these reference points – world society and mass media – a case study about a specific media event will proceed as the general frame. In this frame global developments will hereinafter be analyzed in a ‘thick description’ (Geertz). One of the first of these global media events was probably the ‘assassination of John F. Kennedy’. Despite of its resonance media sociology has not paid much attention to it. To fill this gap ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ material like news or films will be expounded (news factors, entertainment, and thematic structure) as well aspects like the meaning of organisations for spreading information around the globe, access to technology etc. With the results of this investigation a bed-rock is prepared, thereafter an analysis of global differences, the relations to other subsystems (art, sport, and politics) and important self-depictions (mass, public) can start.

 

 

2007 - 2009 "The global production of art"

The extensively-conducted debates on the theme of globalization since the beginning of the 1990's have primarily taken into focus the fields of economy, politics and science. For some years now, further areas of study were added which are mostly summarized under the key-words ‘World Culture’ or ‘Global Culture’, to which sports, religion and the mass media belong. Until now, relatively unconsidered and surely for reasons of its proximity to the culture concept, the area of art has surprisingly remained unexplored.

 

Despite that, a wide range of scholars have noticed that the structure of art has to be described in terms as a ‘recursive structure’, a ‘structure, some of whose elements … will produce rules that generate the structure itself’ or as a ‘reflexive structure that must be able to specify itself’ (cf. Krauss, Rosalind E.: A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition, London: Thames & Hudson 2000, pp. 6 ff.). Art creates and presupposes a heterogenous structure; it is not the reproduction of the same. It is the production out of its products or a reflexive production. In other words, art is an ever-changing structure which is not externally determined. Instead, it produces the rules that will generate itself, and as Scott Lash and Celia Lury observed, this production has today a global reach. The project would like to devote itself to this profession under the aspect of possible experiences, conditions, forces, and structures of globalization. If art is globally produced, a further question would be: how is the universalism and generalization possible and what are the structures that maintain it?

 

Initial researches suggest that networks of artists have an important meaning. Further important structures in the production of global art are the so-called world exhibitions or global events and the transnational audience such as cultures of experts connected to them. In this respect, the function of organization of art such as museums, art universities or galleries, as well as the importance of means of communication and dissemination media have up to now remained relatively unconsidered.

Apart from these, the world of meaning (Husserl) of artistical production should be captured with the question of the influence of globalisation. In order to investigate this more closely, it has to be considered how far artists or art creators for the self-evaluation of their own art are increasingly designating art as art itself, a global art scene, an art public, an art audience, art universities, etc.

A concluding area would theoretically be to work out which forms of universality would enable art to maintain a worldwide global art world; what role pertains to styles (expressionism, cubism, etc.) and/or can a central motor of art furthermore be found which by itself, to some extent projects these out into the world?