transmediale

transmediale logo

transmediale type logo

The transmediale is a festival for media art and digital culture , the end of January once a year for five days until the beginning of February in Berlin takes place. With the 2017 edition, transmediale celebrated its 30th anniversary.

The main focus of the annual festival is a conference program, changing exhibition formats, a film and video program, performances and workshops. The CTM Festival (until 2011 under the name club transmediale), which emerged from transmediale and deals with experimental and electronic music, takes place in parallel and in cooperation with the organization and content . In addition, as part of the transmediale / resource network, transmediale participates in short-term and long-term cooperation projects that are continued throughout the year.

history

The festival was founded in 1988 under the name VideoFilmFest (from 1989 VideoFest) in the context of the Berlinale as a side program of the International Forum of New Films . The founders, Hartmut Horst and video artist and activist Micky Kwella, wanted to create a platform for productions of electronic media that were excluded from classic film festivals such as the Berlinale.

In the following 30 years, the festival continued to develop independently of the Berlinale: While it originally focused on video culture, it entered into a critical and artistic dialogue with television and multimedia at an early stage in order to increasingly establish itself as the leading international platform for media art . In 1997 it changed its name to transmedia and finally to transmediale in 1998. This change reflected the programmatic expansion of the festival, which now encompasses a wide spectrum of multimedia art forms such as the Internet and software art.

Transmediale underwent a trend-setting restructuring in 2001: the program was expanded and the number of visitors moved to the House of World Cultures . At transmediale.02 a comprehensive exhibition was shown for the first time, which made media art tangible and spatial. In 2006 the title of the festival changed from “international media art festival” to “festival for art and digital culture” - a decision that reflected the abandonment of pure media art and the opening up to the tension between art, technology and increasingly digitalised everyday life.

Since 2001, the transmediale Award for visionary work and projects that deal with technologically oriented societies has also been presented at every festival edition. In order to do justice to the steadily growing number of theoretical work submissions for the prize, the competition at transmediale.08 was expanded to include the Vilém Flusser Theory Award. The award, named after the philosopher and media theorist Vilém Flusser , was awarded from 2008 to 2011 for "outstanding media-theoretical and research-based works of art". Since the 2012 festival, the Vilém Flusser Theory Award has been continued as a residency program for artistic research; the general transmediale Award and the Open Web Award are no longer awarded.

The club transmediale was also founded in 1999 as a parallel event to transmediale. Since then, CTM has developed into an independent festival that presents electronic and experimental music culture once a year at various venues in Berlin.

subjects

The transmediale has been taking place since 2001 with an annually changing thematic focus:

transmediale.01 DIY [do it yourself!]
transmediale.02 go public!
transmediale.03 PLAY GLOBAL!
transmediale.04 FLY UTOPIA!
transmediale.05 BASICS
transmediale.06 REALITY ADDICTS
transmediale.07 unfinish!
transmediale.08 CONSPIRE ...
transmediale.09 DEEP NORTH
transmediale.10 FUTURITY NOW!
transmediale.11 RESPONSE: ABILITY
transmediale 2k + 12 in / compatible
transmediale 2013 BWPWAP
transmediale 2014 afterglow
transmediale 2015 CAPTURE ALL
transmediale / conversationpiece 2016
transmediale 2017 ever elusive
transmediale 2018 face value
transmediale 2019 (for the first time without a motto)
transmediale 2020 END TO END

organization

The festival was founded by Hartmut Horst and Micky Kwella in 1988. From 2001 to 2007, the art historian and curator Andreas Broeckmann took over the management of transmediale. He was replaced by media and art researcher Stephen Kovats , who headed the festival until 2011. The curator and media researcher Kristoffer Gansing has been the festival's artistic director since April 2011 .

In 2004 the Federal Cultural Foundation decided to support transmediale (together with the documenta and the Berlin Biennale, among others ) as a top cultural institution. The festival sponsor is Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH, which operated as Kulturveranstaltungs-GmbH until 2005.

Transmediale / resource has existed since 2011, providing a framework for transmediale's year-round activities. The aim is to create continuous structures for feedback, reflection and research beyond the festival period. In addition to changing cooperation projects and network activities, transmediale / resource includes the Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research, the online publication platform transmediale / journal and the pre-festival program Vorspiel, which is organized in cooperation with the CTM Festival and a network of organizations, galleries, independent project rooms and event locations is realized throughout Berlin.

places

The VideoFilmFest took place until 1992 in the rooms of the MedienOperative and the German Academy of the Arts in the east of Berlin. In 1993 the event moved to the Podewil , which has also housed the transmediale offices since 1997. From 2002 to 2005 transmediale took place in the House of World Cultures. In 2006 it moved to the Berlin Academy of the Arts for two years , but has been held again in the Haus der Kulturen since 2008.

Web links

Commons : transmediale - album with pictures, videos and audio files