transmediale 2014 afterglow announces programme and further participant highlights
PRESS RELEASE
transmediale 2014 afterglow announces programme and further participant highlights
Douglas Coupland, Dinos Chapman, MSHR, Sputniko!, Jacob Appelbaum, Jelili Atiku
Berlin, December 18th, 2013
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Following the programme announcement from last month we are pleased to unveil further participants from the realms of art, culture and media, gathering for transmediale 2014 afterglow at Haus der Kulturen der Welt from January 29th to February 2nd, 2014.
The entire programme will be soon available online at www.transmediale.de.
Douglas Coupland (ca), Dinos Chapman (uk), MSHR (us), Sputniko! (jp), Jacob Appelbaum (us), Jelili Atiku (ng), Jeremy Scahill (us), Elizabeth Vander Zaag (ca), Martha Colburn (us), Jonah-Brucker Cohen (us), Sean Cubitt (uk), Bill Binney (us), Fabiane Borges (br), Salvatore Iaconesi (it), Geraldine Juárez (mx), Denisa Kera (cz), Khan of Finland (de), Annie Machon (uk), Shaka McGlotten (us), Niko Princen (nl), Sufeng Song (tw), IDPW (jp), Nancy Mauro-Flude (au), Katerina Undo (be), Dani Ploeger (nl), Adriana Ferrarese (fr), Karin Fisslthaler (at), Bjørn Melhus (de), Cordelia Swann (uk), Ivar Veermäe (ee/de), Andy Weir (uk), Kim Asendorf (de), Philipp Ronnenberg (de), Exonemo (jp), Julian Oliver (nz), Danja Vasiliev (ru), Rachel de Joode (nl), Pinar Yoldas (tr), recorded interventions by Ai Weiwei (cn) und Ai Xiaoming (cn)
Art Hack Day Berlin : Afterglow
This year’s exhibition programme comes together through a hackathon inspired methodology where the works are developed on site during the festival:
In collaboration with Berlin-based LEAP and Art Hack Day/ Olof Mathé, transmediale presents the second part of Art Hack Day Berlin. Following the first edition at Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance (LEAP), Going Dark roughly 70 artists and hackers will create an instant exhibition within 48 hours according to the afterglow theme. In addition, artist talks, workshops and performances will take place in the framework of the resulting exhibition.
Among the participants: Brenna Murphy, Birch Cooper, Kim Asendorf, Phillip Ronnenberg, Julien Oliver, Rachel de Joode, Dani Ploeger, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Exonemo, Geraldine Juárez, Niko Princen, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Katerina Undo
Connected to Art Hack Day is Yami-Ichi an Internet Black Market organised by the century-old Japanese secret society of the Internet, IDPW. After several successful editions in its home country, this market which trades in banned curiosities from the backstreets of the Internet is making its European premiere with thirty vendors from Japan and Berlin.
Performance programme
transmediale 2014 afterglow’s performance programme focuses on audiovisual and inter-media pieces in which technology is not the main focus, but rather the often intangible space between humans, objects, and systems.
Nurturing a longstanding partnership with CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music and Art, together the two festivals constitute the world’s largest annual platform for reflection on the cultural significance of new technologies and digital culture.
In a special celebration this year, transmediale and CTM jointly bring their 2014 editions to a close with Robert Henke, known for his peerless Monolake productions. Henke will perform the German premiere of his stunning new sound and laser show, Lumière, an exploration of the syncronicity and divergence of light and darkness and of slow movements and sudden bursts of motion and noise. The work elevates Henke’s expertise as he commands three powerful lasers to draw repeating shapes, ephemeral objects, and ultra short pulses of light in an improvised dialogue where shapes create sonic events and vice versa.
Another German premiere presented together with CTM will be British artist Dinos Chapman, one half of the enfants terribles of British contemporary art, The Chapman Brothers, who will perform an audiovisual live show based on his acclaimed 2013 electronic music album Luftbobler. Chapman projects his short films on a triple-screen, marrying sound and visuals in an eerie, immersive and unforgettable experience. With insomnia cited as a source of its creation, the album and performance are a result of a decade of sonic and visual experimentation that was literally made in the afterglow.
American artists MSHR show their audiovisual performance Ceremonial Chamber, Nigerian multi media artist Jelili Atiku together with Dani Ploeger makes use of e-waste materials from Nigeria to enace the socio-economic conditions of Nigeria.
Nancy Mauro-Flude presents her performance Error in Time and Geraldine Juárez Hello Bitcoin.
Among the participant highlights: Robert Henke aka Monolake (in cooperation with CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music and Art), Dinos Chapman (in cooperation with CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music and Art), MSHR, Lucky Dragons (in cooperation with CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music and Art), Jelili Atiku, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Dani Ploeger.
Conference programme
The conference of this year’s transmediale, curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli and Kristoffer Gansing in collaboration with Ryan Bishop, Jussi Parikka, Francesco Warbear Macarone Palmieri und Katrien Jacobs, takes afterglow as a metaphor for the present condition of digital culture, examining the geopolitical, infrastructural and bodily consequences of the excessive digitalisation that has taken place over the course of the last three decades.
Central motifs are mass surveillance, excessive big data schemes, whistleblowing, the corrupt ecology of technological resources and the effects of digitalisation on identity and sexuality.
