Program

Program Overview

transmediale 2019 focuses on the role of emotions, empathy, and cultural emergence in digital culture. Responding to this thematic focus, it aims to create an environment for the emergence of experiences and knowledge that goes beyond the limited time frame of the public festival days. Furthermore, it features discursive and performative formats and forgoes an exhibition and clearly defined sections: screenings, performances, workshops, and talks are continuously integrated and relate to one another in a hybrid program structure.
The newly introduced transmediale Study Circles have already started in October 2018 and not only offer a space for reflection and in-depth exploration of some of the festival’s key questions, they generate various outputs which frame and form a part of transmediale 2019’s core program. This approach is also reflected in an accompanying documentation through the transmediale/journal, which will feature two new online issues taking up central topics of the two Study Circles’ thematic strands Affective Infrastructures and Uneasy Alliances.
Besides established event types such as keynotes, performances, and short film screenings, participatory and educational formats play a significant role at transmediale 2019: The workshop program is extended and starts—together with the new transmediale Student Forum—already two days before the festival officially opens.

See transmediale 2019's list of participants.

Study Circle: Affective Infrastructures

As one of two newly introduced Study Circles which frame the 2019 edition of transmediale, Affective Infrastructures revisits the understanding of the notion of infrastructures and its relation to affect. In encounters, workshops, and discussions, the participants look into the potential of technologies that can accommodate multiplicity and difference. The participants are Marija Bozinovska Jones, Lou Cornum, Maya Indira Ganesh, Tung-Hui Hu, Fernanda Monteiro & Nadège, Pedro Oliveira, and Femke Snelting. Read more

Study Circle: Uneasy Alliances

Study Circle Uneasy Alliances takes the question of how affect relates to social change as its starting point. It aims to investigate how new forms of acting in solidarity can be built by connecting artistic, tech, and activist approaches. Jennifer Bennett, Marta Dauliūtė & Viktorija Šiaulytė, Carolina García Cataño, Wojciech Kosma, Ewa Majewska, Patricia Reed, and Robin Vanbesien are taking part in this Study Circle. Read more

Study Circle Library

During the festival, the Study Circle Library is set up at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Designed by Ebba Fransén Waldhör, the library invites the public to delve into the texts and theories which served as references for the working process of the Study Circle. Read more

Keynotes

In transmediale 2019's first keynote, Jackie Wang will offer a genealogy of carceral power, while also looking into the potential of aesthetic and political practices of time marronage. Shaka McGlotten’s performance lecture will deal with a networked experience of love in which they interweave personal experiences with theoretical engagement and network cultures through feminism, queer studies, and non-dual Tantra. Ben Anderson and Rebecca Coleman meet in a keynote conversation and discuss, among other things, forms of boredom emerging in precarious times, infrastructures of feeling and the politics of the present.

Performances

In an installative environment designed by the artist and designer Ebba Fransén Waldhör, we present performances such as Rory Pilgrim’s Software Garden, a work between Kabuki theater, pop concert, and political space of action. COPS – Corporation of People’s Situations deals with the common and asks how current global and local coherences can be addressed and experienced sensually.

Short Films

Among the films shown at transmediale 2019 are Filipa Césars and Louis Henderson’s Sunstone, which traces the techno-cultural legacy of the Fresnel lens and its associations of seeing and understanding. In Mykola Ridnyi’s film No! No! No! the early 20s of the protagonists from Ukrainian Kharkiv coincide with the outbreak of war in the neighboring region of Donbass. By interweaving fictional and documentary elements, Liza Johnson's In the Air portrays a place that has been suffering from an economic crisis for decades.

transmediale/CTM Performance: Actress + Young Paint

In collaboration with CTM, we present the world premiere of the most recent cooperation between Actress and Young Paint on 1 February and 2 February 2019. The AI-based character has not only learned how to react to Darren J. Cunningham’s shadowy, unpredictable, UK bass- and rave-inspired music, but also takes the lead with the occasional solo.

Workshop Program

The upcoming festival edition features a broad range of workshops: Already from 29 January on, you will have the chance to build a feminist data set, create masks to represent and materialize memories, or explore the power of cuteness. Please keep in mind that all workshops at transmediale 2019 require pre-registration. Read more

Student Forum

From 29 to 30 January 2019, we host the new transmediale Student Forum to expand and deepen the festival visit of student groups. With the participation of institutions from fields such as art, science, and design, the two-day format prior to the public festival brings together diverse approaches of studying media today. Read more