transmediale.10: Futurity now!

transmediale is one of the most important festivals for art and the creative application of digital media in the world. It features new and significant projects of digital culture that reflect on the role of digital technologies in society today. Each year the festival includes an exhibition and conference, performances, workshops, and film and video programmes based on the theme of the festival. The club transmediale CTM presents the latest developments in electronic music.


transmediale.10

“Futurity now!” was the theme of the transmediale.10. Throughout the 20th century, writers and intellectuals regarded the year 2010 as the shining example of a future marked by technological progress and social harmony. Yet the closer we got to 2010, the clearer it became that global society neither resembles the utopia nor anti-utopia traditionally portrayed in fictional stories, architectural visions and theories of the future. Instead we saw an increasingly complex network of economic, political and cultural systems which rely on rapidly developing and converging media technologies. Digital practice and social media forms have become an integral part of our lives and are deeply rooted in our cultural codes.
The transmediale.10 focused on the need to counteract political and economic turmoil with new visions of the future. Based on the motto “Futurity now!“, the festival examined how the development of the Internet, global networking practices, open-source methods, sustainable design and mobile technologies are influencing the formation of new cultural, ideological and political models.


transmediale Award and the Vilém Flusser Theory Award

The transmediale and the CTM (club transmediale) hosted a competition for the transmediale Award 2010 and Vilém Flusser Theory Award 2010. The competition called for artistic positions, whose use of form, approach and practice, examined, questioned and enriched our understanding of and our relationship to a technologically shaped society. After reviewing almost 1,500 submissions from 75 countries, the international jury nominated nine artists for the transmediale Award 2010. The nominated works were presented during the festival, and the winner of the transmediale Award 2010 was honoured at an award ceremony on 6 February 2010.


Further transmediale events

The festival in February was preceded by three János von Neumann Salons, organized by the transmediale.10 in cooperation with the Collegium Hungaricum. In the first event of the series, this experimental venue for interdisciplinary scientific and media cultural encounters addressed the theme of the transmediale.10 – “futurity”. The series began on 7 October 2009 with a salon titled “Johnny, be good! – The Camouflage of Cybernetics”. The following salons took place on 4 November and 2 December 2009 at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin. www.hungaricum.de (external link, opens in a new window)

On 22 October the International Flusser Lecture in Berlin commemorated its 10th anniversary. The lectures are organized by the archive in order to keep the exciting potential of Vilém Flusser’s intellectual oeuvre alive and to establish its connection to current developments in the humanities and natural sciences. As part of the commemorative programme, the transmediale announced the nominees of the Vilém Flusser Theory Award 2010.

In November Transitland Destination Berlin turned its attention to the significance and artistic form of video in the past 20 years. Transitland Destination Berlin was one of the events in the project series “transitland – video art from central and eastern europe”, a joint project by the InterSpace Association (Sofia), transmediale - Festival for Art and Digital Culture (Berlin) and ACAX/Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art (Budapest). It is supported by the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, as well as D Media (Cluj) and Videoaktiv (Berlin).
www.transitland.eu (external link, opens in a new window)