transmediale 2015 is celebrating its 28th year this week, running at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) from January 28 to February 1.
The festival and year-long project looks at the future of work, play and life through “the black mirror of data”, examining a culture that has become dependent on and synonymous with measurement, automation and optimisation, one where all work is fun and all social relations productive.
transmediale 2015, led by a curatorial team made up of Daphne Dragona, Kristoffer Gansing, Robert Sakrowski, and Marcel Schwierin, presents the artistic responses to this contemporary phenomenon, kicking off with an opening ceremony with Erica Scourti, Hanne Lippard and La Turbo Avedon, among others. The next day brings a discussion called “Glossary of Subsumption: Enclosed Athens Disclosed” with Oliver Lerone Schultz, as well as “The First Global unMonastery Summit” with unMonastery and Ben Vickers.
That Friday brings back Vickers together with Scourti and Sebastian Schmieg for “Expose and Repurpose” as well as for “Enclosures of Toxicity” with unMonastery, and the day also features: “hybrid publishing toolkit” with Florian Cramer, ; “Appropriate and Accelerate – Art Under Algorithmic Pressure” with Jonas Lund; “Attuning to ‘Data Doubles’” with Stephen Fortune and Matthew Plummer Fernandez among others; and Evgeny Morozov at the “All Watched Over by Algorithms” conference.
Other events of the day include “#temporarycustodians” with curator Helen Kaplinsky and artist Maurice Carlin, and “Datafied Research: Capture People” with Mercedes Bunz.
That Saturday brings another handful of great events, including ones with Benjamin Bratton, Shu Lea Cheang, Lorna Mills, Aram Bartholl, and McKenzie Wark.
See the transmediale website for details. **
