PML Books, ISBN-13: 978-1906496968, English, 188 pages, 2014, UK

Stemming from the Mute magazine crew, the Post-Media Lab at Leuphana University has become an exciting base for a number of artists and researchers. They have developed projects under the theoretical umbrella of Fèlix Guattari’s definition of post-media, individually declined as Slater’s post-media “operators.” This – also freely downloadable – anthology documents projects developed over a two and a half year period. Its critical nature emerges clearly through discussion of an ample range of cultural fields, turning out to be a potentially terrific tool in an updated political scenario. Topics include: the voice of bloggers who took part of the “Arab Spring,” an “ecological” vision of high frequency trading, the transparency of hidden mobile communication unveiled through an app, performances with wearable electronics aimed to prevent sexual violence in the LGBT community, and computational land art (just to name a few). They fit together well in a unique context, challenging the technological and social status quo. The projects also effectively destabilise the vision of technologies inducing isolating rituals (like the addictive checking of incoming information of all sorts) through employing a completely different attitude, collectively building piece by piece a media scenario that is a likely future for us. The heterogeneity of the projects, which have inherited many of the attributes of Mute, connect different fields using a shared language, creating an interwoven political portrayal of theory, media and action.