Slow Media Futures: Ethics, Ecology, and Creativity

May 16, 2026

The conference “Slow Media Futures: Ethics, Ecology, and Creativity” will take place on 16–17 May 2026 at the Kurfürstliches Schloss in Mainz.

I’ve been invited to present the keynote for the conference “Slow Media Futures: Ethics, Ecology, and Creativity”. Over two days, the conference will explore the intersections of media, sustainability, and creative practice, bringing together filmmakers, industry professionals, and scholars. Discussions will focus on how screen media can respond to contemporary ecological and ethical challenges.

With the title “A Sun in Every Frame. Infrastructure and Excess in the Environmental Image”, the presentation text of the keynote reads as follows:

“The oil-spot photometer developed by Robert Bunsen was one of the earliest devices to enable the systematic measurement of light. It consists of a sheet of paper placed between two light sources: a small oil stain in the center becomes invisible when the illumination on both sides reaches the same intensity, allowing their brightness to be compared and quantified. Strikingly, similar droplets of oil have become atmospheric in large contemporary forest fires. Under extreme heat, the essential oils contained in wood evaporate and are carried by smoke as microscopic particles. Suspended in the air, these particles scatter the lower frequencies of sunlight, producing orange skies and occasionally blue-indigo suns.

This talk explores the relation between the oil spots in Bunsen’s photometer and the atmospheres of the present through what Irmgard Emmelhainz describes as a shift in the environmental image: “the Anthropocene has meant not a new image of the world, but rather a radical change in the conditions of visuality and the subsequent transformation of the world into images.” Through concepts such as radiant regimes (Nicole Starosielski) and projective imagination (Giuliana Bruno) this talk will examine the changing conditions of visuality linked to data-images, framing them in a surface tension between structured light and atmospheric excess.”

The conference is organized by Dr. Sezen Kayhan (FTMK, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) and İpek Çelik Rappas (Koç University).