[spectre] transmediale 2013 BWPWAP

[Kristoffer Gansing]

Dear Spectre subscribers,

Hope to see you at the transmediale festival that opens on Tuesday the 
29th of January, next week!
/Kristoffer Gansing, artistic director, transmediale.


transmediale 2013 BWPWAP

BACK WHEN
Mobile phones were dumb. Letters traveled by pneumatic air. Tweeting was 
for birds. Users were chatting on the Minitel. ICQ beat IRC. Xerox 
challenged the Thermofax. YouTube was just another Web 2 start-up. Fax 
was the new Telex. You were calling up Bulletin Board Systems. Only 
university students were using facebooks. History had ended. We had nine 
planets.

PLUTO WAS A PLANET.

For its 26th edition, transmediale boldly goes BWPWAP – Back When Pluto 
Was a Planet. A net culture expression, BWPWAP is used for that which 
lies in the past or that possess an anachronistic character. In the 
context of transmediale, it does not mean entertaining nostalgia for the 
past. On the contrary, Pluto and its reclassification is taken as a 
metaphor for how quickly cultural imaginaries can change and be 
contested in a world underwritten by parallel developments. Adopting the 
BWPWAP expression in the form of a meme, transmediale 2013 
recontextualizes cultural and technological forms through a travelling 
in time and space that creates moments of crisis in contemporary media 
culture.

The program follows four threads: Users, Networks, Paper and Desire. The 
festival will look at what these topics meant BWPWAP, what they mean 
today and how they might develop in the future following the sense of 
alternate realities that lies at the core of the theme. These threads 
run transversely across the different festival events and by following 
them, visitors can experience constant shifts of modalities and 
perspectives.

The Users thread explores the user as one of the most important figures 
occupying the 21st century cultural landscape: adopting a broad 
perspective which includes a historical look at user cultures' 
development in consumer society and cybernetics, as well as the changing 
roles of the user.

In Networks we ask what it means when networks are BWPWAP, when (social) 
networks have become a pervasive part of daily life and have contributed 
in changing the way we create friendships and connections.

The Paper thread traces the history of paper as a transcendent cultural 
form and its various artistic appropriations from Mail Art and visual 
poetry to electronic literature and beyond.

In the Desire thread, we look at how critical reflections on sexuality 
and pornography can inform digital culture and politics of the present, 
by creating juxtapositions, decompositions, fragments and unexpected 
combinations as forms of queer expression.

As with Pluto itself, these threads are “objects” in crisis. Their 
identity is not to be taken for granted in the post-digital age as is 
evident through the cultural, political and economical crises that they 
are all undergoing. These states of crisis are taken as opportunities 
for artistic intervention and reflection. In each thread, we search for 
new ways to engage with the histories, practices and futures of these 
familiar domains according to the time and place-shifting logic of 
BWPWAP: areas that we might have taken for granted until recently, but 
where we now need to learn from the past in order to intervene in the 
present and create new concepts for cultural practice.

http://www.transmediale.de/bwpwap

SNAPSHOTS OF THE PROGRAMME

transmediale 2013 Exhibition programme: The Miseducation of Anya Major, 
curated by Jacob Lillemose.
This exhibition is presented in three parts and openly investigates 
questions of knowledge, learning and education in relation to 
contemporary media, from the photocopier and paper shredder to computer 
games and the latest smartphone. Within this framework, the exhibition 
"Tools of Distorted Creativity" presents a series of contemporary works 
that expands the notions of software tools and their affordance of 
creativity in nonconformist, and even dysfunctional directions. "Imaging 
with Machine Processes. The Generative Art of Sonia Landy Sheridan", is 
a survey exhibition of an artist who experimented with the machines of 
technological society as instruments of the philosophical mind and 
artistic imagination from inside educational institutions. Finally, 
"Evil Media Distribution Centre" by the duo YoHa (Graham Harwood and 
Matsuko Yokokoji) is an installation that takes its point of departure 
from the book Evil Media (2012) by Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey.

