With digital technologies being integrated into the liveness of experience, a new situation for social change and cultural practice has arisen, which currently seems to lead to either political extremes or extreme complacency. How to resist the manipulative and polarising aspects of affect in the digital public sphere as it is expressed through a deadlock of the politics of feeling on the one side and disengagement on the other? What motivates social engagement and how can new forms of care and solidarity be developed and embodied?

For the first time in many years, the festival does not have a title in order to emphasise the possibility of emergence: In response to a critical time, transmediale wants to focus on live practices and the creation of learning environments rather than close down meaning.

Taking up the challenge of how to understand and work with new technologies of feeling, transmediale recognises that digital culture has become instrumental for capturing and managing what Raymond Williams once called “structures of feeling”—lived experiences and cultural expressions, distinct from supposedly fixed social products and institutions. Such experiences and expressions now create the affective spaces of social media, form the design imperatives of artificial intelligence applications, and seem to be capable of evoking empathy through virtual reality. In these contexts, social and political issues tend to become emotionalised and get turned into binary choices of for and against. One of the contemporary challenges is how to be critical and affirmative at the same time while avoiding such oversimplifications. For this purpose, transmediale 2019 strives to feature living, and not yet fully formed digital cultures of artistic vision, speculative thinking, activist intervention, and counter-cultural dreaming.

Following its focus on cultural emergence, the 2019 festival aims for a high level of participant and audience engagement through discussion-based and educational formats: Preceding the public festival days, transmediale offers the new Student Forum to create an environment for concentrated, in-depth work and studying. The workshop program is extended and starts on 29 January, too, continuing throughout the festival. Furthermore, the transmediale Study Circles are integrated across the program, zooming in on specific aspects of the festival theme. The Study Circles Affective Infrastructures and Uneasy Alliances consist of working groups in which participants come together before, during, and after the festival and generate various outputs such as workshops, events, and publications.

Kristoffer Gansing Artistic Director, Daphne Dragona Conference, Inga Seidler Program Development, Spatial Design, Florian Wüst Film & Video, Amelie Buchinger Program Coordination, Olga Wiedemann Program Assistant, Sibylle Kerlisch Production, Adam Asnan Stage Management, Christian Kleinwächter Projectionist, Anna Kondrig Intern Program, Julius Kopf Intern Program, Magdalena Ritter Administration & Finance, Ann-Christine Pilder Administration, Sina Droste Intern Administration and Participant Management, Diana Banzhaf Intern Administration and Participant Management, Filippo Gianetta Marketing & Communications, Tabea Hamperl Press & Communications, Natalie Schütze Editorial & Communications, Anky Heidenreich Accreditation Management & Communications, Nicola Angelillis Info Counter & Volunteer Management, Teona Gurgenadze Interns Communication, Christoph Papendorf Interns Communication, 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, Barbara Acevedo Strange, Website Development by einskommanull: Sebastian Göbel, Laura Oldenbourg, Michael Scharnagl

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

Main funders: Kulturstiftung des Bundes

Additional funding: by Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa

Partners: CTM Festival, Creative Europa Programme of the European Union, Thennn, Aarhus University, Winchester School of Art, Embassy of Canada, Flanders State of the Art, creative industries fund NL, Akademie der Künste, KIM Critical AI Studies HfG Karlsruhe, Pro Helvetia, Spektrum Community, Import Projects, TIER The Institute for Endotic Research

Technical sponsor: serve-u technical support

Media partners: ROM Magazine, neural, Berliner Fenster, radioeins, Le Monde Diplomatique

Supporters: Goethe Institut, Zurich University of the Arts, institute of network cultures, Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures, ZEM Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften, Berliner Gazette, Merz Akademie, MIGROS Kulturprozent, Echoo, IN-BERLIN, Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, Wallonie - Bruxelles International, Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles, iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Lithuanian Culture Institute, Preussen Quelle