When JOHN HILLIARD tosses his camera into the air, it’s not an angry outburst of rage, but the start of a systematic investigation. We have tried to explore photography and media art systematically and rigorously ever since the founding of this journal in 1991. In this 76th issue of EIKON, the fourth issue in our twentieth year, we once again present five artists from different countries who take positions on current developments and trends or, for example, the British artist John Hilliard, seek to trace out the essence of photography. New York artist TARYN SIMON—currently with a solo show at Tate Modern—shows with her series of blood lines and things thought dead that photography is both, truth and fiction. Social crisis and political tensions are the basis for the video works of Dutch artist AERNOUT MIK. His multiperspectival juxtaposition shows society in transformation, and allows the everyday to appear surreal.

The paradox of the thing and its opposite, as Andreas Spiegl writes, is the motif of the works of JULIA MÜLLER-MAENHER. Her sociographic studies of a shoe empire show how everything contains its opposite. And ROMAN PFEFFER sees things in yet a different way: in his highly aesthetic photography the everyday becomes a piece of art and a chandelier is split in two halves.

In our Forum, we interviewed Martin Guttmann, the new photography professor at Vienna’s Akademie der bildenden Künste, who commented on resistance against net-based pop and how students can change the world. Kathrin Röggla talked with Maria Rennhofer about some new ideas for a novel based on the revolutions in the Arab world, and Thomas Licek discussed the mammoth task of putting together a compendium of European art history.

This issue also features on an electronic arts festival in Istanbul, a farewell to the photographer Bernhard Blume, and another impressive panorama of exhibitions with photography from Iceland and Russia and flower power in Innsbruck. And finally, the issue concludes with the usual two pages featuring delicious treats from the book and video market.