Three Ongoing Networking Projects brought to you by reSource 
transmdedial culture, Berlin, curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli.
Last August 2012, during the transmediale event reSource 002: Out of 
Place, Out of Time event, three installation projects were launched. 
Their ongoing production lasted six months, leading to transmediale 2013 
BWPWAP, where the final results are shown and performed. The projects 
are OCTO-P7C-1 Intertubular Pneumatic Packet Distribution System which 
is transmediale 2013’s Official Miscommunication Platform by 
Berlin-based collective Telekommunisten with the support of 
raumlaborberlin. ReFunct Media #5 is a circuit-bending installation made 
of obsolete technologies conducted by a team led by Benjamin Gaulon. 
Composting the City | Composting the Net is a collaborative art 
installation and performance project initiated by Shu Lea Cheang, 
processing discarded food scraps and the immaterial junk of net data.

Everything but the Planets - Film as Imaginary Museum curated by Marcel 
Schwierin.
The film & video program of the transmediale 2013 BWPWAP, consists of 47 
films, 2 installations, a panel and a guest curated online film program. 
It revolves around the idea of film as imaginary museum and the framing 
and re/contextualisation of reality. Guests of the program are: Dennis 
Adams (us), Babak Afrassiabi (ir/nl), Karimah Ashadu (uk/ng), Ralph 
Kistler (de/sp), Boaz Levin (il/de), Tonje Alice Madsen (dk), Eleonore 
de Montesquiou (de/fr/ee), Muntean/Rosenblum (at/il), People Like Us 
(uk), Elizabeth Price (uk), Volker Schreiner (de), John Smith (uk), 
Andrew Norman Wilson (us). Additionally, there is a guest program, 
Videodrones, curated by Oliver Lerone Schultz and Vera Tollman of Video 
Vortex #9.

BWPWAP Event Selection

BWPWAP Networks with Geert Lovink
Social Media: From Complaints to Alternative Tools
31.01.2013 19:00-20:30 - AUDITORIUM
With respondent Craig Saper

BWPWAP Networks: Consequences (One Thing Leads to Another)
By People Like Us
31.01.2013 21:30-22:30 - AUDITORIUM
Performance

BWPWAP Users with Olga Gorinuova
Aesthetic growth: becoming a human, a thing or a piece of code
01.02.2013 19:00-20:30 - AUDITORIUM
With respondent Finn Brunton

BWPWAP Users: Coded Narratives
By Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez with guest musician A Guy Called Gerald
01.02.2013 21:30-23:00 - AUDITORIUM
Performance

BWPWAP Paper with Kenneth Goldsmith
On Uncreative Writing
02.02.2013 17:00-18:30 - AUDITORIUM
With respondent Florian Cramer

BWPWAP Desire with Sandy Stone
03.02.2013 16:00-17:30 - AUDITORIUM
With respondent Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri

BWPWAP Desire: Eier Haben
By Diane Torr with Anus B. Haven, Anaïs Héraud, Kai Simon Stoeger and Viola
03.02.2013 18:30-20:00 - AUDITORIUM
Performance

SPECIAL EVENT
IN THE JODOVERSE AND BEYOND
With participation of Alejandro Jodorowky through a live video stream
02.02.2012 20:30-22:00 - AUDITORIUM
Moderated by Hasko Baumann
Introduced by Jacob Lillemose

Followed by
Darkness Bright:
Demdike Stare; Gatekeeper
02.02.2012 22:30-00:15 - AUDITORIUM
Performance Double Bill


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Kristoffer Gansing ✈ artistic director
transmediale 2013 BW_P_WA_P_ <http://www.transmediale.de/> ◒♇ Haus der
Kulturen der Welt ♇◓ Berlin/DE:29.01-03.02

transmediale ♒ festival for art and digital culture berlin
Klosterstr. 68, 10179 Berlin, Germany ♒ fon +49 30 24749 761 ♒ fax +49
30 24749 763, Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH ♒ Amtsgericht Berlin 
Charlottenburg, HRB 41312 B, Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender André Schmitz ♒ 
Geschäftsführer Moritz van Dülmen

http://www.transmediale.de <http://www.transmediale.de/>
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