Introduction

This introductory essay to the special section on ‘true’ seeks to outline and activate the ring of the true in contemporary media. It moves beyond the sceptic and positivist stances relating to ‘post-truth’ by foregrounding the audiovisual methodologies with which the true comes to be and by affirming the potentials of ‘falsification’. The essay insists on a critical distinction between falsification and a lie, and thereby builds on the speculative and aesthetic modalities in producing ‘truth-effects’ in contemporary media. In this way, the essay address uncertainty and the temporalisation of truth, the creative nodes of difference involved in knowledge production and subjectivation, as well as the intermedial and ecological immanence of truth-effects.