Sofrischsogut
teaching
An overview of my seminars and teaching activities.
UdK Berlin, Winter Semester 2024/2025
KITSCH AND CUTE — Between Sentimentality and Subversion
For a long time, a culture without hierarchies — one that did not disparage the tastes of the less privileged — was almost unthinkable. Unsparing polemics against supposedly inferior aesthetics, above all against kitsch, hardened into lasting resentment toward art and culture deemed sentimental, mawkish, or cute. Yet under the conditions of social media, and in the context of feminist discourse and critiques of classism and racism, kitsch is undergoing a belated revaluation and taking on new significance in aesthetic and sociocultural debate.
This seminar traces the historical and theoretical development of kitsch and cuteness — from their role in popular culture through postmodern affirmations to their political implications today. It asks: do kitsch and cuteness reproduce existing structures of power, or do they hold subversive potential? What conditions must be met for the trivial to become a form of resistance?
We will examine historical theories of kitsch and cuteness alongside their present-day manifestations in fashion, pop culture, and art. Working from the writings of Pierre Bourdieu and Clement Greenberg, Susan Sontag and Valerie Steele, through to more recent accounts of cuteness by Daniel Harris and Sianne Ngai, we will consider the ideological implications of so-called "bad taste" and explore how kitsch and cuteness operate as expressions of gender and class background. Drawing on popular trends such as Harajuku, Barbiecore, Bimbocore, and Coquette, as well as selected fashion collections — from the romantic cuteness of Simone Rocha to the kitsch-irony of Moschino to the creepy grotesquerie of Doublet — we will map the tensions between elitism, commerce, countercultural gesture, and individuality.
HfbK Dresden, Summer Semester 2024
CUTE, CALM, CARE – Aesthetics of Care
In her landmark 2016 book Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway argued that we must make kin in order to feel accountable to one another. That call forms the starting point for our engagement with an aesthetics of care: cute, calm, and care are affective aesthetics that make an (emotional) sense of belonging possible.
The turn toward an aesthetics of care in art can be understood as a response to a growing need for tenderness and consolation — a retreat into the cozy, the homely, and the small, away from a globalized world that keeps growing larger, more complex, and more precarious. Working from selected artistic positions, this seminar examines in depth what a critical, affirmative, or provocative artistic engagement with care might look like. We will also take a closer look at which cultural, social, and political developments make a visual world that is cute, caring, consoling, or lovable feel necessary in the first place.
HGB Leipzig, Summer Semester 2024
Photography and fiction
Photography has never been mere depiction — it has always been narration, construction, sometimes even deception. It oscillates between documentation and fiction, between trust in a "that-has-been" and the critical recognition that every image can also be a manipulation. Today the line between reality and staging seems to be dissolving for good: deepfakes, AI-generated images, and hyperreal aesthetics challenge our sense of what truthfulness in an image can mean.
This seminar examines artistic positions that work with the ambivalence of the photographic. We ask: what does it mean when image and reality can no longer be clearly told apart? What strategies do artists use to address this blurring — affirmatively or subversively? And what does it say about our moment that appearance so often convinces more than substance does?
HGB Leipzig, Winter Semester 2023/2024
Photography and text
Artists are called upon not only as makers of images but as speakers — protagonists who communicate and interpret their own work on a wide range of occasions and to a wide range of ends. They operate within a cultural apparatus in which their work acquires social significance through acts of positioning, mediation, and networking that reach well beyond what the work means to the artist individually. Accompanying texts do more than convey a work's genesis, motifs, and possible readings: they assert stylistic affiliations, construct cultural contexts, articulate worldviews and stances, and sometimes advance political agendas.
Against this background, we turn to the catalogue text as a genre in its own right. How does text shape the meaning of a work? How does it form, extend, deconstruct, integrate, or isolate a photographic work? When and why do artists write these texts themselves, and when are writers deliberately brought in? Which narrative techniques — including visual ones — come into play? What are the aims of text collaborations, and what effects follow from them?
We pursue these questions through close readings of exemplary cases. Alongside this, the seminar tests a range of text formats through exercises, critique sessions, and the writing of new texts — ideally in connection with participants' existing photobook projects.
University of Hildesheim, Summer Semester 2022
Aesthetics and Theory of Cuteness
For a long time, "cute" and "sweet" were not considered serious aesthetic categories. That changed in the twenty-first century. In recent years, cuteness has been widely recognized as a global aesthetic of commodities and everyday life. No longer confined to knickknacks on the domestic shelf, it increasingly dominates communication on the social web through cute modes of (self-)presentation. Selfies with the appropriate filters, so-called cat content, and above all emojis shape everyday digital life. Where cute art or literature would have been unthinkable in the Western world of the last century — or encountered only in ironic form — artists and writers now venture into sweetness with growing confidence.
