//festival umetnosti i digitalne kulture, Berlin//
Tanka, pozadinska tenzija koja se osecala u Domu Kultura Sveta (Haus der Kulturen der Welde) i relativno primetno nezadovoljstvo umetnika sadržajem glavne postavke izložbe ucinili kontrastirali su blještavom dizajnu enterijera i pratecih postavki, bucnom prisustvu video bimova, ekrana i limuzina ispred glavnog ulaza koje su dovezle „face“ iz sveta kulture. Sa druge strane, omogucila je ta tenzija da utisak ostane jaci i da se tu umeša nešto od jako realnog prisustva osnovne problematike današnjice.
Dozvolila sam sebi slobodu da temu ovogodišnjeg Transmediala prevedem kao ZAVERIVANJE. U originalu, tema CONSPIRE ukljucila je raznovrsne pristupe ovoj pojavi koja je tumacena kao neka vrsta skrivene ali obavezne aktivnosti koju gradjani praktikuju u svakodnevnom suocavanju sa informacijom a po uzoru na državne i vojne sisteme prošlosti (i sadašnjosti?).
Transmedijale svake godine privlaci i okuplja znacajnije i manje znacajne predstavnike savremene umetnicke prakse iz oblasti digitalne i medijske umetnosti. Prvi put festival je održan pod ovim imenom pre tacno 10 godina, kao jedanaesti po redu Video Fest, posle uspešno lansiranog koncepta godinu dana ranije, pod imenom Transmedia, održanog u centru Podevil (Podewil) februara 1997. Video Film Fest poceo je da se održava još 10 godina ranije – 1988 godine i bio je orijentisan pretežno na video kulturu – koja je posmatrana kao alternativa filmu. Ubrzo potom postavio se kriticki i prema televiziji pre nego što ce poceti da tretira i multimedijalnu umetnost tokom devedesetih i razviti se konacno u „festival umetnosti i digitalne kulture“.
Od alternativnog projekta nezavisne organizacije MedienOperative namenjenog programu eksperimentalnih i dokumentarnih video radova, delimicno podržanog od strane regionalne uprave grada Berlina, sufinansiranog iz Loto fondacije (Lotto-Stiftung) i Fonda Kulture Glavnog Grada (Hauptstadtkulturfonds) Transmedijale je postao jedan od brendova Berlina, na listi Federalnog Nemackog Kulturnog Fonda (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) od 2005 godine.
Istovremeno sa budžetom, relevantnost festivala raste u ocima evropske publike. Opredeljen za preispitivanje svakodnevnih pojava koje precesto uzimamo „zdravo za gotovo“ teme prethodnih festivala cine niz pogodaka centralne misli kritickih teorija i prakse današnjice. Posle „Nezavršenog“ i „Ovisnika o realnosti“ tema zavere se ponovo nalazi na liniji sukoba alternativa i signalizira opasnost od moci koja pociva na skrivenom, neizrecenom. Kao po obicaju, transmedijale otvara prostor za kritiku vladajucih sistema komunikacije i ekonomije interneta, u rukavicama elitnog kruga umetnika-aktivista-teoreticara...
Kroz ceonu poziciju programa festivala prošli su prvobitno kao tim - Hartmut Horst (Hartmut Horst) - do 1994. i Miki Kvela (Micky Kwella) - do 2000. godine, zatim je od 2001 do 2007 godine umetnicki direktor bio Andreas Brukman (Andres Broeckmann), da bi ove godine to mesto preuzeo Stiven Kovac (Stephen Kovats), arhitekta i strucnjak za medije, poreklom iz Kanade sa dugackom evropskom praksom u ovom polju. On je u saradnji sa Natašom Pretrešin-Bakelez (Nataša Petrešin) kao kustoskinjom izložbe preuzeo je odgovornost za koncepciju festivala i inovacije koje ukljucuju otvaranje novog prostora pod imenom Bilderberg Salon (aluzija, još jednom, na konspirativne aktivnosti vodecih politicara Zapada odnosno umetnika ucesnika festivala). Lansirana je i serija publikacija koje ce davati osvrt na istraživanje kao i umetnicku i kriticku pozadinu – osnovu koja stoji iza svake godišnje teme. Ovaj projekat nazvan „Transmediale Parkur“ („Transmediale Parcours“) ureduju Stiven Kovac i Tomas Munc (Thomas Munz) – kurator programa Transmedijala.
