[rohrpost] Transmediale Diskussionsrunde

[Kristoffer Gansing]

Dear rohrpostler,

(sorry to write in English, I am sure it is better than my written
German though)

As I am one of the responsible persons behind bringing Art Hack Day to
transmediale 2014, I would like to offer you a few words of
clarification. In principle I agree that the financial structures of
cultural funding between artists, curators and institutions are
exploitative and that festivals, museums and other institutions should
also exert pressure to change that and not leave it to the artists to
always end up in the role of "complainers".
Therefore, it was also a risky decision to bring Art Hack Day to Berlin
and transmediale, since it replicates some of the structures of
participatory culture that we know all too well from the so called
decentralised and participatory but in reality neoliberal and
centralised structures of web 2 and social media culture. However, I
also believe that one needs to work with these models and try to push
them into situations where they become something else than what
corporate culture has co-opted them into, and where collaborative art
and research practices can happen outside of the superficial social
media mode, creative industries meet ups and their data mined
surveillance structures.
The decision to bring Art Hack Day as an exhibition format was based on
the idea of trying out something else than the curated show in the
context of the festival, a living entity in reaction to the festival
thematic rather than a predefined collection of the curators best picks
in relation to the theme. We were approached by Art Hack Day early last
year and decided to try this out although we knew that some of the
modalities of how such an event usually works, is not entirely
compatible with the institutional context of the festival. For example,
no participant or organiser ever got paid in the previous Art Hack Day
events, which operates on a similar self-organised basis of any
hackathon. That said, Art Hack Day always asks a venue to provide the
infrastructure and the institutional framework of the venue has varied
from case to case, from the artist run space, hackerspace to the
Kunsthalle. In each case, it goes without saying that there have been
different financial conditions of the different venues and the different
people working there. In the case of transmediale, we are not an
institution with our own physical infrastructure or even set of
technology and we have to rent and pay for all technical equipment and
staff for the entire festival. Some is provided as in kind from Haus der
Kulturen der Welt, but most of it is provided through external partners.
So this was the basic structure we could offer to Art Hack Day.
Additionally to the material resources, we offered accomodation and
travel to those participants who needed it - something which Art Hack
Day was never able to do before. And of course we provided all the food
and drinks that is integral to any hackathon (nothing to brag about
since it just has to be done).
Further clarification: it is not true that none of the participants were
paid. Some of the participants had backup from their institutions such
as Universities - since it is part of the cultural scene that
transmediale engages in that participants are not necessarily in a
completely precarious freelance situation but have jobs in research,
other arts organisations PhD's, companies (more unusual though) etc.
Other participants got funding through cultural foundations or embassies
where transmediale in some cases applied to have their costs covered.
And some participants received fees for additionally taking part in the
performance or conference programme of transmediale.
So in the end, the picture is more complex than a simple statement from
the artists that indeed did not get a fee might convey. This does not
change the fact that the discussion is very important and that more
transparency and scrutiny of such events are needed but this then also
reaches beyond transmediale as such and into the model of cultural
funding through which we exist and which has its dark sides for sure but
through which we paradoxically are also able to offer a unique space for
cultural production across disciplines, discourses and formats (far
beyond the confinement of "media art") to which I do not think there are
many counterparts in the world. I am working for transmediale because I
truly believe in that this is a useful meeting place and highly
appreciated among its participants and audience. Call it an outdated
media art relic, hipster after party or a forum for pseudo-political
discussions - I think it is nothing like that and thinking back about
the people and events we had here in the past few days, including their
enthusastic, critical and engaged feedback, and looking around me at the
last day of the festival, find it hard to believe anyone would honestly
say that.

sincerely
Kristoffer Gansing
artistic director, transmediale.