The more aware we become of the technological mediations that shape our condition\, the stronger the desire for immediacy: unfiltered access\, unimpeded visibility\, the removal of whatever stands between ourselves and the world. Alloa and Thomä\; call transparency &ldquo\;perhaps the ultimate consensual value of our time&rdquo\; (2018: 2)\, a consensus that suits an age that considers itself post-ideological. Immediacy has become the dominant style of &ldquo\;too late capitalism&rdquo\; (Kornbluh 2024)\, and it resonates with New Realism&rsquo\;s renewed desire for contact with things themselves. The same desire is turned inward: exposure is no longer chiefly imposed on subjects but sought by them: we make ourselves transparent\, through digital confessions\, intimate disclosures and &ldquo\;no-filter&rdquo\; aesthetics\, as an expression of the very desire for immediacy that organises our relation to the world (Harcourt 2018).
\nThe prominence of transparency today is inseparable from digital technologies\, which have expanded the possibilities of visibility while transforming the politics of disclosure. Critical transparency studies challenge the assumption that greater visibility entails greater accountability or knowledge: transparency always involves decisions about what is disclosed and what is concealed\, who gains access and who is exposed to scrutiny (Han 2015\; Birchall 2017\; Flyverbom 2019). Digital platforms intensify these dynamics\, with new forms of asymmetry of knowledge and surveillance (Zuboff 2019) and by by weaponizing and strategically constructing what can be seen and known (Teurlings 2026). The paradox is that the more pervasive media become\, the more easily their infrastructures and mediating operations disappear from view.
\nYet transparency is not the opposite of mediation but one of its effects. As Alloa puts it\, &ldquo\;[i]n order to let something (else) come to the fore\, a diaphanous medium must deflect the attention from itself\, anesthetize itself and recede into the background&rdquo\; (2018: 36). Transparency thus depends on mediation to the extent that mediation makes itself inconspicuous. The paradox\, however\, is that in order to claim to be transparent\, this inconspicuousness must be showcased: &ldquo\;Whether in glass architecture or in the use of screens and other interfaces\, transparency alternates ambivalently between a media-technical operation (where the medium becomes invisible to let the gaze pass through) and an ostensible aesthetic quality (where the &lsquo\;see-through&rsquo\; quality is framed\, highlighted\, and celebrated)&rdquo\; (Alloa 2022: 13-14).
\nLooking at the long genealogy of transparency in premodern discourses (Alloa 2021) only adds a further paradoxical layer\, which becomes obvious when looking at the word itself. Its prefix trans- suggests passage but also transformation: what passes through a medium may be altered on the way. Its suffix -parency evokes appearance and\, with it\, the staging of visibility. The ideology of transparency disavows both: it presents what is mediated as untouched by mediation\, and what is made visible as if its appearance were neither produced nor staged. What transparency conceals\, then\, is not only the medium that enables vision but also the transformations and selections through which something becomes visible.
\nThe masterclass will engage with three texts by Emmanuel Alloa that explore the relationship between transparency and mediation:
\na. Alloa\, E. 2026. &lsquo\;Trans(ap)parency: The Logic of Immediation&rsquo\;. Screen Bodies 11 (1): 99&ndash\;113. \;https://doi.org/10.3167/sb.2026.110108.
b. Alloa\, E. 2026. &lsquo\;Hiding in Plain Sight &ndash\; Suspicious Transparency and the Lessons of Literature&rsquo\;. In Proceedings of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (Vol. 27) \;https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23479672
c. Alloa\, E. 2024. &lsquo\;Escaping the transparency trap. In defence of playacting&rsquo\;. in (In)visible European Government. Critical Approaches to Transparency\, edited by Maarten Hillebrandt\, Pä\;ivi Leino-Sandberg\, Ida Koivisto\, Routledge. pp. 142-151.
The above texts will serve as the basis for discussion. Students are asked to contribute to the discussion by bringing their own media object into the discussion\, and analyse the dialectics of visbility and opacity at work in their particular media object.
\nReferences
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