U saradnji sa nedavno otvorenim Arhivom Vilem Flusera (Vilém Flusser) u Berlinu, ustanovljana je Nagrada za Teoriju – Vilem Fluser za istaknutu teoretsku ili istraživacku praksu. Pošto su pohvaljeni rad „Kraj Tajnosti“ („End of Secrecy") umetnickog dua Bureau d'Etudes (fr) i tekst „Strah od Muslimanske Planete: Skrivena Istorija Hip-Hopa“ („Fear of a Muslim Planet: Hip-Hop’s Hidden History") Naema Mohaimena (Naeem Mohaiemen, bd) nagrada je dodeljena Britanskom umetniku Simonu Juilu (Simon Yuill) za tekst „Svi problemi notacije bice rešeni od strane masa“ („All problems of notation will be solved by the masses“). Povlaceci paralelu izmedu „open-source“ modela u proizvodnji softvera i eksperimentalnog modela u umetnickoj praksi, Juil se fokusira na eksperiment sa notacijom, improvizacijom, „bukom“ i kolektivnošcu.
Problem slobodnog softvera i odnosa zakonodavstva prema internet protokolima bio je tema konferencije pod nazivom „Posivljenje zajednickog- referenca na CreativeCommons licencu - (u originalu „Greying of the Commons“) Internet Protokol (IP), Zakon ulice“. Moderator konferencije bio je Feliks Štalder (Felix Stalder,at), kulturni teoreticar i predavac medijske ekonomije na Akademiji Umetnosti i Dizajna u Cirihu. Intelektualna svojina i autorska prava iz perspektive Evropskog Parlamenta kao i vlasnika diskografske kuce predstavljaju goruca pitanja koja ce zakonodavstvo morati da reši, odnosno – kome ce zakonodavstvo morati da se prilagodi.
U Beogradu je u decembru prošle godine lansirana CC licenca, sa vizijom da se domaca scena ukljuci u globalni front za javna dobra saradujuci sa zajednicama koje podržavaju otvorene sadržaje, pravo na pristup znanju, slobodni softver, otvoreni pristup u edukativnom izdavaštvu i slobodnu kulturu. Ucesnici konferencije nisu imali tako svetlu sliku onoga što predstavlja i omogucava CC licenca. Eva Lihtenberger (Eva Lichtenberger, at), clan Evropskog Parlamenta – iznela je presek sukoba interesa korisnika sa jedne strane i Kopirajta (Copyright) sa druge. Politika koja bi se mogla svesti na recenicu „Ja ne bih da kradem, ja bih da delim sa drugima“ zahteva da se za nju izgradi odredeni pravni okvir u kome bi se mogla smestiti i razlika izmedju generalnog prava i intelektualnog prava.
Pravni svet je prevaziden realnošcu. Fajlovi su vec preuzeti sa mreže. Ovo je cinjenica koju je podvukao Razmus Flešer (Rasmus Fleischer, se) – govornik Švedske piratske organizacije Piratbiro (Piratbyrĺn) koja funkcioniše kao izazov postojecim pravnim konceptima i autorskim pravima. „Mi živimo u post-autorskom društvu“ tvrdi on i ukazuje na nove oblike cenzurisanja i pravnog gonjenja kojima pribegavaju korporacije i zakonodavni sistemi. Menadžment Digitalnih Prava (DRM - digital rights management) je prošlost, sadašnjosti je Menadžment Politickih Prava.
Ipak, treba uociti razliku u pristupima razlicitih industrija i cenzure – ne postoji potreba za cenzurom pornografske muzike! Da li su muzicari zaista na šteti zbog piraterije? Ili su to samo diskografske kuce? Volfgang Peters (Wolfgang Petters, de) iz izdavacke kuce „Hausmuzik“ (Hausmusik) iz Minhena, koja je prestala da postoji 2007 godine ukazuje na ovu promenu u ekonomiji. Pošto nece biti moguce da se vecina korisnika interneta strpa u zatvor, sistem ce morati da se menja na drugoj strani. Verovatnoca da jedan korisnik koji „skida“ filmove bude legalno gonjen je manja od verovatnoce da taj isti pobedi na lutriji!
