[spectre] reSource for transmedial culture: Statement of interest

[Tatiana Bazzichelli]

reSource for transmedial culture
Statement of interest & call for collaborations

The reSource is an initiative of transmediale - festival for art and 
digital culture, Berlin in collaboration with CTM/DISK GbR and Kunstraum 
Kreuzberg/Bethanien, on the search for further partners during 2012.

## reSource - A new initiative of the transmediale festival

The reSource for transmedial culture is a new framework for transmediale 
festival related projects that happen throughout the year in the city of 
Berlin. It is an initiative that extends into ongoing activities with 
decisive touchdowns at each festival. Within the aegis of facilitating 
collaboration and the sharing of resources and knowledge between the 
transmediale festival in Berlin and the local and translocal scene 
engaged with art and digital culture, the objective of the reSource for 
transmedial culture is to act as a link between the cultural production 
of art festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and 
technology, hacktivism and politics.

This statement of interest is directed mainly to local and international 
artists, cultural producers, hackers, activists, and gender-situated 
communities active in the city of Berlin and in the broader field of net 
culture regionally and internationally, to co-develop experiences which 
invite exploration, experimentation and reflection. By generating a set 
of questions and issues which are addressed to local and translocal 
communities within (and beyond) digital cultural production, the main 
idea is to develop mutual exchanges of methodologies and knowledge, as 
well as project-space experiences, investigating new ways of forming a 
cultural public and producing a meta reflection on strategies of 
collaborative actions.

The launch of the reSource will take place at transmediale 2012 through 
different project disseminations such as workshops, talks and 
performances. It will in itself be an important feature of the 25th 
anniversary of the transmediale, looking into the future while 
acknowledging the importance of the festival as an accessible and 
dynamic forum for the translocal art scene as well as for 
interdisciplinary cultural producers and researchers.

The reSource launch at transmediale is anticipated by a beta-reSource 
event on November 16-18, 2011 at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) 
organised in partnership with the Digital Aesthetics Research Center 
(DARC) of Aarhus University and the Vilém Flusser Archive. After 
transmediale 2012, the reSource will extend its activity in 
collaboration with two main partners: CTM/DISK, proposing a series of 
open events held in the spring 2012, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, 
organising a public event in August 2012, which will show the results of 
the first phase of collaboration and sharing within the context of the 
reSource for transmedial culture.

This statement of interest is thought as a call for collaborations to 
involve a number of additional projects and partners towards the 
creation of a distributed platform during 2012 and further, envisioning 
the festival form as a peer-production context of knowledge and research.

## reSource - A year-round distributed project

If a source is the beginning, or origin of something, reSource is used 
in this context as a starting point from which a distributed sharing 
process, and a common executable (artistic) program, is produced. The 
aim of the reSource for transmedial culture is to be distributed in a 
form that extends into an ongoing, year-round activity with touchdowns 
at each festival. This form includes both its executable files, and its 
source code. Source codes are useful to modify a program or understand 
how it works. Taking this notion more broadly, in the framework of the 
reSource for transmedial culture, the objective becomes to develop a 
networking distributed platform and an (executable) meta reflection on 
the meaning and the practices of networked art, hacking and 
collaborative art production within the context of an international art 
festival.

Starting from the assumption that the increasing commercialisation of 
the contexts of sharing and networking is currently transforming the 
meaning of art and participation, what should be the answer of artists, 
activists and hackers working on a critical dimension of networking? And 
if hacker and artistic practices are developing in the context of a deep 
transformation of the meaning of participation, often reflecting a 
precarious cultural and economical configuration, what is the 
responsibility and the role of cultural institutions engaging with art 
and digital technologies, towards a critical articulation of culture 
production? In Berlin, hacker, activist and artistic practices are very 
much realised outside the realm of artistic institutions. Some of those 
practices are contributing to transform the economy and the cultural 
asset of the city, but they are also becoming easy targets to be 
exploited by the market. However, this is not only a local phenomenon: 
At this present time, while financial markets are deeply influencing the 
development of cultural production and, more generally, our daily life 
flexibility, direct participation and common engagement are becoming 
pervasive business logics. The progressive involvement of users in the 
production process generates new possibilities of interaction among 
peers, but also of hierarchical control.

Analysing the topology and the effects of artistic and hacktivist 
practices in decentralised social networks implies a reflection on power 
structures, business methodologies as well as on the relationship 
between art and economy. The social media and social networking 
phenomenon brings about contradictions and ambiguities. The subject of 
social networking is constantly transforming, and requires both a 
theoretical and empirical involvement of researchers and artists, 
theoreticians and practitioners before it can be fully understood. It 
becomes necessary to rethink concepts such as innovation and disruption, 
co-optation and opposition, as a mutual feedback loop, and a two-way 
disruption.

## reSource - A shared knowledge laboratory

The reSource for transmedial culture aims to work towards the creation 
of a shared knowledge laboratory within transmediale, and a project for 
local and trans-local distributed networks by organising events, 
workshops and talks involving artists, hackers, activists, researchers 
and cultural producers active in the city of Berlin and abroad. The aim 
of the reSource is to involve communities that not only engage directly 
with network technologies, but that are also critically reflecting on 
decentralised and distributed strategies of networking and 
anti-hegemonic practices, from hackers and activists to feminist, queer, 
transgender and porn communities.

Within this framework, the reSource statement of interest poses the 
following objectives:
- To rethink the concepts of (social) networking, collaborative 
practices, innovation and participation, through the creation of a 
platform of distributed networks involving grassroots communities of 
hackers, artists, performers, activists, curators and cultural producers;
- To apply the concept of disruptive innovation to the art field so as 
to open up a critical perspective on the “network economy”, working in 
collaboration with local and translocal communities in Berlin and 
abroad, trying to understand how the market works after de-assembling 
its strategies and mechanisms of production;
- To generate disruptive modalities of art production after the 
emergence of social media, reflecting on distributive decentralised and 
socially engaged contexts of participation and innovation;
- To analyse the concept of transmedial culture, investigating creative 
approaches across digital and analogue media, reflecting on the 
intersections between cultural production, networking and disruptive art 
practices;
- To reflect on the strategies of networked art and hacktivism, by 
developing an empirical methodology based on mutual exchanges between 
the members of the (post-) media art scene, cultural producers and 
researchers in the field of the humanities.

The analyses of these subjects necessarily imply sharing methodologies 
whereby artists, hackers, activists and researchers join together to 
form practice-oriented contexts of reflection and give feedback to both 
theory and practice through an interdisciplinary, distributed and 
polyphonic approach. Artistic and hacker practices are thought therefore 
both as a resource for producing cultural innovation, but also as a 
strategic challenge to generate media criticism – and a meta reflection 
on artistic production in the framework of digital culture and network 
economy.

This statement of interest must be imagined as an initial input and a 
starting point for further collaboration on the analysis and the 
production of disruptive hacker and artistic practices in the framework 
of (social) networking, but also as an input to generate a collective 
investigation into the practice of networking as an art strategy – and 
an applied research method.

Contacts:

Tatiana Bazzichelli: tbazz at transmediale.de
reSource concept and programme developer

Daniela Silvestrin: ds at transmediale.de
reSource programme assistant

More info: http://www.transmediale.de/beyond/tm-resource

-- 
Tatiana Bazzichelli // reSource concept and programme developer
in/compatible // transmediale 2012, 31 Jan - 5 Feb 2012 // 
http://www.transmediale.de

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