stephen kovats on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:54:21 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime-ann> transmediale.10: FUTURITY NOW! - opening Tuesday in Berlin!


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FUTURITY NOW!
transmediale.10
2 - 7 February 2010
House of World Cultures (HKW) and other locations across Berlin
www.transmediale.de

But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity.'
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, 1895


Dear spectrites!

Last night, as part of Berlin's 'Long Night of the Museums', we opened two exhibitions by transmediale.10 award nominees, [The User] <http://www.transmediale.de/en/coincidence-engines> and Felix Luque Sanchez <http://www.transmediale.de/en/chapter-i-discovery>. Both are exceptional works, which are now open to the public daily through the festival. With these pre-openings almost all of transmediale 15 Satellite events and locations are in full swing now! See all the Satellite events at <http://www.transmediale.de/en/festival/satellites>

The festival officially launches tomorrow February 2, 2010, and we hope to see you at our Opening Gala <http://www.transmediale.de/en/ node/11385>. Doors to the HKW open at 1700, and the Opening Ceremony, featuring an appearance by science-fiction author and technology pioneer, Herbert W. Franke will be followed by a special live performance out on the HKW terrace (yes ... in the fresh snow!) by the pioneering sound artist and composer Charlemagne Palestine playing Berlin's Tiergarten carillon, next to the House of World Cultures <http://www.transmediale.de/en/tintinnabulations-tomorrow- and-tomorrow-charlemagne-en>. Simultaneously we will 'switch on' Yvette Mattern's installation "From One to Many" - a rainbow of seven laser beams, slicing through Berlin from the HKW, past the glass dome of the German parliament to the TV Tower at Alexanderplatz <http:// www.transmediale.de/en/node/11344/>.

Back inside the HKW the Salon, Free Culture Incubator and transmediale Award nominee works will be on display and we'll be opening the transmediale.10 exhibition, Future Obscura curated by Honor Harger <http://www.transmediale.de/en/transmediale10-exhibition- future-obscura>. Performances by our special guests aaajiao, Byetone (raster-noton), and Benjamin Laurent Aman complete the evening! (and a special thanks here to raumlabor for their spectacular post- futurist festival architecture!)

Full announcements, programmes and schedule on the transmediale.10: FUTURITY NOW programme are available online, with some of the main programme segments highlighted below.

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transmediale.10
FUTURITY NOW!
2 - 7 February 2010
House of World Cultures (HKW), Berlin

1] Introduction
2] Conference
3] Exhibition
4] Performance
5] Film & Video
6] Salon

1] Introduction

Between 2 - 7 February, with FUTURITY NOW!, transmediale.10 presents a unique and intensive programme of lectures, screenings, performances, exhibitions, concerts and much, much more! We are thrilled about the participation of such great artists, writers and researchers including Ryoji Ikeda, Bruce Sterling, Gabriella Giannachi, Michael Khaimzom, Charlemagne Palestine, Feng Mengbo, F.A.T. Lab, Regine Debatty, Steve Lambert, Joy Tang, Jem Finer, Alan Shapiro, Yvette Mattern, Rasha Salti, raster-noton ... and also especially about welcoming you!


2] Conference

"The fact that you have no interest in the future, does not mean that the future has lost interest in you."
[Bruce Sterling]

Have we caught up with our notions of the future? This is the principle question posed at Future Observatory, the transmediale.10 conference, taking place from 5 - 7 February 2010 in the iconic House of World Cultures in Berlin.