Kopirajt je teritorijalan, primetio je Folker Grasmuk (Volker Grassmuck, de), sociolog i istraživac medija u Helmholc Centru za Tehnike u Kulturi pri Humbolt Univerzitetu u Berlinu. Sva tri sredstva kontrole nad proizvodom prevazidena su tehnologijom – monopol nad sredstvima produkcije i reprodukcije više nije u rukama velikih korporacija zbog drasticnog pada cena tehnologije; monopol nad sredstvima distribucije takode nije više moguc. Nova strategija industrije je u transformaiji ponude – umesto proizvoda nude se katalozi i paketi proizvoda. Rad se povecava. Kolicina se povecva. Alan Toner je ilustrovao prethodne tvrdnje problemom kolicine podataka koju mi danas posedujemo. Kada cemo imati vremena da ih pregledamo? Kako cemo imati ikakve koristi od tog pregleda? Sadržaj se pretvara u neku vrstu „buke“, utapa se u neizdiferenciranu masu informacija.
U velikoj meri ova rasprava oslanja se na pitanje novca. Novac je ono što pokrece pitanje autorskih prava odnosno pitanje – ko zaraduje od ovog proizvoda. Sa druge strane, razvoj digitalne tehnologije doveo je do toga da se neke stvari jenostavno više ne mogu naplatiti. Politika naplate se menja, usluge se naplacuju u paketima. Da li ce uskoro sve postati besplatno? Tada cemo svi morati jako puno da radimo...
U potrazi za konspiracijom Džulija Melcer (Julia Meltzer, us) i Dejvid Torn (David Thorne, us) boravili su u Damasku, gde su zajedno sa Sirijskim izvodacem i filmadžijom Ramijem Farahom (Rami Farah) razvili video projekat „Nije Pitanje Da Li Nego Kada“(„Not a Matter of If but When“). Rad je, prema recima autora, pokušaj da se pronade smisao u vremenu u kome je fond reci presušio. Prvom nagradom žiri je još jednom je potvrdio legitimitet ovom parazitskom pristupu koji publiku zapadne evrope doji „biserima“ siromašnih društava.
„Crni Amazon“ („Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime“), dobtinik druge nagrade žirija - knjiga u inkubatoru subverzivnim aktivnostima dospela je u štampu. Ovaj kriticki rad hakerskim aktivizmom smešta pitanje krade u kontekst etike mogucnosti. Amazon Nuar ekipa koju cine duo UBERMORGEN.COM (at), Paolo Cirio (Paolo Cirio, it) i Alesandro Ludoviko (Alessandro Ludovico, it) rematerijalizuje ono što je bilo ukradeno, metaforicki ili fizicki, kroz razvoj koda i hakiranje kljucnog on-line sistema za prodaju knjiga (www.amazon.com).
Gordan Savicic (at), takode nagradenim radom „Opasani Grad: Bol Svakodnevnog Života“ („Constraint City: The Pain of Everyday Life“) uspostavlja direktnu vezu izmedu digitalnog i živog sveta kroz komunikaciju korseta sa signalima bežicnih mreža u okruženju. Kaiševi na korsetu su opremljeni motorima koji stežu korset i pojacavaju pritisak na telo onoga ko ga nosi u prisustvu signala. Crveni tragovi na koži govore o iskustvu prisustva u bežicnom okruženju i svakodnevnom bolu koji ne osecamo.
Zaverenicki tim Pikide (Picidae) koji cine Kristof Vahter (Christoph Wachter, de) i Matias Jud (Mathias Jud, ch) razvio je softver koji subverzira cenzuru interneta. Generisanjem fotografija veb stranica ovaj softver cini sadržaj nevidljivim za pretraživace i samim tim onemogucava filtriranje neželjenog sadržaja.
Postavkom u Paviljonu Podevil (Podewil’s Pavillion) nesumnjivo je dominirala „Film Mašina“ („Film Machine“) japanskih umetnika Keicira Šibuje (Keiichiro Shibuya) i Takašija Ikegamija (Takashi Ikegami). Iluzija bioskopskog iskustva postignuta je upotrebom LED osvetljenja i koncentricnih krugova visecih zvucnika. Kroz prostor šibaju zvuci apstraktne filmske muzike i u svedenom dizajnu instalacije oseca se prisustvo holivudskog ukusa.