Through readings and discussion, students' own essays, and image analysis, this block seminar takes up the following questions. What is cuteness? What effects come with the aesthetic? How does it differ from the beautiful and the sublime on the one hand, and from the ugly and the disgusting on the other? Where does the cute appear? Why was it treated with such suspicion here for so long? Is cuteness an expression of weakness and submission — or equally of dominance and control? Does it convey affection, or manipulation? And what influence do East Asian cultures of cuteness, such as Japanese kawaii or South Korean aegyo, exert on global popular culture?
Drawing on examples from art and popular culture, from Elmyra Duff to K-pop, and on widely discussed writings on cuteness by Edmund Burke, Sianne Ngai, and Simon May, we will pursue these questions and examine the cute above all as a site where power is negotiated.
University of Hildesheim, Winter Semester 2021
Digital cultural techniques
Computers and smartphones, the internet and social media are part of everyday life, and over the past thirty years they have established new cultural practices that take hold as bodily habits and routines. Cultural techniques are commonly defined as "procedures for producing culture" (Harun Maye), and their analysis is usually directed at the forms of communication, thought, and perception that emerge from new technologies. "The iPod didn't just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry" — this is how Steve Jobs opened his legendary address introducing the first iPhone as a further development of the iPod, hinting at the device's far-reaching consequences for how music is perceived and what it does.
Beginning with the personal computer, a whole series of new devices and programs has since produced new cultural techniques of its own. We "surf" the internet, "google" terms, and "scroll" through the results. We "chat" with friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, "like" posts on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and "add hashtags" to address posts or connect with others. We "stream" content online in real time, "post stories," and "skip" everyone else's. These are only a few of the practices that shape everyday digital life.
The seminar takes up the question of how a cultural technique is to be defined and analyzes selected digital practices on that basis. Readings include texts by Marcel Mauss, Marshall McLuhan, and Erhard Schüttpelz, as well as Geert Lovink, Limor Shifman, and Felix Stalder.
University of Siegen, Summer Semester 2021
Aesthetics and Theory of Social Media
Social media are far more than communication platforms — they are complex aesthetic systems that shape perception, self-presentation, and social interaction in novel ways. The visual and textual cultures of Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X, and their peers follow rules of their own, drawn from technical structures, algorithmic logics, and the practices of their users. Likes, shares, and feeds shape not only how we receive content but how we think, how we feel, and how we stage ourselves.
This seminar addresses the aesthetic and theoretical dimensions of social media. What role do visual and textual codes play in the platform economy? How do memes, filters, reaction mechanisms, and viral trends shape our understanding of art, authenticity, and public life? Which theories help us analyze the specific modes of presentation, reception, and participation at work here?
Drawing on approaches from cultural and media theory alongside concrete case studies, we examine the aesthetics of social media — from selfie and influencer culture to postdigital art practices. In doing so, we ask critically how far platforms shape our aesthetic sensibilities, and what new forms of expression and community arise from them.
University of Siegen, Winter Semester 2020/21
Strategies of empowerment
The demand for the equality of all human beings, formulated in the age of Enlightenment, has lost none of its urgency or relevance. For "man," explicitly addressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, never meant all people — women and people of color, among others, were excluded, and in practice remain so today.
The tension already at work in the Enlightenment — between postulates of equality on one side and actually existing conditions shaped by inequality, sexism, and racism on the other — has persisted, and it continues to prompt minorities and the disadvantaged to resist.
The social web has fundamentally changed how people can participate in public discourse and shape it. In principle, anyone can raise their voice, gather in communities, and establish forms of protest. Conversely, this also transforms "analog" protest culture, which has lately undergone a renaissance, not least in connection with the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
In the effort to empower oneself or others, and to move at least closer to equality, activism, art, and advertising alike have developed various strategies of empowerment — and with them, aesthetics of resistance. Among the most common are provocation, empowerment, affirmation, and subversion.
The seminar approaches these strategies theoretically and then puts them to work in analyses of various twentieth- and twenty-first-century movements and their actions.
University of Siegen, Summer Semester 2020
Contemporary social figures
Influencer or nerd, girlboss or startup founder, troll or moralist, zealot or angry old white man — any of these types might qualify as a significant social figure of the present. Social figures are a tool for "pursuing the questions that press most urgently on people in contemporary society," as one of the few foundational essays on the concept (by Sebastian J. Moser and Tobias Schlechtriemen) puts it. Social figures, in other words, give people a means of articulating themselves.
The seminar takes up the questions of which social figures describe our present, and in what particular ways they do so. Working from journalistic articles, writings on the zeitgeist, and artifacts from visual art and film, we will examine the social, cultural, and political conditions that gave rise to each figure, and which contemporary discourses have emerged through them and are carried by them.
