In the organizer's words:

Art and media education for war? Not with us!

While civil clauses are being questioned at many universities and colleges, the Senate of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne passed a resolution on December 19, 2024 to enshrine such a clause in its basic regulations. As the first civil clause since the turn of the century in 2022, it marks a conscious resistance to the social normalization of militarization. It opens up a space for debate on the new responsibilities of art, media and culture professionals and sends a clear signal for the promotion of peace-oriented art and media education.

The lecture by Christian Heck (artistic-scientific assistant for aesthetics and new technologies / experimental computer science) outlines the background to this groundbreaking step. Examples will be used to show how social media is being used for war, our data for weapons and our experiences for military operations.

In view of the increasing AIization of war and militarization of social media technologies, VR technologies, computer games, generative AI systems, interface designs, digital media and technologies that are researched, taught and artistically practiced at the KHM, questions are increasingly being asked about the social responsibility of those who design media works and content and artistically research and design media and media technologies.

The KHM takes a clear position on this: it rejects any involvement of art, science and research that serves the waging of war or has this as its goal, and promotes the social aspects within social media. It thus sends a clear signal against a political offensive that seeks to impose dual-use research as an unavoidable normality and to systematically open up universities to military agendas.

The lecture shows how this self-commitment becomes a lived practice in seminars, artistic projects and public positioning. It invites students, teachers and the interested public to engage with the responsibilities of art and media education in the digital age and to discuss the role of the media arts as an active contribution to social peace.

The event takes place as part of the basic seminar "Artificiality and Intelligence - Media, War and Algorithmic Violence".