U tradiciji prošlogodišnjeg analognog rada „Random Screen“, Standardno Vreme („Standard Time“) usmerilo je secanje na lepotu manuelnog. Video projekcija prikazuje 24 sata digitalnog casovnika koji je u svtari neprestano održavan od strane ekipe koja ažurira vreme.
fotografije izložbe možete naci na adresama::
http://picasaweb.google.com/idealnigrad/Transmediale08/photo#s5163324023421985122 (Dom Kultura Sveta)
http://picasaweb.google.com/idealnigrad/Transmediale0802/photo#s5163455123003729970 (Paviljon Podevil)
zvanicna adresa festivala::
http://www.transmediale.de/site/
//festival for art and digital culture, Berlin//
A slightly noticeable tension in the House of World Cultures (Haus der Kulturen der Welt) and relative discontentment of artists with the content of the exhibition Conspire, that could be heard in the Café Global, contrasted the shiny design of interior and setup, noisy presence of the beamers, screen and limos in front of the main entrance that brought the “big shots” from the world of culture. This tension has made the impression of the event a bit stronger and strengthened the real presence of today’s important issues.
The theme CONSPIRE included diverse approaches to the phenomenon that is interpreted as a kind of a hidden but compulsory activity which citizens are practicing in everyday relation to the information, taking over the model form the government military systems of the past (and presence?).
Transmediale attracts every year significant and less significant representatives of contemporary artistic practice that gather around the field of digital and media art. The festival was held for the first time under this name exactly ten years ago as the eleventh Video Fest, after successfully launched concept under the name Transmedia, in the centre Podewil in February 1997. Video Fest started a ten years before – in 1988 and was oriented mostly on video culture – that was seen at the time as an alternative to film. Soon afterwards it positioned itself in a critical relation towards television before it started to treat multimedia art during the nineties and finally develop into the “festival for art and digital culture”.
From an alternative project of the independent organization MedienOperative, designated for the programme of experimental and documentary video, partially supported by the Regional government of Berlin, co-financed from the Lotto Foundation (Lotto-Stiftung) and the Fund for Culture of the Capital (Hauptstadtkulturfonds) Transmediale has become one of Berlin cultural brands, regularly financed by the Federal German Cultural Fund (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) since 2005.
Along with the budget, the relevance of the festival grows in the eyes of European audience. Oriented on questioning everyday phenomena that we too often take as they are, previous themes of the festival stand in a line of “scores” of the central thought of critical theories and practice of today. After “Unfinish” and “Reality addicts” the theme of conspiracy is once again on the frontline of clashes between alternatives, signalizing the danger of power that lays on the hidden, untold. Transmediale opens up a space for the critique of main systems of communication and economy of internet, from the safety of an elite circle of artists-activists-theoreticians…
The head position of the festival has been formed by the team - Hartmut Horst - until 1994 and Micky Kwella – until 2000. From 2001 to 2007 the art director was Andreas Broeckmann, for the place to be taken by Stephen Kovats, this year. Kovats is an architect and a media researcher, originally form Canada with a long European practice in this field. He had taken the responsibility, in collaboration with Nataša Petrešin Bachelez, for the concept of the festival and innovations which included establishment of a new space called Bilderberg Salon (allusion of, once more, conspiracy activities of the leading politicians of the West or the artists that took part in the festival). A series of publications is launched, giving an overview of the research, the artistic and critical background that stands behind every year’s theme. This project is named “Transmediale Parcours” and edited by Stephen Kovats and Thomas Munz – the programme curator.
Together with recently opened Vilém Flusser archive in Berlin, a Theory Award has been established and given for an outstanding theoretical or research practice. The two honourable mentions were granted to the work „End of Secrecy" from the artist-duo Bureau d'Etudes (Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt , fr) and the text „Fear of a Muslim Planet: Hip-Hop’s Hidden History" by Naeem Mohaiemen. The award was given to the British artist Simon Yuill for the text „All problems of notation will be solved by the masses“. Drawing a parallel between “open-source” model in the production of software and experimental model in the artistic practice, Yuill focuses on the experiment with notation, improvisation, collective and noise.
The problem of open-source software and the relation of legal systems towards internet protocols were the subjects for the conference “The Greying of The Commons: IP, The Law and The Street“. The discussion was moderated by Felix Stalder (at), author and cultural theorist, teacher of media economy at the Academy of Art and Design Zurich. Intellectual property and authorship are, from the perspective of European Parliament as well as from the one of the collective societies, the burning questions that the law will have to deal with or in other words, that the law will have to adapt to.
In December last year, the CC licence has been launched in Belgrade, with a vision to include the domestic scene into the global front for public property, collaborating with communities that support open source, free access to knowledge, free and open software, open access to educational publishing and free culture. The participants of the conference did not share this positive view on what the CC licence enables and stands for. Eva Lichtenberger (at), member of the European Parliament has presented a review of conflicts of interests between the users on one side and Copyright on the other. The politics that could be described by the sentence “I wouldn’t steal, I want to share” demands a certain legal framework to be built for it, a framework in which the difference between general law and intellectual law could be placed.
