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  • Thomas Meinecke

    Lookalikes

  • Moritz Baßler, Robin Curtis, et al. (Hg…

    Kultur und Kritik (Heft 1, Herbst 2012) POP

  • Simon Rothöhler

    Amateur der Weltgeschichte. Historiographische Praktiken im…

  • Gregor Eichinger, Eberhard Tröger

    Touch Me! Das Geheimnis der Oberfläche

  • Gestalten (Hg.)

    Visual Storytelling. Inspiring a New Visual Language

  • Christian Marazzi

    Capital and Affects. The Politics of the Language Economy

  • Hal Foster

    The Art-Architecture Complex

  • Thomas Hirschhorn

    Establishing a Critical Corpus

  • Andrej Holm, Klaus Lederer, Matthias…

    Linke Metropolenpolitik. Erfahrungen und Perspektiven am…

  • Lars Spuybroek

    The Sympathy of Things

  • Jarett Kobek

    Atta (Semiotext(e) / Intervention)

  • A. Moravánszky, J. Hopfengärtner (Hg.)

    Aldo Rossi und die Schweiz. Architektonische…

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    Urban Prayers – Neue religiöse Bewegungen in der globalen…

  • Marta Herford, Markus Richter (Hg.)

    Wir sind alle Astronauten. Richard Buckminster Fuller

  • Jürgen Teller

    Touch Me

  • Lukas Feireiss,Ole Bouman

    Testify! The Consequences of Architecture

  • Marie J. Aquilino

    Beyond Shelter. Architecture for Crisis

  • El Croquis 156

    Valerio Olgiati 1996-2011

  • Pier Vittorio Aureli

    The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture

  • Mieke Gerritzen, Geert Lovink, Minke…

    I Read Where I Am. Exploring New Information Cultures

  • Matt Mullican

    Notating the Cosmology 1973-2008

  • Arno Brandlhuber, Silvan Linden (Hg.)

    Disko 20-25 Architektur ohne Architektur

  • Craig Buckley, Jean-Louis Violeau (Hg.)

    Utopie. Texts and Projects, 1967–1978

  • Jürgen Krusche, Günther Vogt

    Strassenräume in Berlin, Shanghai, Tokyo, Zürich. Eine foto…

  • David Ake

    Source. Music of the Avant-garde, 1966 - 1973

  • Murray Grigor

    Infinite Space. Der Architekt John Launter. DVD

  • Yona Friedman

    Architecture with the People, by the People

  • Lars Lerup

    One Million Acres & No Zoning

  • M, Kelley, J. Shaw, Niagara, C, Loren

    Destroy All Monsters Magazine 1976-1979

  • M. Hlavajova, S. Sheikh, J. Winder (Hg.)

    On Horizons. A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art

  • Michael Sorkin

    All Over the Map. Writing on Buildings and Cities

  • Nadine Barth (Hg.)

    German Fashion Design 1946-2012

  • Simon Reynolds

    Retromania. Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past

  • Stan Allen, Marc McQuade (Hg.)

    Landform Building

  • Fredric Jameson

    Representing Capital. A Reading of Volume One

  • Magdalena Taube, Krystian Woznicki (Hg.)

    Modell Autodidakt

  • McKenzie Wark

    The Beach Beneath the Street. The Everyday Life and…

  • Pedro Barateiro, Ricardo Valentim (Hg.)

    Activity (is to a group what content is to platform)

  • El Croquis 155

    Sanaa 2008-2011

  • Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon…

    Pioneers of the Downtown Scene

  • Curtis, Rees, White, Ball (Hg.)

    Expanded Cinema. Art, Performance, Film

  • Kaminer, Robles-Dúran, Sohn (Hg.)

    Urban Asymmetries

  • Abel, Evers, Klaasen, Troxler (Hg.)

    Open Design Now. (why design cannot remain exclusive)

  • AA Bronson, Peter Hobbs

    Queer Spirits

  • A. Avanessian, L. Skrebowski (Hg.)

