transmediale/resource

Fachbegriffe schwirren auf Konferenzen nur so herum, manchmal erstarren sie in einem geteilten Referenzsystem und manchmal lösen sie sich in Rauch auf. Commons. Versammlung. Neoliberalismus. Wir nehmen an, dass wir alle über das selbe sprechen –aber ist dem so? Jeder weiß, dass wenn man einen Begriff nur oft genug wiederholt er anfängt absurd zu klingen. Fiona Shipwright nahm sich einem dieser Koversationskennzeichen während transmediale 2017 an: dem schwer fassbaren [ever elusive] Wort Infrastruktur.

Terminology whizzes around at conferences, sometimes congealing around a shared set of reference points and sometimes dissipating into dust. The Commons. Assemblage. Neoliberalism. We assume we're talking about the same things—but are we? Everyone knows that if you repeat a term often enough, it starts to sound absurd. Fiona Shipwright picked up on one of these conversational hallmarks during transmediale 2017: the “ever elusive” word infrastructure. By following its usage throughout various events, especially a workshop called “Impossible Escapes,” she found its curious and often funny (mis)appropriations telling, and even found something like political potential its endless ambiguity: for “no one field or discipline can command a monopoly of understanding.”

Offshore Investigation Vehicle by the Demystification Committee is based on ongoing research into the structures of power embodied in offshore practices and tries to identify means of dislocating these financial systems.

transmediale 2017 schloss mit einer Performance von Laurie Anderson, The Language of the Future. Aus diesem Anlass reflektiert Ryan Bishop in diesem Essay über Sprache und Narrativen in dem sich über Dekaden erstreckenden Werk von Anderson als eine Künstlerin, welche sich aller Kategorisierung entzieht —"ein Zusammenfließen von technologischer Reichweite, Ambition und Scheitern in Kombination mit ironischem Humor".

transmediale 2017 closed with a performance by Laurie Anderson, The Language of the Future. To mark the occasion, in this essay Ryan Bishop reflects on language and narratives in Anderson’s decades of work as an artist shirking all categorization—“a confluence of technological reach, ambition and failure mixed with ironic humor.”

You forgot to grab your copy of transmediale/magazine at the festival? Don't worry, we've got you covered.

Du hast während des Festivals vergessen, dir das transmediale/magazine mitzunehmen? Keine Sorge, wir haben da etwas für dich...

Another edition of transmediale and CTM is over and we would like to thank all the Vorspiel 2017 participants for their involvement and collaboration.

Eine weitere Ausgabe der transmediale und des CTM ist vorbei und wir möchten allen Vorspiel 2017 Teilnehmern für ihr Engagement und ihre Zusammenarbeit danken.

Is there a way to address the “basics” of life and art practice that is neither regressive nor future-obsessed? This question came up both in a 2005 transmediale panel discussion involving the artist Steve Kurtz, and again in his keynote presentation at the 2017 festival. Kurtz, part of the decades-running and legendary Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), overcame great legal hurdles to speak at the 2005 “Basics” event on his current work. In 2017 he described the trajectory this work has taken in the last 12 years, given the new instantiations of biopower we face. That is, if biopower is even the right word—Elizabeth Povinelli, for one, has coined the term “geontopower” to indicate contemporary power’s control of the border between life/nonlife in addition to biopower’s hold over life/death.