The legal world is overcome by the reality. “The files are already downloaded” stressed Rasmus Fleischer (se), speaking in the name of the Swedish organisation Piratebureau (Piratbyrĺn) which is busy with challenging the existing legal concepts and author’s rights. “We are living in a post-author’s society” he claims and points out new forms of censorship and legal prosecution that the corporations and legal systems are practicing. Digital Rights Management is past, the future is in the Political Rights Management.
Different industries have a different approaches to censorship – there is no such a thing as musical pornography! Are the musicians really suffering from the pyrites? Or are that only the label companies? Wolfgang Petters (de), head of the Munich music label “Hausmusik”, which has been shutdown in 2007, stresses the change in economy. Since it will not be possible to put the majority of users of the internet in prison, the system will have to change on the other side. The probability for a user that is downloading movies to be legally prosecuted is lower than his chance to win the lottery!
Copyright law is territorial, insisted Volker Grassmuck, (de), sociologist and media researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Cultural Techniques of Humboldt University in Berlin. All the three means of control over the product have been overcome by the technology – monopoly on the means of production and reproduction is not any more in the hands of big corporations because of a drastic lowering of prices of technology; monopoly on the means of distribution is also not possible any more. The new strategy of the industry is in transformation of the offer – instead of products themselves, they offer catalogues and packages of products. The work is inflated. The amounts are growing. Alan Toner has illustrated the previous predications with the of the amount problem of data we “own” today. When will we ever have time to go through them? How will we make any use of doing so? The content turns into some kind of “noise”, merges into the undifferentiated mass of information.
This discussion leans to a high extent on money issues. Money is what raises the question of authorship or - the question who earns from this product? On the other side, the development of digital technology has reached to the point where certain things cannot be charged for anymore. Politics of charging is changing, services are charged for in packages. Is everything going to become free in the end? We will then have to work even more…
In the search for conspiracy, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne (us) have spent several months in Damask, developing the video project „Not a Matter of If but When“ together with the Syrian performer and filmmaker Rami Farah. The work is, the authors say, an attempt to find meaning in a time where vocabulary has become depleted. Awarding it with the first prize, the jury has once again confirmed legitimacy to this parasite approach that amuses the audience of Western World with “pearls” from the undeveloped societies.
„Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime“, awarded with the second prize, a book in the incubator has become a hard copy through subversive hacking activities. This critical work puts the question of stealing in the context of the ethics of possible. Amazon Noir crew that is formed my the artistic duo UBERMORGEN.COM (at), Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico, (it) re-materialises what has been stolen, metaphorically and physically, through the development of code and hacking the major online system for book shopping. (www.amazon.com).
Gordan Savicic (at), with his also awarded work „Constraint City: The Pain of Everyday Life“ establishes a direct relation between the digital and living world through communication of the specially designed corset with signals from wireless networks in the surrounding. The straps on the corset are equipped with motors that are tightening the corset and increasing the pressure on the body of the one who is wearing it, according to the strength of signals. Red marks on the skin tell about presence in the wireless surrounding and everyday pain that we don’t feel.
The conspiracy team Picidae formed by Christoph Wachter (de) and Mathias Jud (ch), has developed software which subverts the censorship of internet. It generates photographs of internet pages and makes the content invisible to the search engines and by this way makes the filtering of content not possible.
The exhibition in the Podewil’s Pavillion was undoubtedly dominated by the „Film Machine“, a work of Japanese artists Keiichiro Shibuya and Takashi Ikegami. The illusion of the cinema experience was reached through the use of LED lights and concentric circles of hanging speakers. Abstract film music is “running” around the space in the minimal design of the installation and one can feel the presence of the taste of Hollywood.
In the tradition of the last-years analogue work “Random Screen”, the “Standard time” has directed the memory on the beauty of the manual. Video projection shows 24 hours of a digital clock that is actually continuously maintained by the crew that updates the time.
photographs of the exhibition can be found on the addresses::
http://picasaweb.google.com/idealnigrad/Transmediale08/photo#s5163324023421985122 (Haus der Kulturen der Welt)
http://picasaweb.google.com/idealnigrad/Transmediale0802/photo#s5163455123003729970 (Podevil’s Pavillion)
official address of the festival::
http://www.transmediale.de/site/