TRACES | Wolfgang Ullrich: Memocracy. Social media and authoritarian image politics

Wolfgang Ullrich: Memocracy. Social media and authoritarian image politics
Until recently, it would have been unimaginable for the government of a world power to communicate on a large scale using memes and AI images, and even to design its policies to be memifiable from the outset. In the US, this has been the case since the start of Donald Trump's second term. This means that even the toughest political decisions are translated into pointed entertainment formats and thus concealed in their character. However, it also means that their own supporters and "meme warriors" are constantly circulating memes with which they support and often further exacerbate the respective policy. The lecture analyzes this new form of image politics and its location: social media platforms in which the Darwinian "survival of the fittest" logic functions as a model for society and the political system as a whole.

The Transdisciplinary Research Center for Exhibition Studies (TRACES) bundles the existing interdisciplinary research approaches on the history and present of exhibitions at the School of Art and Design Kassel and various Faculties of the University of Kassel. The research station on Lutherplatz was built by students at the University of Kassel in summer 2021, based on a design by Bauhaus teacher Ludwig Hilberseimer, and serves to promote dialog between urban society and the university. Here, students and lecturers provide insights into their work with talks, lectures, workshops, seminars and exhibitions and involve the public in research in the sense of "citizen science". more about TRACES

TRACES lecture series summer 2026