Japanese artist Sputniko! will thematise technology’s impact on everyday life in a performative keynote, the panel The Chinese Dream: The Doctrine and the Sexy will feature a discussion about attitudes towards patriotism, surveillance culture and body politics in the Chinese sphere with Sufeng Song and recorded interventions by Ai Weiwei and Ai Xiaoming.
Independent security analyst Jacob Appelbaum and documentary film director Laura Poitras reflect with artist and geograph Trevor Paglen on upcoming frontiers of action and awareness for hackers, activists and artists in the present context of geopolitical surveillance and control.
Sean Cubitt and Denisa Kera will talk about the effects of electronic and synthetic waste on geological and biological bodies, Bill Binney and Annie Machon deal with the question how the ethics of cypherpunk, whistle-blowing and investigative journalism are evolving into a hybrid form of civic resistance.
The conference programme is supported by the Federal Agency for Civic Education and one of its streams is presented in collaboration with the Winchester School of Art.
Among the participant highlights are: Sputniko!, Laura Poitras, Trevor Paglen, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeremy Scahill, Benjamin H. Bratton, Metahaven, James Bridle, Sean Cubitt, Olia Lialina, William Binney, Fabiane Borges, Salvatore Iaconesi, Geraldine Juarez, Denisa Kera, Khan, Annie Machon, Shaka McGlotten, Sufeng Song, recorded interventions by Ai Weiwei and Ai Xiaoming
Screening programme
The films and videos featured in transmediale 2014 focus on subjects such as the internet, surveillance, and Big Data as well as electronic, digital and analogue trash. The afterglow theme is seen as gloomy visions of the afterlife of images and technologies in which naïve dreams of a digital revolution, free exchange and equal participation no longer have a place. A total of 53 films, videos and slide shows from 1931 to 2013 are to be shown in eight programmes and seven installations, each programme with its own sub-theme.
Present artists are Adriana Ferrarese, Martha Colburn, Karin Fisslthaler, Louis Henderson, Maha Maamoun, Bjørn Melhus, Luther Price, Jack Stevenson, Cordelia Swann, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Ivar Veermäe, Andy Weir
Network programme
As in the previous years the Vorspiel pre-festival programme leads up to transmediale and CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music and Art, and features the best of Berlin’s experimental digital culture, media and sound art. Apart from institutional partners of both festivals, the Vorspiel programme includes contributions from the transmediale and CTM reSource network of Berlin venues who have responded to the festival themes afterglow and Dis Continuity. Vorspiel takes place from January 22nd to 28th, 2014 in a variety of Berlin-based organisations, galleries, independent project spaces and other venues.
The Canadian writer and visual artist Douglas Coupland delivers this year’s Marshall McLuhan Lecture on January 28, 2014 at the Embassy of Canada in Berlin. Following his iconic writings on the first digital workers Microserfs in the 1990s to the digital natives of JPod (2006), Coupland will outline his idiosyncratic view on life after the Internet and what, not only the writings of, but also the medical condition of McLuhan can teach us about it. Concurrently with the festival, Douglas Coupland will exhibit his series of post-digital Slogans for the 21st Century (2013) in an exhibition presented by Daniel Faria Gallery and transmediale at the Or Gallery Berlin.
The event is in English; the entry is free.
transmediale Marshall McLuhan Lecture is a cooperation between transmediale and the Embassy of Canada in Berlin.
Within the scope of the transmediale and UdK Vilém Flusser Residence for Artistic Research 2013 Turkish artist and researcher Pinar Yoldas has developed a new work of speculative biology. The final outcome is presented by transmediale in cooperation with the Ernst Schering Foundation where the exhibition An Ecosystem of Excess will be on display from January 24 to May 4, 2014. The work introduces a fictive yet, as seen from the contemporary ecological situation, poignant vision of evolution where new species have evolved out of the pacific trash vortex, the immense plastic “soup” residing in the Pacific ocean.
From January 24th to February 2nd, 2014 the touring exhibition Schizophrenia Taiwan 2.0, curated by Pierre Bongiovanni, Chin-Wen Chang 張晴文, Chien-Hung Huang 黃建宏 und I-Wei Li 李怡衛 , brings works by emerging Taiwanese visual and media artists to Berlin-based Balassi Institut – Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (.CHB). In their works the artists reflect on the paradoxical situation to simultaneously live before and after the digital revolution. The artworks give an insight into a society between tradition and post-digital awakening.
From January 17th to 31st, 2014 Gratis Projekt by Waschmaschinengruppe is to be seen at the studio of .CHB. Füsun Ipek’s and Bálint Liptay’s street and fleamarket finds become images of change, conquest and obstacles.
In collaboration with Goethe-Institutes Sofia (Bulgaria), Ankara (Turkey) and Athens (Greece) as well as the media art project ArtUP!, transmediale 2014 presents current media art positions from South East Europe from January 25th to February 2nd, 2014. The exhibition future past - past future takes place at SUPERMARKT and is curated by Sandra Naumann.
A press release presenting the Vorspiel pre-festival programme will be sent out in January.
Press dates, press kit, printable press images and online accreditation form are available in our press section under http://www.transmediale.de/de/press
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.
Tabea Hamperl
press@transmediale.de
tel: +49 (0)30 24 749 774
http://www.transmediale.de/