Lots of content at this festival that is discussed in Human Futures.
transmediale is an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture. Located in Berlin, it presents advanced artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural impact of new technologies. It seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that try to shape the way in which we think about and experience these technologies. transmediale understands media technologies as cultural techniques which need to be embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape our contemporary society.
The festival includes exhibitions, competitions, conferences, film and video programmes, live performances and a publication series called 'transmediale parcours'. Moreover it cooperates with club transmediale (CTM), which deals with electronic music and club culture.
FESTIVAL Each year in January & February, transmediale presents renowned artists, scientists and media practitioners from all around the world. Through each year’s specific theme, the participants engage with a wide international audience and examine global developments in digital media, art and technology.
The competition for the transmediale Awards is one of the festival’s highlights. With an average of 1000 submissions from more than 50 countries, the competition demonstrates transmediale’s increasing international significance. Each year, two awards are granted, the transmediale Award for artistic distinction and the Vilém Flusser Theory Award for outstanding theory or research-based digital arts practice.
The exhibition works alongside architects to present curated works of renowned artists, as well as a selection of the submissions for the transmediale Awards, within a unique cultural space. Every second year, the exhibition is curated externally and shown for a prolonged period of four to six weeks.
The conferences and workshops present a series of scientific and cultural discourses on the respective festival theme. In recent years, speakers such as Diedrich Diedrichsen, Wulf Herzogenrath, Humberto Maturana, Antonio Negri, Stellarc, Einar Thorsteinn or Peter Weibel have given keynote addresses.
The film and video programme encompasses a wide, contemporary spectrum of feature films, short artistic video works and special programmes, all presented on the big screen. The 'transmediale video selection', a compilation of the best screenings, is shown all around the globe each year.
The performance programme presents cross-disciplinary projects in the fields of installation, sound, performance and video on stage, showcasing the search for new forms of expression between artistic genres. The transmediale parcours is the latest in a line of transmediale publications that have established themselves throughout the last 20 years as widely sought-after guides to contemporary digital, media and technology-based art and culture. Expanding upon this tradition, the transmediale parcours was launched in 2008 to reflect upon the research as well as artistic and critical backgrounds behind each festival’s theme.