Two thousand plus twelve: Transmediale is now open

Right now, Transmediale is happening. The festival for media art has a tight grip on the "Haus der Kulturen der Welt" (a place for international contemporary arts; translator's note) in Berlin-Tiergarten for an entire week. In/compatibilities is the motto. The digital is hotwired with the analogue. In doing so, the great Transmediale keeps its alternative spirit.

 

Transmediale features a new spectral-reflecting layout and a new director - Swedish media archaeologist Kristoffer Gansing. Five festival programmes offer symposiums, exhibitions, video screenings, panels, readings, performances and discussion forums. They all raise the question what kind of technologies mankind produces and why they are often harmful or incompatible? What are potential solutions, what remains in the dark?

 

A/D short-circuit

This year, Transmediale celebrates its 25th anniversary. A time for retrospects. A delicacy for video artists are the screenings of old Transmediale video clips from 1988.

 

The key note speakers Andrew Feenberg, Graham Harman, Matthew Fuller and others easily cover the entire bandwidth of media theories by McLuhan and Flusser to Kittler. And the foyer features the splendid installation of Ben Woodeson: Electric shocks for those who like things to be a bit more impulsive.

The Joshua Light Show exlusively presents on three evenings how high-end light design of the late 1960s meets finest digital screening technology of today.

An absolute must for light freaks, psychedelics and friends of handmade e-music.It's this congenial mix of projects that makes this lighthouse festival under the direction of Kristoffer Gansing worth paying a visit: "This large but still alternative transmedia festival."

Text: Boris Alexander Knop