Thinkers from various fields will discuss the epistemologies, limitations, ruptures and malfunctions of the future as an object of cultural projection. It brings together designers, media artists, net citizens, critical thinkers and researchers in order to create a network to lens the future. It will be anchored by keynotes from renown writer and futurologist, Bruce Sterling; technology pioneer Conrad Wolfram (co-founder of Wolfram Alpha); and writer and critic Richard Barbrook (author of "Imaginary Futures"). Future Observatory examines the, ways of perception and patterns of behaviour that are inscribed into our contemporary media cultural society. What is the code that performs the operation future? From the perspective of modernity the 21st century served as an object of projection for innumerable exuberant visions of future societies and techno-utopias. 2000, 2001, 2010 are emblematic as appointed dates for futuristic notions of social and economic progress to come true. Until now however this is neither the case regarding the utopian, nor the dystopian predictions. We have neither arrived in the kind of future that was foreseen for us, nor have we left this very future behind altogether. Paradoxically today we find ourselves in a future that belongs to the past - and which simultaneously contradicts our present. What we are currently experiencing above all are the limitations, ruptures and malfunctions caused by this temporal superimposition.

The conference will open on 5 February 2010 with the special Futurity Long Conversation relay event. 21 guests will discuss projects, ideas, technologies and utopias that are already determining our future. In The Long Conversation the dialogue as an aesthetic, analytical and collaborative process expands into a special timezone in which the participants and the audience oscillate between the disciplines of art, science and industry. The format of the Futurity Long Conversation was inspired by the work of The Long Now Foundation and the Longplayer Trust, international organisations crafting ways with which to perceive time and durational process in radically different and perhaps media technologically appropriate ways.

Keynotes:
Richard Barbrook (UK) / Imaginary Futures
Conrad Wolfram (UK) / Wolfram | Alpha
Bruce Sterling (US) / Atemporality!

Participants in the Futurity Long Conversation and Conference panels include: Susan Neiman (US), Jem Finer (UK), Drew Hemment (UK), Andy Cameron (UK), Joy Tang (TW), Tim Edler (DE), Trebor Scholz (US), jaromil (IT), Julian Oliver (NZ), Maja Kuzmanovic (HR), Gustaff Harriman Iskandar (ID), Denisa Kera (CZ), Juliana Rotich (KE), Florian Rötzer (DE), Mercedes Bunz (DE), Alexander Rose (US), Sascha Lobo (DE), Tiziana Terranova (IT), Steve Lambert (US), Siegfried Zielisnki (DE) In addition, transmediale.10 Award nominees Sosolimited will unveil an entirely new work, a tandem live coding performance of the The Long Conversation.

Further information on the conference including all participants can be found on:
<http://www.transmediale.de/en/future-observatory-en>
(With special thanks to the support of the BpB - the German Federal Foundation for Civic Education!)

3] Exhibition

We make our journeys out there in the low light of the future, and return to the bourgeois day and its mass delusion of safety, to report on what we've seen. What are any of these 'utopian dreams' of ours but defective forms of time-travel?
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006)

Future Obscura brings together a group of diverse artworks which explore the complex condition of futurity through the lens of image- making. Clear boundaries of the time continuum are broken down by artists whose work allows us to peer into the 'low light of the future'. As her curatorial departure point, guest curator Honor Harger explores the camera obscura, the historical apparatus in whose interior the image of an exterior scene can be projected. The exhibition presents the work of artists who re-work this mechanism artistically by appropriating the materials, mechanisms and machines of image-making. It features a large-scale audiovisual installation by pioneering Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda, who is presenting at transmediale for the first time. Other highlights include the German premières of White Noise, a major installation by rising star Zilvinas Kempinas, who represented Lithuania at the 2009 Venice Biennale and A Parallel Image, an electronic camera obscura by Gebhard Sengmüller, previously known for his striking work Vinyl Video. transmediale.10 will also stage the world premières of important new site-specific pieces by Julius von Bismarck, Julien Maire, Yvette Mattern and Julian Oliver. Together the works in the exhibition meditate on how futurity is an obscured notion of what we used to think of as the future.

