Images Between Series and Stream

The statement that we no longer live “in time” or even “with time” but “in series” is trivial today. We no longer live in the seasons and by the seasons — spring, summer, autumn and winter, but in subsequent seasons of our favorite series — Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, House of Cards, True Detective and The Killing. Unfortunately, platforms like HBO or Netflix have drawn our activity more during the pandemic than we would have expected. This gives the impression that we no longer have our own lives but the lives of the “heroes” of the series, without which we cannot imagine our existence. Does this reveal the emptiness of our existence or the power of capitalism that governs our lives, our free time, and our desires and identifications “through” and “by” the platforms? Our liberal freedoms are within the framework of the necessity of technical mediation and ideological conditions. Surely, succumbing to our whims and the market are two poles of the same thing. Seriality only empowers us in this.

The direct impulse for the undertaking was the experience of scientific work and exchange during the COVID-19 pandemic as a first-hand touch of the “poetics of disappearance”. It is, needless to say, an experience with which the writer of these words deeply sympathizes, as most of the people nowadays probably do. Therefore, the book can claim a wide appeal, resulting not only from the topicality of its subject matter, but also the emotional affinity to the authorial perspectives in the book which its readers are bound to feel when reading individual contributions.