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The conference and workshop Researching BWPWAP – referring to the cancellation of Pluto’s planetary status in 2006, BWPWAP (Back When Pluto Was a Planet), the 2013 edition of the transmediale festival – took place in November 2012 in Lüneburg, Germany, organised jointly by Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Aarhus University and the reSource transmedial culture/transmediale.

In the time-frame 11 May - 3 June, the reSource curator Tatiana Bazzichelli will travel to Brazil to discover local and translocal events, projects and institutions working critically with art, technology, politics and identity.

The net jargon acronym BWPWAP – Back When Pluto Was a Planet is an expression used whenever one wants to talk about things in our recent past that have changed quickly. On August 24th, 2006, at the closing ceremony of their general assembly, the International Astronomical Union infamously voted in favor of “demoting” Pluto from its planetary status. transmediale 2013 suggested that this classification crisis, spurred on by new technologies and shifting knowledge paradigms, opens up a rich space of cultural negotiation and artistic intervention.

In our post-future era of acceleration and densification of information, the state and nature of being live and online becomes one of the crucial definers of our social presence. Response and action are compressed into an existential here and now triggering a durée of continuous digital stimulation. With RESPONSE:ABILITY transmediale.11 explored the emerging qualities of liveness as a fundamental nature of our present digital culture and discusses the abilities, that are required to respond to social, political and economic processes triggered by the intensity of our participation and interaction.

Looking beyond the alarmist scenarios of environmental, social and economic catastrophes to be expected in the wake of global warming, the essential question isn't that of how to avoid these processes, but to examine the need for a fundamental shift in cultural perception with respect to nature, culture and technology. With DEEP NORTH, transmediale.09 focused on the impact and unavoidable consequences of this pending global transformation - the crossing of a point of no return akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.

For the first time in its history, the festival had a motto: STOCKTAKING VISION. They took stock of where television and all the new media have gotten us so far, and what they have given us.

Technological advances were growing at an exponential rate, and electronic art had started to invariably succumb to the digital. To deal with these developments, the VideoFest had restructured itself: video, television and multimedia were now given equal attention, and even the screening of films made with digital production elements was now possible.

VideoFest in its seventh year, the year of that infamous „itch“ – which wasn’t the case luckily. The interconnections between video and television had become ever more important. The programme showed uncommon television productions and takes that, critically speaking, went against the grain of commercial media.

Also with the VideoFest ‘92, the MedienOperative claimed to reflect the development of international video culture and to represent a rich variety of genres – productions, sculptures, or selections from fields like interactive media and computer animation that break down boundaries.