Exhibition artists:
Julius von Bismarck (de), Ryoji Ikeda (jp/fr), Zilvinas Kempinas (lt/ us), Julien Maire (de/fr), Yvette Mattern (de/us), Alice Miceli (br), Julian Oliver, Clara Boj, Diego Diaz and Damian Stewart (nz/es), Ken Rinaldo (us), Gebhard Sengmüller (au), Bengt Sjölén, Adam Somlai- Fischer & Usman Haque (se/hu/uk), TeZ (it/nl)
Further informations concerning the exhibition can be found on
http://www.transmediale.de/en/transmediale10-exhibition-future-obscura


4] Performance

The transmediale.10 Performance programme presents a range of concerts and events acting as auditory and performative interrogations of FUTURITY NOW!.The highlight: six concert evenings in collaboration with CTM featuring some of the most important figures working within music and sound today. Each night new, and often rare, performances by Ryoji Ikeda, artificiel, Jurgen Reble & Thomas Köner and AtomTM will represent the most experimental intersections of audiovisual culture and digital art. A special performance evening co-hosted by eARTS Shanghai on Sunday February 07 featuring Feng Mengbo, aaajiao, FM3_Zhang and Dj set by Ben Huang will wrap-up transmediale.10!

At 19:00 each evening, the Cafe Global Stage at the House of World Cultures will be brought to life by a series of performances. transmediale is proud to present the world première of La Chambre Des Machines by Nicholas Bernier and Martin Messier, plus unique interpretations of works featuring Matthias Fritsch, Rachida Ziani and Dewi de Vree, and Andrea Lange. Some of Berlin's finest talent in the form of Pe Lang, Benjamin Laurent Aman and Lord Cry Cry will close each evening with a special sound landscape exploring the post- avant-garde of audio culture. More details about the Highlights of the performance programme can be found on http://www.transmediale.de/en/performance-highlight-transmediale-ctm- col...


5] Film & Video

The film & video programme of transmediale.10 consists of eleven programmes with a total of 54 films of all genres. Feature, documentary, animation, experimental films and video art from 20 countries will be shown, with a special focus on the selections from the 600 submissions from 30 countries. The films look at FUTURITY NOW! in terms of failed utopias and illuminate various sub-topics such as the role of the media, the future human body or the post- socialist era. Guest curator Rasha Salti from Beirut is going to present the online platform ArabShorts.net and discuss the relevance of digital media for the Arab world. Two additionally curated programmes will approach the theme of transmediale.10 from a historical perspective: Man & Machine is about the conflicts between man and the technologies created by he himself. Short Fictions presents science fiction shorts made by artists. In 1957 Hugh Stubbins designed the utopian architecture of the HKW as a conscious counterpart to the Stalin Allee in East Berlin. In the matinée on Sunday the plot of the GDR's first science fiction film will unfold in this very building: Der Schweigende Stern (1959) by Kurt Maetzig pictures the dark vision of a failed civilisation.
More informations about the film&video programme can be found on
http://www.transmediale.de/en/transmediale10-film-video-programme

6] Salon ... Talks, Workshops, Art
The transmediale.10 Salon consists of three interdisciplinary strands exploring FUTURITY NOW!. With a specific focus on free culture and process-based projects, the Salon will engage cultural thinkers and makers into conversations and actions that lay down future strategies for a global network age. The Free Culture Incubator curated by Ela Kagel and the Phuturama sub-conference on Speculative and Fictive Design curated by Gregor Sedlag are two of the main highlights of the Salon programme!

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Festival and Day Passes, as well as the special Conference Pass, and individual concert/performance tickets with reductions for students are available online!
http://www.transmediale.de/en/tickets

With best regards, and looking forward to seeing you in Berlin at transmediale.10,

Stephen Kovats

artistic director
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FUTURITY NOW!
transmediale.10 |  2 - 7 feb 2010
festival for art and digital culture berlin

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klosterstr. 68 - 10179 berlin - germany
fon +49 30 24749 761 fax +49 30 24749 763
http://www.transmediale.de
http://twitter.com/transmediale (#tm10)
facebook: transmediale

kulturprojekte berlin gmbh
aufsichtsratsvorsitzender volker heller
geschäftsführer moritz van dülmen
amtsgericht berlin charlottenburg, HRB 41312 B
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