Zerstresst!

Fragmentation, simultaneity and overstimulation characterize our present-day world. Events appear in a flood of short messages, shared screenshots, or TikToks. The images in such media are fast, fluctuating, affective - they lead to stress and are stressed in themselves. This volume examines the phenomenon of media overload from an interdisciplinary perspective and proposes a new interpretative model for the visual cultures of our (digital) age with the concept of Zerstressung. Examining (resistant) image and knowledge practices, glitches, the Anthropocene era, and cultures of remembrance, the chapters discuss Zerstressung as an aesthetic as well as a political concept. - New aesthetic as well as (image)-theoretical perspectives on stress - Examining visual overburdening in digital cultures - Establishing the idea of Zerstressung as an aesthetical, political and analytical figure

Nina-Marie Schüchter, is a research assistant at the Institute of Art History, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She studied art history, German language and literature, and art and design studies in Düsseldorf, Basel and Essen. In 2024, she completed her doctorate on the phenomenon of early-modern curiosity cabinets in contemporary artistic practice. Her work and research focus on feminist art criticism and history, modern historiography, and matters concerning the relationship between art and the Anthropocene. Ines Röckl, is a PhD candidate at the University of Regensburg. She studied history, art history, art education and cultural management in Regensburg, Poznä and Düsseldorf. 2019-2022 research assistant, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf; 2022-2025 DFG project 'Digital Morphology of Ornamentation', University of Regensburg. Her main fields of interest include the tension between architecture and movement, and ornamentation research. She is currently conducting research on clay in the context of exhibitions. Jasmina Nöllen, 2019-2025 research assistant, Institute of Art History, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Studied art history, English and American studies in Düsseldorf and has taught modern to contemporary art. Her research is located at the intersection of pain iconography, performative body politics, trauma aesthetics and memory-critical reinterpretation of post-Yugoslav monuments. Svetlana Chernyshova, is a research assistant at the Institute of Art History, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, where she teaches art from ca. 1800 to the present day and investigates contemporary approaches to art theory. She completed her doctorate - as part of the DFG Research Group 1678 'Materiality and Production' - on the phenomenon of exhibitions from a (media)-ecological perspective. Her work and research concentrate on issues of the image in a (post-)digital age, and theories of space and the body with a focus on contemporary art.