Wittbülten National Park Centre, Spiekeroog, 7–9 October 2025

Ever since Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin described, in *Remediation: Understanding New Media (2000) described forms of media transformation in technical, narrative and aesthetic terms as ‘remediation’, this concept has been taken up in media theory, memory studies and archival research, as well as in theories of curatorial practice. It was borrowed from the environmental sciences, where ‘remediation’ refers to processes for restoring or improving contaminatedsoiland water. This distinctly ecological perspective, which Bolter and Grusin did not pursue further, warrants reconsideration.

Remediation thus signifies not only the transformation of media formats and practices—for example, through digitisation—but also the negotiation of responsibility: if colonial violence, ecological destruction or archival gaps are inscribed in data, images, texts and objects, then every transformation simultaneously possesses an ethical-political dimension. In this sense, remediation is not a purely technological shift, but implies a process of (re-)activation and re-evaluation that renegotiates historicity, materiality and mediality in terms of ecology and archival policy.

The retreat therefore centred on approaches from cultural and media studies to the term and concept of remediation. The aim of our discussion was to further develop these approaches conceptually and to open up the term for media-ecological considerations, as well as for the activation of colonial collections and archives, and for curatorial concepts and artistic or cinematic practices.

With Louise Adams, Marie Sophie Beckmann, Jakob Claus, Anja Dreschke, Charlene Gerdes, Felix Hasebrink, Petra Löffler