XLt Radar at Transmediale #TM23 - An Intro - Part 1
Extracting the Artivist Signals
( XLt foto : From the streets of Btropolis )
XLterrestrial (XLT ) analysts are prepping for Transmediale #TM23 and CTM festival. We will come back in Part 2 to share some highlights and things we find useful, but for now you can explore the 2 sites and each with their dense, overlapping and city-wide schedules here :
Transmediale ( Jan31 + Feb.1-5 ) : https://2023.transmediale.de/en
CTM ( Jan27 - Feb5 ) : https://www.ctm-festival.de/
The last Transmediale we participated in was 2020, just before the pandemic threw the planet into a brand new kind of turmoil. We presented a brief history of the Indymedia platform and network for its 20th anniversary via our CiTiZEN KiNO format, an interactive cinematic immersion, in the Roter Salon of Volksbuhne at Rosa-Lux Platz.
( CK#85: Asymmetric Media - poster for TM20 )
This year we are once again attending as ‘citizen press’ and plan to report on and analyze whatever artivist signals we can extract from this unusual conference/festival that began on that straaange West Berlin island, way back in 1988. Originally it was as an experimental video + film + new media arts event ( an independent B-side extension or counter-cultural concept to the ritzy Berlinale ) that slowly grew into one of the most important cultural investigations of our rapid digital culture transformations and mutations. It definitely bleeds out beyond those frames into whatever arts, debates and dialogues ( art on walls, installations, performances, panels, workshops, interventions, etc. ) can do to grapple with the seemingly inseparable sociological and technological chimeras. Transmediale itself is rather playful and predominantly technotopian in regards to this new fusion beast. XLT, on the other hand, view this - more often than not - as a precarious and unstable venture into the wild hyper-krapitalist techno-colonial futurist expansionism. That’s one highly unsustainable clusterfuck ya got there !
Every year we’ve attended it’s been a kind of tug-of-war between the digital evangelists and those of us who clearly see the seams ripping at the backsides of our fragile spaceship earth, as we all get sucked into just about every black rabbit hole that emerges in the dark matter of industrialized fantasies and cybernetic appetites. Run Run Run on the Auto-Bahn-a-maton ( insert a misinterpreted poppy Kraftwerk-muzak-earworm here ) like a self-driving + unreeling techno-dystopian-spooled drama. But, keep in mind, we like to over-poeticize that little shop of spectacular horrors + technosphere undoings, as well as our rebel cultures of resistance, both… to keep your/our eyes-wide-open , ready to face these challenging times, and act up accordingly !
Foto: Nicht Unsere Krieg / Not Our War. Fresh graffiti on the walls of the Btropolis, on the same day that Chancellor Olaf Scholz OKs the Panzer shipments into the latest bonfire of a new east /west conflict/divide. XLt might choose to draw a parallel here in terms of getting dragged into the no-longer-new dark age of digital dystopias. Someone else’s agendas are possibly getting rocket-fueled by this subtle but all-too-often netz-industry-friendly + netz-capturing show.
There’s no point analyzing and webbing these disembodied perspectives here in a Substack / Blog without keeping it in context of our crises-ridden times ! We are not here for the net entertainment jollies nor the silicon marketshares ( though of course we appreciate anyone who wants to support our project and cause. Contact us. ). We ARE here to assist you and us in collectively navigating the cultural sectors + political frictions in order to learn and organize together, and to imagine and create the social system upgrades required for better possible futures.
Stay Tune. Several reports from #TM23 to come !