Preview: transmediale and CTM

The 2012 edition of transmediale sees Berlin’s renowned multidisciplinary digital arts festival clock up 25 years of surveying the role of culture, art and technology - and the intersections between the three.

Beginning in 1988 as the VideoFilmFest, the festival has evolved into one of the most established and important cultural events in Berlin’s ever-swelling calendar. Taking place in the middle of the city’s rheumatic winter, it warms the cockles of an international crowd with a programme of art, performance and discussion. With focus fixed squarely on technology’s advancing thrum, transmediale reflects Berlin’s unique - and still unimpeachable - position as a hub of future-fixated creativity.

Held at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin’s central district of Tiergarten, this year’s theme is in/compatible and is the first edition under the stewardship of newly appointed artistic director Kristoffer Gansing. Running across six days, transmediale 2012 will act as a platform to explore what happens when systems stop working together and how, in the age of Lulzsec and their ilk, hackers can exploit these weaknesses which in turn become potential for renewal. To thrash out what that means exactly is a cerebellum tickling roster of international artists, filmmakers, musicians and academics who will be stepping up to provide an unmissable six days of discussion panels, video screenings, workshops and performances.

Back to the Future

To celebrate 25 years of transmediale, it seems only right that the festival will be taking a moment to look back over the history of media art and culture in Berlin. After all, the festival has a better vantage point than most, beginning as a hybrid and art informed alternative to regular film festivals before the Wall came down, when Berlin’s cultural sovereignty on its current scale, with its weekend ravers and international art scene, wasn’t even imaginable. The remit may have broadened since 1988, but its visual programme remains one of the festival’s strongest areas.

This time around, each of the eight video programmes will begin with a historical work, setting up an intriguing juxtaposition with the contemporary pieces shown. Among the newer work, ‘Pieces and Love All To Hell’ is a standout. A film by Dominic Gagnon based on censored YouTube videos culled by the artist before they were taken down which shares some less than cheering insight into society’s basest impulses. Alternately Good Boy/Bad Boy is a takedown of the surfeit of pet clips (yes, really) on YouTube. In it the collective Neozoon investigates how the cute (Good Boy) quickly devolves into something degrading and cruel (Bad Boy). Suddenly that viral doesn’t seem quite so funny...

Club transmediale

Running in tandem with transmediale is the twelfth edition of CTM - or CTM: Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Arts to give it it’s full title - offering up a self-contained programme of events dedicated to contemporary and experimental music at venues across the city. With a fine pedigree in nailing the zeitgeist (last year’s Hyperdub showcase was a roadblock) 2012’s theme is ‘Spectral,’ so be prepared to get your think pieces out for a heady dissection of our current yen for all things witch house, hauntological and hypnagogic. And with Berlin’s reputation for clubbing - both saucer-eyed and cerebral - CTM: 12 steps up with a walloping line-up across a cluster of unmissable nights.

Highlights include the Mouse on Mars’ album launch, which sees the duo performing their new album Parastophics live in the monstrous setting of Berghain. For something a little more off the beaten track Germany’s house upstart Kassem Mosse will be joining a bill with dub maestro Pole and Stefan Schwander’s African-flavoured project Harmonious Thelonious to test the Kirsche Audio soundsystem at Kreuzberg’s Horst, while Hudson Mohawke is bringing his maximalist, prog-engorged r’n’b to Gretchen’s main room.

For those of a more avant bent Kompakt don Wolfgang Voigt and Jörg Berger will be presenting the world premier of their collaborative new project ‘Mohn’ at Kreuzberg’s Hebbel am Ufer, which promises a night of dark, slow motion techno with added, um, plasticiser. If concerts in seraphic locations are up your strasse, Tim Hecker will be playing his critically lauded 2011 album Ravedeath at the beautiful Passionkirche on Marheinekeplatz.

However, arguably the hottest ticket is the label showcase from London/NYC label Tri-Angle. Drawing on the roster’s wellspring of half-lit, offbeat talent to bring you Balam Acab, Holy Other, oOoOO alongside Planet Mu’s Kuedo and a DJ set by Leisure System’s puzzle.
 

Feeling wired

As you’d expect from a festival perched on the cutting edge, transmediale doesn’t shy away from engaging with the more ambiguous ramifications of our increasingly technological lives. Dark Drives: Uneasy Energies in Technological Times probes the flip side to a world where there’s an app for anything except our inability to tear ourselves away from the laptop glow. Curated by Jacob Lillemose and including pioneers of media art like Ant Farm and Sture Johannesson alongside more contemporary pieces by Jennifer Chan and Art 404, a bout of unflinching soul searching is assured. The latter’s sculpture 5 Million Dollars 1 Terabyte (2011) has already proved contentious in the art world while Vibek Raj Maurya and Jack Caravanos’ photographs documenting the sublime amounts of e-waste dumped each year are a reality check for anyone who’s ever needed a smartphone upgrade, like, now.

Sound & Vision

This year’s performance programme, The Ghost in the Machine, will be drawing on the compatibility and incompatibility between old and new taking the analogue as the “ghost” that haunts digital culture. A familiar topic for anyone who’s found themselves discussing the timbre of a Roland Juno over a pint, here given a new spin by presenting a series of audio-visual performances with artists using digital instruments to engage with analogue media.

Surely a highlight of a comprehensive line-up is the Joshua Light Show, a group of artists formed around sixties pioneer Joshua White, giving the synapse-fried Berliners an opportunity to catch the original proto AV performance: a full-blown psychedelic light show. Other pieces worth a look are Idiomotoric Chatroom, a piece conceived exclusively for transmediale by Austrian video artist Billy Roisz in collaboration with musicians dieb13 and Mario de Vega and Wolfgang Spahn and Martin Howse's sound and light performance Liquid State Machine.

Panel Games

Not sated your lust for all things digital? The two-day symposium called in/compatible: systems | publics | aesthetic will be running on the 3rd and 4th of February to unpick, with the help of an array of speakers from various academic and artistic fields, the issues raised by the various exhibitions. Tickets are available individually or as part of a package.

It’s worth remembering that many of transmediale and CTM’s events tend to sell out quickly, so it’s wise to snap up your tickets early.

Information

Transmedial: in/combatible, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin (030 397870, www.hkw.de). U55 Bundestag. Date Tue 31 Jan-Sun 5 Feb. Admission €10-90 see listings.

CTM.12 – SPECTRAL, Various venues (030 4404 1852, www.ctm-festival.de). Date 30 Jan-5 Feb. Admission €5-170 (double passes) see listings.