Transformations of the popular

In his input, Prof. Dr. Lars Koch will use the comparison between Milo Rau and the ZPS as an example to highlight how popular branding works in the field of contemporary activist art. Central to this are questions regarding specific calculations of resonance within the attention economy, media profiling techniques, and strategies for managing participatory emotions.

Prof. Dr. Lars Koch is a professor of Modern German Literature and Media Culture Studies at TU Dresden. His research focuses on the literary and media cultural history of fear and the interplay between affect and popular culture. Another central focus of his work is the cultural-diagnostic category of disruption. Recent publications: Writing Angst. Horror Literature, the Gothic Novel, and Literary Horror from 1800 to the Present (ed. together with Jakob Baur/Barbara Schaff, Bielefeld 2025); The Great Disruptor. Trump, the Media, and the Politics of Degradation (ed. together with Tobias Nanz/Christina Rogers, Berlin/Heidelberg 2025). 

This input explores the currently popular phenomenon of vulnerability regulation. It focuses on the framing texts of artistic productions—such as content notes and trigger warnings—as well as on related artistic practices. The discussion will thus address the potentials and challenges of a shifting attitude toward reception, and specifically the question of just how (self-)harmful artistic criticism actually needs to be.

Julia Prager is the director of the DFG project “Theater of Trans-lation: Dynamics and Constellations of Translation and Demeaning in 21st-Century Theater and Performance” (co-directed with Lars Koch) at TU Dresden. Her research interests include otherness of language in literature and theater, vulnerability studies (particularly in relation to self-help media and spatial dispositives), media constellations in the work of Elfriede Jelinek, and discourses on the connections between bodies and technologies. Her postdoctoral thesis, “Theater of Otherness of Language,” will be published by Nomos in 2026. 

Popularity is a drug that tempts and compels one to gamble with opportunities for attention. In her input, Maren Lehmenn explores this idea using the example of sociological concepts of staging.  

Maren Lehmann is a professor of sociological theory at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. Her research interests include the problematic history of individuality and the social theory of formal organizations. Within the SFB “Transformations of the Popular,” she leads the subproject “Precarious Popularity: Political Populism as the Delegitimization of Procedures.” 

In its modern forms, the popular includes a contempt for the popular itself; indeed, this is one of its paradoxical elements. What has become established as a trope in contemporary rap culture (Kanye West: “I don’t do the popular. Fuck the popular thing”) can, however, be observed in earlier times and in entirely different fields. As the “flip side of persecution,” for instance, the Italian poet Pier Paolo Pasolini cursed his own success and successfully cast himself as its tragic victim. Only its radical negation legitimized the desire for spectacle. Using Pasolini as an example, Fabien Vitali's input looks at contempt for the popular as a characteristic and function of popular destinies.  

Fabien Vitali works as a research associate in the subproject “Pasolini:Popular” of the SFB “Transformation of the Popular.” After earning his doctorate in Italy (Pisa), he taught Romance literature at universities in Munich and Hamburg, among others. His research focuses on modern Italian literature, particularly the interplay between aesthetic and political issues.