by Adela Lovric // Jan. 16, 2024
The 37th edition of transmediale—Berlin’s annual festival and a critical space for the development of experimental approaches to art and digital culture—is set to take place from January 31st to February 4th, 2024 at different venues across the city. This year, the event focuses on how language, relations and political possibility become artifice through the horror of 100%, 24/7 access to content. Curated by Nóra Ó Murchú in collaboration with Nadim Choufi, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Lorena Juan and Yasemin Keskintepe under the sardonically witty title ‘you’re doing amazing sweetie,’ it questions how logics of content production determine and frustrate our relationships to technology, and challenges the allure of unusable politics that spawn from cycles of consumption and distraction. Inspired by the reality of reality TV, two ‘Seasons’ of day and night transmediale “drama” will take place at silent green Kulturquartier, followed by a one-day ‘Reunion’ at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW).
Moisés Horta Valenzuela – Hexorcismos, 2023 // Photo by Guxor
On January 29th, leading up to the main part of the festival, the Embassy of Canada will host the annual Marshall McLuhan Lecture, which will be given this year by Cory Doctorow. In conversation with Frederike Kaltheuner and moderator Helen Starr, the Canadian-British journalist and author will discuss the internet’s evolution and “enshittification”—a pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets—as well as how the internet can be reclaimed. transmediale will then officially kick off on January 31st at silent green with a program of music, performances and film screenings, which will set the stage for the following two days and nights of the festival. One highlight of the opening night is the international premiere of ‘MUTUALISMX: Becoming Sonic Networks,’ where hexorcismos, joined by collaborators Kloxii Li and Ale Hop, presents their “sonic becoming” in the form of a generative AI music and visual album.
Eva Papamargariti: ‘Liminal Beings,’ 2019, video still // Courtesy of the artist
The first two festival days—‘Season 1’ and ‘Season 2’—are dedicated to performances and conversations operating as confessionals, exploring the politics of erasure and censorship, girl economies, infrastructures of distraction and the tensions between the real and the unreal of digital authoritarianism. silent green’s Betonhalle will become an immersive space of performance, interventions, conversations and film screenings, with contributions by Alex Quicho, Anna Engelhardt, Eva Papamargariti, Holly Childs & Gediminas Žygus, Mario Santanilla and Winnie Soon, among others.
Su Hui Yu: ‘Future Shock,’ 2023, film still // Courtesy of the artist
The third and final day—the ‘Reunion’—will relocate to HKW, presenting a series of conversations and performances alongside screenings and talks with filmmakers that explore the destruction of interconnected infrastructures and platforms, the ways interfaces restrict political possibilities, anti-fascist tactics and the artifice of language. Among the film highlights is Su Hui Yu’s ‘Future Shock’ (2023), which retells Alvin Toffler’s eponymous 1970 book through the context of Taiwan, combining old-school folk tales and supernatural mysteries.
Mary Maggic: ‘FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER,’ 2023 // Courtesy of the artist
In HKW’s foyer, Mary Maggic’s performance and interactive installation ‘FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER’ (2023), where humans and non-humans train together to achieve the impossible fantasy of post-natural optimisation under the appropriated motto of the Olympics, will activate throughout the day. The program will also feature dubravka sekulić, Georgina Voss, Helen Pritchard, Luiza Prado, Silvio Lorusso and Svitlana Matviyenko, with more to be announced, and close with a concert by Farida Amadou, marking the Berlin debut of her new solo.
Bassam Issa Al-Sabah: ‘Uncensored Lilac,’ 2023, film still // Courtesy of the artist
Additionally, two of transmediale’s three exhibitions will unfold at silent green’s premises. From January 26th to April 14th, ‘Uncensored Lilac’ will have artists Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan collaboratively transform transmediale studio into a fantasy world, questioning how climate change affects and alters social and environmental relations. In their works, the duo follows a group of goddesses and their assembly of familiars, pets, servants and technologies set in a dreamlike hallucinatory landscape. Also starting on January 26th is the 10-day exhibition ‘Oceanic Refractions’ at silent green’s Kuppelhalle, presented as a joint program of transmediale and CTM festival. In this immersive sound installation, produced by artists AM Kanngieser and Mere Nailatikau, field recordings from Fiji, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea are interwoven with reflections from teachers, artists, fisher-people, grandparents and chiefs, offering audiences rare insights into the environmental relations sustaining Oceania’s many worlds.
Jenkin Van Zyl: ‘Surrender,’ 2023, installation view // Courtesy of the artist and Edel Assanti
The main exhibition of the festival, ‘this is perfect, perfect, perfect,’ opens on January 31st at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, presenting 13 artists who confront the never-ending trail of distraction. Taking an already extinct viral video as a starting point, it explores how the relentless pursuit of digital attention and monetization of content has transformed the way we consume, perceive and engage with the world around us. Until April 14th, visitors will have the chance to engage with works by Alice Brygo, Maria Guta & Lauren Huret, Ndayé Kouagou, Laura Lulika, Sungsil Ryu, Noura Tafeche and Jenkin Van Zyl, among others. Dissecting the hyperbolic, sensational, anxiety-inducing images and narratives that are generated on our screens, the featured artists reveal the operations and logics of content and their never-ending toxicity at work, prompting us to ask ourselves: “Do we consume content or does content consume us?”
Festival Info
transmediale
‘you’re doing amazing sweetie’
Festival: Jan. 31–Feb. 4, 2024
transmediale.de/2024/sweetie
Various Venues
transmediale studio
Bassam Issa Al-Sabah & Jennifer Mehigan: ‘Uncensored Lilac’
Exhibition: Jan. 26–Apr. 14, 2024
transmediale.de/2024/uncensored-lilac
AM Kanngieser & Mere Nailatikau: ‘Oceanic Refractions’
Exhibition: Jan. 26-Feb. 4, 2024
transmediale.de/oceanic-refractions
Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin, click here for map
Embassy of Canada
‘Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024’
Cory Doctorow, Frederike Kaltheuner, moderated by Helen Starr
Talk: Monday, Jan. 29; 6:30pm
transmediale.de/mcluhan-2024
Leipziger Platz 17, 10117 Berlin click here for map
Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien
Group Show: ‘this is perfect, perfect, perfect’
Exhibition: Jan. 31-Apr. 14, 2024
transmediale.de/this-is-perfect
Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin, click here for map
