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The Paradox of Choice: Methodological Challenges in the Work with Short Form Content

The Department of Theory of Art cordially invites you to a lecture by Andrey Logutov from Goethe University Frankfurt.

This lecture addresses a central methodological dilemma in contemporary media and cultural analysis: how to select, frame, and interpret short-form content such as popular songs, video shorts, memes, or micro-narratives in a media environment defined by abundance, repetition, and algorithmic circulation. The premise of the lecture is that any attempt to curate a representative or “relevant” corpus of small forms is structurally compromised from the outset. Unlike traditional cultural objects, short-form content does not organize itself along stable hierarchies of value or influence. Instead, it occupies what may be described as a flat cultural space: a field without clear vertical markers, canons, or durable landmarks on which critical judgment could reliably rest.

At the same time, this space is phenomenologically repetitive. Short forms circulate in loops, remakes, trends, and templates; they invite reenactment rather than interpretation, participation rather than distance. Individual items rarely stand out for long, yet collectively they produce powerful affective and cognitive patterns. This creates a paradox for researchers: while the field feels endlessly variable, it is also governed by strong formal constraints and rhythms of recurrence. Selection thus becomes less a matter of identifying exemplary objects than of confronting an ongoing stream in which novelty and redundancy are tightly entangled.

Andrey Logutov is a Walter Benjamin Researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt. He holds a doctorate in American literature and has dedicated the last decade and a half to teaching and conducting research in media studies, sound studies, and popular culture studies. He is the author of "Repeat After Me: Song As / And Technology" to be published with Bloomsbury in 2026.