University of Siegen, Winter Semester 2019/2020
Cultural techniques of social media
We "chat" with friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. We "google" terms, "scroll" through the search results, and "surf" the World Wide Web. We "like" posts on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and "add hashtags" when we want to direct our own posts toward an audience and connect with others. We "repost" the images, texts, and videos that mean more to us than mere approval, the ones we identify with, and we "screenshot" whatever we want to remember. We "take selfies," "use filters," and "tag" friends in our pictures. We "stream" our lives online, "post stories," and "skip" everyone else's when they don't appeal to us.
Through our use of the internet and social media, a whole range of new cultural techniques has become established, taking effect in everyday, routinized practices. The seminar takes up the questions of how a cultural technique is to be defined, what distinguishes it from other kinds of technique, and how far the online practices named above can be understood as cultural techniques.
University of Siegen, Summer Semester 2019
Net feminism
New forms of communication and image production on social media have given feminism fresh momentum. On Twitter, hashtags such as #aufschrei and #MeToo ignited a discourse on sexual abuse and assault; on Instagram, the body positivity movement critically interrogates traditional gender roles and develops a counterprogram to prevailing beauty norms and bodily ideals.
This seminar enters the contested terrain of the "right" image of women — a battle that plays out on social media in more than metaphorical terms. Our focus falls on the cultural and discursive history of the politics of the female image, from the emancipation movements of the early twentieth century to the present-day net-feminist conflict over images.
University of Siegen, Winter Semester 2018/2019
Cologne in the 80s: Scene Stories
The 1980s in West Germany were marked by the Kohl government, the founding of the Green Party, and by Challenger, Chernobyl, and Waldsterben — the dying of the forests. Alongside the pop-cultural mainstream stood vigorous independent scenes; alongside the emerging medium of music television, small fanzines. Among them was SPEX, founded in Cologne, which under editors including Diedrich Diederichsen, Jutta Koether, and Clara Drechsler, and through its fusion of pop, theory, and politics, became one of the most important cultural organs in the country.
Cologne in the eighties also produced the artists' group Mülheimer Freiheit, which brought together painters of the Neue Wilde and likewise understood itself as dissident — set against a politics and a culture it experienced as apathetic. This "revolt against the spent protest culture of the sixty-eighters, […] against weary commitment, cheapened morality, and self-righteous nostalgia for revolution" (Helge Malchow) was characterized above all by a turn toward pop and mass culture.
University of Siegen, Winter Semester 2018/2019
Write a culture blog
Writing a (cultural) blog is a way to give your own subjects more visibility and to seek out exchange with like-minded people. But how do you start a blog? What thematic direction should it take? How do you find subjects worth writing about? Which journalistic formats lend themselves to the medium? How do you build a network? What do collaborations with institutions look like? How do you prepare content for social media? What is a blogger event, and how does an Insta-meet actually work?
The seminar answers these questions. At its center is the practical testing of different text genres: we write and analyze reviews, opinion pieces, columns, and reports. We invent hashtags, draft tweets, and make images for Instagram.
University of Siegen, Summer Semester 2018
The nerd
He wears horn-rimmed glasses, lives in the basement, is antisocial, misanthropic, allergic to everything, and unlucky with women; he lives on frozen pizza and takes an outsized interest in technology and computers — the nerd. In the literature, films, television, and journalism of the present and recent past, the nerd has become one of the central cultural figures of our time. Analyzing this popular figure opens up a view onto the self-understanding of a society that has projected a particular set of values, perspectives, and interests onto him.
Working from numerous literary, journalistic, and cinematic portrayals of the nerd, the seminar draws conclusions about how theory, technology, and work are valued and understood; about the role assigned to women; and about the social standing of pop culture (which the nerd desires) and high culture (which does not interest him).
We will also trace the shift in the nerd's image over recent decades, from peculiar outsider to strong-willed, highly intelligent loner.
Alongside literary depictions, we will examine films and series including Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), The IT Crowd(2006–2010), The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019), The Social Network (2010), and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010).
University of Siegen, Winter Semester 2017/2018
Authorship in social media
The letter, the diary, photography, film, the interview, and by now social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — all of these are media through which authors stage themselves. Drawing on a series of examples, above all the "media authors" of the twentieth century (Stefan George, Thomas Mann, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Peter Handke, and many others), we ask how authors construct an image of themselves. Which narratives do they draw on (the author as genius, provocateur, loner)? What habitus do they perform (the pipe)? Which attributes do they acquire (the hat, the horn-rimmed glasses)? We look at the media strategies at work, from the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Facebook posts of the writers Ronja von Rönne and Stefanie Sargnagl.
We read the authors' primary texts alongside classic writings on the theory of authorship. The emphasis falls on working with concrete examples: we examine authors' public appearances and interviews on radio, television, and online, analyze author portraits, and interpret Facebook entries, Instagram posts, and tweets.
