“Taking things at face value” seems to have become the norm of public discourse amidst today’s reactionary and algorithmically guided communication practices. transmediale wants to challenge this impulse to judge things by their immediate appearance and instead look at less visible issues, which run deep across all sectors of society. These include power relations rarely discussed at digital culture events, such as contemporary imbalances of class, gender, and race, which are also being built into technological systems. In fact, rather than providing an emancipatory alternative, (post-)digital culture today seems to support hate-mongering, racist and neo-colonial powers. This, however, should not be a reason to lament a mythical past, back in which, supposedly, the internet was free and digital creativity unbound. Rather, there is a need to embrace both unsettling and uniting cultural practices, as well as daring speculative thinking, to promote auto-criticality and an awareness that nothing is ever as simple as its surface suggests. Similarly, cultural events like transmediale are made up of different political imaginaries and communities that are simultaneously resistant and complicit to the developments one so urgently needs to oppose.

With these challenges and paradoxes of the present moment in mind, how can artists, cultural workers, and speculative theorists respond to the current politics of taking things at face value and, at the same time, face their own values? How does one name biases and exploitative mechanisms for what they are, in order to formulate new ways to resist, deconstruct or move beyond them?

transmediale 2018 means transmediale 2018 does not mean transmediale 2018 means transmediale 2018

Kristoffer Gansing Artistic Director, Daphne Dragona Conference Curator, Inga Seidler Exhibition Curator, Florian Wüst Film & Video Curator, Amelie Buchinger Program Coordination, Jakob Freese Program Assistant, Olga Wiedemann Program Assistant, Sibylle Kerlisch Production, Meret Kiderlen Event Management / Auditorium Performance, Sabrina Kürzinger Event Management / Film & Video, Adam Asnan Stage Management, Christian Kleinwächter Projectionist, Magdalena Ritter Administration & Finance, Ann-Christine Pilder Administration, Giulia Messia Participant Management, Lucas Gloe Intern Administration and Participant Management, Filippo Gianetta Marketing & Communications, Tabea Hamperl Press, Elvia Wilk Editor transmediale/journal, Maria Lechner Marketing, Judith Jung Communications, Natalie Schütze Communications, Ann-Kathrin Heidenreich Communications, Nicola Angelillis Info Counter; Technical Support by serve-u: Phillip Sünderhauf, Andreas Buchholz, Marc Klische, Gregor Krajnik; Graphic Design by The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger: Manuel Bürger, Simon Schindele, Sebastian Holl-Trieu, Alexander Papoli-Barawati; Website Development by einskommanull: Sebastian Göbel, Laura Oldenbourg, Michael Scharnagl

transmediale advisory board Alex Adriaansens, Marie-Luise Angerer, Dieter Daniels, Micz Flor, Hito Steyerl, Moritz van Dülmen, Ben Vickers, Hortensia Völckers

Main funders: Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Kultur Projekte Berlin, HKW, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung

Partners: CTM Festival, Creative Europe, Aarhus University, Winchester School of Art, Embassy of Canada, creative industries fund NL, Berliner Gazette, Edith Russ Haus, British Council

Sponsors: serve-u technical support, Eventbrite, Bühnenverleih Frank von Wysocki GmbH

Media partners: flash art 50, neural, Le Monde diplomatique, Springerin, radioeins

Supporters: Goethe Institut, EMAP / EMARE, Aargauer Kuratorium, ZEM Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften, University of Phoenix, Merz Akademie, Preussen Quelle, Echoo, IN-Berlin