[spectre] BWPWAP transmediale 2013 Call for Works

[Kristoffer Gansing]

BWPWAP - transmediale 2013 
Back When Pluto Was a Planet
// transmediale 2013 Call for Works 
// The Vilém Flusser Residency Programme for Artistic Research

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transmediale 2013 - Call for Works
Deadline: 30 June 2012

transmediale is Berlin's annual festival for cultural activities
crossing art, culture and technology.
For its 26th edition, from 29 January to 3 February 2013 at the Haus der
Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, transmediale once again calls for
contributions.

Entries are now open for the transmediale 2013 programme which will
consist of installations, film and video screenings, workshops,
performances, talks and discussions. Even though transmediale is always
interested in works exploring new technologies, either as a theme or as
form, no genres or media are excluded. The exhibition programme is
particularly oriented towards artworks that explore ambiguous and
problematic relationships to technology and challenge common perceptions
of it as a rational or creative tool. The video programme is devoted to
contemporary artistic video works and experimental film screenings with
historical references. Live audiovisual manifestations of old and new
media form the main focus of our performance programme. The workshop and
talk programme explores the critical dimension of networking,
hacktivism, media theory and the politics of technological development.

2013 Thematic framework
BWPWAP - Back When Pluto Was a Planet
The Imaginary Museum I

Can impossible and unrealistic uses and abuses of technology be
translated into new cultural imaginaries? Into networks out of place and
out of time? Like BWPWAP!?

Back When Pluto Was a Planet: with this title transmediale 2013 will
explore the simultaneous displacement and invention that takes place in
cultural processes mediated by technology.

BWPWAP is a popular net culture acronym referring to the cancellation of
Pluto's planetary status in 2006 and is commonly used whenever one wants
to point out that a statement or opinion is resting on no longer valid
data. It can also be read as the recollection of a poetic imagination
rendered obsolete by new technological knowledge paradigms. The decision
to degrade Pluto's status in the planetary system is a testimony to how
new technologies and discourses decontextualise networks that were once
thought to be stable and lead to recontextualisations that are reshaping
the very imaginary of culture.

transmediale 2013 calls upon artists, users and theorists to contribute
to the creation of new cultural imaginaries, where behaving like BWPWAP
is a dissident creative act. On the one hand we are looking for works
that interrogate processes of techno-cultural displacement: outsourcing,
digital labor, user-generated content and prod-usage as phenomena that
work to redefine cultural production. But equally we are interested in
processes of invention: when networked collaboration and participation
have become compulsory components of a new cultural industry, what are
the critical technological practices? We recognise the user as a highly
inventive figure occupying this techno-cultural landscape with all sorts
of unruly and irritated behaviour, far beyond the straight-jacket of the
notion of “the ideal user.” In the digital business world, where the
user and not the customer is king, what kind of user agencies exist and
how can we grasp the complex games of adaptation and appropriation that
have unfolded within online as well as offline user cultures?

Selection process
Even though the themes of the transmediale are set by the curatorial
team, the focus of the individual programmes are further developed in
relation to the works submitted in response to this call for works. In
this way we strive to create a dialogue between the thematic ideas and
current artistic practice. The final programme of the festival
eventually consists of a mix of invited participants, projects of our
all-year platform (reSource - transmedial culture berlin) and
contributions selected through the call. The review process lasts until
the end of August.

In mid September, a list of the entries selected through the call for
works will be published on http://www.transmediale.de. No further
notification will be given to those applicants who were not selected.

Keywords
the imaginary, classification, nightmares of participation,
dematerialisation, decontextualisation, shifts, alternative
temporalities, semantic networks, WFIOTN (We Found It On The Net),
appropriation, out of place, textual economies, critical literacies,
taxonomy, rematerialisation, language games, recontextualisation ,
displacement, irritated memories, categorization, invention, user
culture, lusers, lamers, prod-users, outsourcing, machine bastards,
anachronisms, fictive materialities, reemergence from nowhere,
intergalactic fantasies, delocalisation, telework, WHYUWWM (We Hope You
Understand What We Mean)

Deadline for submission: June 30 2012

More info at: http://www.transmediale.de/

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The Vilém Flusser Residency Programme for Artistic Research
Submission Deadline: July 31 2012

We are calling upon artistic research to actively explore the
capabilities and limitations of transdisciplinary and transmedial
situations in contemporary culture and thus to understand artistic
research as exploring the links between aesthetics, materiality and
politics.

The Vilém Flusser Residency Programme for Artistic Research supports
projects and activities which are simultaneously conceptual and
practice-based. The programme is geared towards the initiation of new
research or to the further development of existing projects.

For Vilém Flusser, theory and praxis are intrinsically tied to each
other. His nomadic thinking was shaped by a philosophy of positions,
experimental testing of different ways of thinking and the linking of
different disciplines and methodologies played a significant role in his
work. Not the search for the truth but rather the playing around with
the aesthetic constitution of truth characterised his thinking, often
developed in dialogue with others. A fundamental principle of his
philosophy is the dialogue between the disciplines, points of view and
methodologies. Knowledge production as a dialogue between different
standpoints, such as between science and art, laboratory and applied
research, old and new media, local and global forms of organisation, is
therefore the guiding principle for the concept of artistic research,
which is supported by the Vilém Flusser Residency Programme for Artistic
Research.

This is not a production grant and while a public presentation/event
will be expected, there is no pressure to present finished works. Where
applicable, the support of publications, exhibitions, interventions and
other results of the residency may be negotiated on a project-to-project
basis. Special priority will be given to young and/or emerging
artist-researchers.

Note
The residency begins in April 2013, as a minimum of two months work-and
research-residency in Berlin. The applicant selected by the jury will
have the oppportunity to further develop the submitted project during
the time of the residency. The programme includes:
# travel costs to Berlin
# stipend of 1000 EUR per month   
# studio / workspace in the _vilém_flusser_archive at the University of
Arts (UDK) in Berlin.
Further details of the project presentation at the transmediale festival
and _vilém_flusser_archive will be negotiated directly with the
applicant.

Submission Deadline: July 31 2012

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BWPWAP - transmediale 2013 | 29 jan - 3 feb 2013
festival for art and digital culture berlin

klosterstr. 68 - 10179 berlin - germany
fon +49 30 24749 761 fax +49 30 24749 763
http://www.transmediale.de

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