Transmediale is one of the major platforms and scenes of international collaboration in the field of art and digital culture, which since 1988 has offered critical perspectives on approaches to the intersections and entanglements of art, technology, sciences and humanities.
As the festival describes themselves:
“Transmediale is a yearly festival and cultural organisation that facilitates critical reflection on and interventions into processes of cultural transformation from a post-digital perspective. In bringing together artists, researchers, activists, and thinkers transmediale offers new perspectives and approaches on how the digital and a general technological condition has become a factor of influence in practically all spheres of life.” (from http://transmediale.de)
Every year has a theme, but this year the theme carried no title. As artistic director, CHRISTOFFER gansing explained it, the 2019 Transmediale is focused on the ‘structures of feeling’, emotion and affect in computational life and art. Practice played a more central role than in previous editions, and the question of the status and awareness of practice thus became a hotspot of attention and criticism. The aim was to address “One of the contemporary challenges is how to be critical and affirmative at the same time while avoiding ...oversimplifications.” (Transmediale, conceptual theme-statement, https://2019.transmediale.de/theme )
The ArT students took part in the new student platform, starting a few says ahead of the main festival. Here, we had a chance to meet the curators and artistic director and hear them explain their ideas with this year’s festival; as well as students and teachers from art academies around europe, which was an interesting experience in itself.
ArT students certainly proved to be well equipped to navigate the ideas and conceptual framing of the festival, as well as investing their own experience in possible collaborations.
The festival itself was a hotspot of hybrid practices, panels, workshops and sessions that we all enjoyed.
Every morning we met for an hours discussion of what we saw yesterday and what is on todays schedule. Including dinners and occasional drinks, it was a great succes both content and social wise.
- Morten Søndergaard, Associate Professor at AAU