    Contemporary Art and Aesthetics

  • 2G N. 57

    Njiric+ Architekti

  • Lucia Nagib

    World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism

  • Huda Smitshuijzen, Abi Fares (Hg.)

    Typographic Matchmaking in the City

  • H. F. Mallgrave, D. Goodman

    An Introduction to Architectural Theory. 1968 to the Present

  • Alexander Bolton

    Alexander McQueen. Savage Beauty

  • Professur Theorie und Geschichte der…

    Architecture in the Age of Empire / Architektur der neuen…

  • Garth A. Myers

    African Cities. Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and…

  • Jean-Louis Cohen

    Architecture in Uniform. Designing and Building for the 2nd…

  • Christopher Dell

    Replaycity. Improvisation als urbane Praxis

  • Byung-Chul Han

    Shanzhai. Dekonstruktion auf Chinesisch

  • Kaoru Takahashi (Hg.)

    Hello! UK Graphics. Graphic Design in the UK since the 1980s

  • Josep Lluís Mateo

    After Crisis. Contemporary Architectural Conditions

  • Louis Luthi

    On the Self-reflexive Page

  • O.M. Ungers

    Morphologie City Metaphors

  • Lisa Taylor & Gardeners of Seattle…

    Your Farm in the City

  • Hassenpflug, Giersig, Stratmann

    Reading the City. Stadt lesen

  • Butler, Habermas, Taylor, West

    The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere

  • Richard Fairfield

    The Modern Utopian. Alternative Communities of the 60s and…

  • Jochen Rädeker, Kirsten Dietz

    Reporting. Unternehmenskommunikation als Imageträger

  • Lorey, Nigro, Raunig (Hg.)

    Inventionen 1. Gemeinsam. Prekär. Potentia. Dis-/Konjunktion

  • Jimini Hignett

    The Detroit Diary

  • Klanten, Mollard, Hübner (Hg.)

    Behind the Zines. Self-Publishing Culture

  • Tom Holert

    Civic City Cahier 3. Distributed Agency, Design’s…

  • Paul Van Beek, Charles Vermaas

    Landscapology. Learning to Landscape the City

  • Jan Ole Arps

    Frühschicht. Linke Fabrikintervention in den 70er Jahren

  • Gunter Reski, Marcus Weber (Hg.)

    Captain Pamphile. Ein Bildroman

  • Amy Allen (Hg.)

    Democracy in What State?

  • D. Hauptmann, W. Neidich (Hg.)

    Cognitive Architecture. From Biopolitics to NooPolitics

  • Stefan Sagmeister

    Sagmeister: Another Book about Promotion and Sales Material

  • Enzo Mari

    The Intellectual Work. Sixty Paperweights

  • Bettina Allamoda

    Catwalk to History - A Sourcebook

  • Peter Petschek, Siegfried Gaß (Hg.)

    Schatten konstruieren. Pergolen, Zelte, Pavillons, Seile,…

  • Will Jones (Hg.)

    Architects' Sketchbooks

  • Martin Ebner, Florian Zeyfang (Hg.)

    Poor Man’s Expression

  • El Croquis 151

    Sou Fujimoto 2003-2010

  • Caleb Kelly (Hg.)

    Sound (Documents of Contemporary Art)

  • Terry Myers (Hg.)

    Painting (Documents of Contemporary Art)

  • Wilfried Dickhoff, Marcus Steinweg (Hg.)

    Inaesthetics 2

  • Ed Annink, Max Bruinsma

    Lovely Language. Words Divide Images Unite

  • Gwen Allen

    Artists' Magazines. An Alternative Space for Art [pb]

  • Michaela Meise

    Preis dem Todesüberwinder

  • C. Menke, J. Rebentisch (Hg.)

    Kreation und Depression. Freiheit im gegenwärtigen…

  • Gregory Sholette

    Dark Matter. Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise…

  • Drawing Center (Hg.)

