transmediale 2016 launches with new funding approvals

transmediale 2016 will open on 3 February 2016

Funding approvals by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), LOTTO Foundation and digiS

Berlin, 25 January 2016

On 3 February 2016 at 19:00 transmediale/conversationpiece will open its doors at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The opening will display the full spectrum of the Conversation Piece program, featuring interactive talk shows, installations, and performances.

One year before its 30th anniversary transmediale has received approvals for funding from the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the LOTTO Foundation, and the Digitization Service Center digiS. More information here.

Opening of transmediale/conversationpiece

On 3 February 2016 from 19:00 the multi media premiere of Steve Rowell’s Parallelograms will be installed in the HKW auditorium. Rowell’s work is an experimental documentary and mapping project representing architectural typologies in American politics and industry. The film interrogates the landscape of dark money and influence in Washington, D.C. At 21:00 Steve Rowell will meet Brian Holmes in a talk.

In the experimental talkshow Superschool: Conversation Starter with Inke Arns, Ed D'Souza, Teresa Dillon, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Fredrik Svensk, Ben Vickers, and Theresa Züger, moderated by Superschool, the academic one-way lecture format will be interrupted live by a group of obnoxious users who will pass on their questions—either to an invisible panel representing the politically incorrect conversations of internet forums, or to the audience that represents collective intelligence. As a live simulation of internet culture, the qualities, banalities, and shortcomings of different knowledge systems will be examined and the thematic streams of transmediale/conversationpiece will be tied together.

The performance before all hell broke loose by Vilunki 3000 / DJ Candle In The Wind, Tomi Leppänen and Stiletti-Ana draws together underground pioneers of Finland’s thriving electronic scene for a unique musical conversation. Each artist will play a 15-minute solo, followed by a 15-minute duo, drawing on knowledge of each other’s styles and practices. before all hell broke loose is curated by Teresa Dillon.

With the event Market of Immaterial Value the 2015 Vilém Flusser residents Valentina Karga and Pieterjan Grandry investigate the creation, validation, and dissemination of art in the immaterial economy. What is the role of the artist in a financialized (art)world? During the opening Karga and Grandry will create a market in which the public has the possibility to actively participate in the value creation of art. During transmediale, participants will have the possibility to buy equity and speculate on the future of this collectively owned artwork.

François-Joseph Lapointe will shake hands with visitors during the opening night, gradually changing the invisible microbial community in the palm of his hand for his performance 1000 Handshakes. Periodically, assistants will take a sample from his skin. The DNA of this microbiome will be analyzed to reveal how our contact with others changes who we are. The data collected during this performance will then be used to generate Microbiome Selfies, shown in the exhibition The Other Selves: On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome at Art Laboratory Berlin (opening 26 February 2016), curated by Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz (Art Laboratory Berlin).

Liam Young’s Hello, City! A Live Cinema Performance of Where the City Can’t See is an audio-visual expedition to a city found somewhere between the present and the predicted, the real and the imagined, stitched together from fragments of real landscapes and designed urban fictions. Set in the Chinese-owned and -controlled Detroit Economic Zone (DEZ) and shot using laser scanners, the film presents this near-future city through the eyes of the robots that manage it. Commissioned by the Chicago Architecture Biennial and reimagined for transmediale/conversationpiece, Hello, City! is a live performance of Where the City Can’t See, the world’s first fiction film made entirely from data (directed by Liam Young and written by fiction author Tim Maughan).

Also on display will be Femke Herregraven’s installation Precarious Marathon, in which four newly designed chat bots play the role of moderator, high-frequency trader, insomniac artist, and art critic on a panel, exploring the relations between art, stock market trading, and play.

The cartographic installation Atlas of Mediathinking and Mediaacting in Berlin by UdK Berlin, Fakultät Gestaltung—Institut für zeitbasierte Medien, chaired by Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski, explores the wide fields of media thinking and media acting in Berlin, concentrating mainly on the emerging media-theoretical discourses and artistic practices between the late 1940s and the first decade of the 2000s in the form of videos, soundtracks, found footage, extracts of interviews, archival research material, and many more media.

Funding News

The Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) has extended the funding of transmediale as a cultural institution of excellence. The foundation has recently decided to continue to support transmediale through 2022 with an amount of 450.000 euros per year.

In 2017, transmediale turns 30. The upcoming anniversary has prompted an approach conceptually linking transmediale 2016 and 2017. The 2016 edition, Conversation Piece, challenges its organizers as well as its participants to reflect on the future shape of cultural festivals. The 2016 edition will create a cursory index of the main topics of contemporary digital culture and the particular role of transmediale in this context. These ideas will be developed further at the 30-year anniversary festival, which will present an exhibition curated by Inke Arns.

The LOTTO Foundation Berlin, chaired by Berlin’s mayor Michael Müller, has decided to provide 219.000 euros for transmediale e.V. for the exhibition of the anniversary edition in 2017, which will focus on the development of media art and digital culture.

In addition, transmediale has been selected as one of 14 digitization projects for the funding program “Digitization” by the Digitization Service Center digiS of Berlin Senate’s culture administration. This initiative supports the digitization of the assets of Berlin-based culture institutions. digiS will provide 400.000 euros for all the funding projects in total; transmediale’s share will enable contextualized presentations of all transmediale publications, as well as a curated selection of conference and event documentation.

transmediale is a project by Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in collaboration with Haus der Kulturen der Welt. It is funded as a cultural institution of excellence by Kulturstiftung des Bundes [German Federal Cultural Foundation].

Image Credits: Artwork by The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger feat. Krazy Kat by George Herriman

Tabea Hamperl
press@transmediale.de
tel: +49 (0)30 24 749 792
http://2016.transmediale.de/