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Transmediale 2013

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The motto of this year’s Berlin’s biggest festival of digital culture is BWPWAP. And no, we did not drop off on the computer keypad there. Do you remember the time Back When Pluto Was Still A Planet? Grab your Ipad, google the date or scroll down your facebook timeline…what do you find? Does it matter? Is ‘had been’ revelant? In words of Kristoffer Gansing, the creative force behind the project, Transmediale is about things in our digital life that we consider a past but they still very much influence our day-to-day life. Pluto lived through its identity crisis as a planet  in 2006 while print media grapple with their own digital dilemma every day.  Print media have turned digital but it seems their ‘paper’ past is far from over. Last year’s event called for users’ misbehavior bringing focus on the incompatible parts of our technical world. This time, experts set the tone by attempting to recreate and reanimate what’s considered out of order regardless if it is marketing friendly or not.

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Highlights include a live discussion with US author Kenneth Goldsmith, a professional in Conceptual Writing, who last year successfully transcribed all weather forecasts of the year 2012. Later that year he published them as a book. He’s also the author of a book of essays on Uncreative Writing. He comes to Berlin to discuss the new role of spoken word in digital age.  If you’re more into art and exhibiton, don’t miss The Miseducation of Anya Major on new ideas, developments, use and effect of temporary media. Alexandro Jodorowsky, one of Chile’s most prominent directors of science fiction, also pays a visit to discuss his universal world approach. He has never been the one to shy away from controversy by combining art with spirituality, esoterics and psychoanalysis and inspired movies such as ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘The Fifth Element’.

Transmediale is a event of unusual perspectives on the roles of digital media in our world and how by finding their limits one can use them in an unique and individual way.