    Iannis Xenakis. Architect, Composer, Visionary (Drawing…

  • Margit Rosen (Hg.)

    A Little-Known Story about a Movement

  • Fundación Cisneros/Colección Patricia…

    Tomás Maldonado in Conversation with María Amalia García

  • Chris Kraus

    Where Art Belongs

  • Beatriz Colomina, Craig Buckley (Hg.)

    Clip, Stamp, Fold. The Radical Architecture of Little…

  • Giovanna Borasi (Hg.)

    Journeys. How Travelling Fruit, Ideas and Buildings…

  • Paul Le Blanc, Helen C. Scott (Hg.)

    Socialism or Barbarism? The Selected Writings of Rosa…

  • Jens Müller, Karen Weiland (Hg.)

    Kieler Woche. Geschichte eines Designwettbewerbs

  • Benedict Boucsein

    Graue Architektur. Nachkriegsarchitektur

  • Harald Bodenschatz, Thomas Flierl (Hg.)

    Berlin plant. Plädoyer für ein Planwerk Innenstadt Berlin 2…

Cover In the Delirium

In the Delirium of the Simulation: Baudrillard Revisited by Achim Szepanski

15 years after his death, the ghost of Jean Baudrillard lingers. Beyond just a pessimistic media theorist, the hyper-realist metaphysician of media and information may have become more relevant than ever before, and many of the concepts that Baudrillard left behind have become guiding principles in an ever deteriorating situation. Much of these ideas, from the Hyperreal to Cultural Nihilism, were repopularised in the last 15 years through such books as Capitalist Realism, in which the poster child for critical theory, Mark Fisher, appeared to have left the world a message, written in blood on the inside of our shared prison cell: Baudrillard was right!

A lot of the most frightening confessions there drew primarily from Baudrillard such as the future collapsing in on itself, and all meaning and symbolism melting down into a delirious nihilism under the ever-rising heat of Capital as it establishes itself as an all-encompassing, totalising, technology-obsessed form of dominion, that thinks and acts of its own will, like an Artificial Intelligence that endlessly feeds itself data until all information has been devoured.

To say that we live in a simulation seems more true than ever, as we have less and less ability to affect anything, we reach out to influence what we see, only to realise time and time again that we are somehow cut off from the content, as if everything we know is just a projection on a wall; the horrors are real, and happening somewhere, but exist to us as holograms. We can but run our fingers through the beams of light projected on the wall, so close but so far from anything real.

We are psychiatric patients trapped in algorithmic cells, cut-off, stressed, and scared—the prophecies that caused Fisher to panic have, by this point, been completely realised. We have crossed over a threshold into a world that is both more-real than real, and yet entirely unintelligible and unintuitive, shifting wildly around and unfolding like a fever-dream. In the delirium of the simulation, nothing makes sense without knowing the codes that superficially hold everything together, and perhaps only Baudrillard figured out the code. After all, Baudrillard, with his ideas about code, the digital, quantum theory and hyperreality, seems to be one of the few who recognised early enough the true form of Capital as fictitious or speculative Capital. While his books may have once read like speculative, cynical horror-fictions about what could go wrong if Capital became an all-encompassing and nihilistic tyrant, now that this has come true, perhaps it is time to consult his ghost. It is time to admit that the worst case scenario has become real, and that the raving-mad cynic on the side of French Theory may have been talking the most sense, after all.

This book is an incredible serious diagnosis of the current form of capital, a profound excavation and presentation of the most important and helpful ideas that Baudrillard published: from the unravelling of western philosophy, to a redefining of marxist theories of economics and capital, to a shift in critical theory that complies with quantum theory.


Achim Szepanski, Force Inc. / Mille Plateaux
In the Delirium of the Simulation: Baudrillard Revisited by Achim Szepanski
Published by Becoming/Non, 2024, 978-9925-7984-7-6