XII. TRANSMEDIALE 2019
02/03/2019

While pre-opening with Jody Berland’s lecture “Extending McLuhan’s Posthumanism: Feeling The Techno-Animal Embrace” (Canadian embassy) addressing a post-human techno-animic reconfiguration, Transmediale’s curator proved his acknowledgement of critics addressed to its 2018 edition. Indeed, “Face value” had been problematized as being exclusive, sad and led by white academic males whose rhetoric did not reflect any critical contingency. Meanwhile, this year undefined team dealt mostly with affects, care, new forms of theoretical thinking as well as activism potency and poetical humour. Acknowledging the artificiality of language and our necessity for a post-human theoretical frame, Transmediale worked its way out of hegemonic academical pond games with key lecturers like Jackie Wang, Erica Scourti, Shaka McGlotten, Louis Henderson, Caroline Sanders and many more.

Differing through each panel’s standpoints, many of Transmediale’s lecturers were dealing with notions of subjective data-sets and ways to counter empirical arbitrary choices embed in data collection, manipulation and consequences on machine learning training. Considering the tremendous impact data has in both manipulating and shaping opinions and affects, subjective data set as non-biased collective commons is of consideration in contemporary digital activism (especially for feminists, queer and minorities). As systemic synthetisation became obscure and obsolete in post-truth era, it is quintessential, not to say urgent, to assess the quantitative method rooted in data processing. Indeed, those protocols carry bias as they discard features considered irrelevant in the quantitative valuation (for instance blackness, obsolete training canons and phallogocentric discrimination). Reconfiguring and addressing notion of “subjectivity” are methods which were introduced during “Affects Ex-Machina: Unboxing Social Data Algorithms; structures of Feeling – transmediale 2019 Opening” and by Doreen Mende and Caroline Sinders; introducing new ways to deconstruct affective computing as well as looking at emotion as quasi-semantic trading zones. Here those data sets could be built to transcend cognitive limits of emotional quantitative rationalisation and synthetisation (potentially by looking at post-phenomenological interpretation or post-anthropocentric poetic forms of speculation). Further was developed the idea of generating archives as evidences formed of collective data sets. Hither, data arrangements could be built upon a gathering of affects and intuitions rather than scientific facts and figures. Here, Doreen Mende interventions was of significant interest in introducing methodologies of data collecting built upon material witnessing through looking at an image as an infrastructure in itself. Somehow, those talks privileged qualitative quantifying over quantitative, especially within their consideration of the archive as truth worthy digital production. The project Vframe — Syrian archive was a great concrete example.

Drifting from affect to principle of commoning as form of resistance against late capitalism was a of great significance throughout the event. Lecturers like Cornelia Solfranks and Felix Stadler discussed ways art could re-enact forms of aesthetical powers through practices of commoning, in doing so creating a symbolism and aesthetic embed in the “real”. Further, they inquired how artists could employ computational tools to engage with communities, commoners and communing process. Looking through Simondon’s understanding of participatory art and Negris & Hardt definition of the commons had a big influence on my current project Uterii. Affective body were also introduced as a relational infrastructure familiarising the public to notions of alien-ness, otherness and alterity. As well as theories of becoming and the current necessity to create new semantics for desire and collectivity. In opposing the basic, primal experience of solidarity to the cynical distance enhanced by party politics, I could only think of “the invisible committee” and Stiegler’s prompt to re-incarnate “becoming” by collective desire’s reappropriation, or the “Yellow vests”’s sentence “we just desire to live”. In this reconfiguration of becoming as embodied desire, the principle could be to build collective agency based on experience to counter sad-socialist’s tendency to live under the “oppressive myth” (another concept introduced during those talks). Meanwhile promoting a joyful form of activism. The injunction about “oppressive myth” triggered discussions among the public and I myself felt dubious of the terminology implied. Indeed, it is complex to acknowledge myth in neoliberal empirical violence upon its subjects, as so clearly expressed by the Yellow vests demonstrations. Although, I also agree that sad privileged socialist tend to use this oppressive mythology as a motivation to either non-action or nihilist-violence. Finally, the talk drifted on the dilemmas present in commoning and collective art as being coopted and corrupted by their institutionalization. And how to assess and reconfigure such effect by means of solidarity and education.This theme was also approached during Goldsmith’s MFA lecture’s series organised by Suhail Malik.

Finally, one of the moments which made me realise, again, how theory could be enacted, lived and performed afar from the cold academic language was that of the queer performance of Shaka McGlotten later followed by a discussion with Erica Scouti. Drifting on Tantric theories, Lauren Berland’s political definition of love, being interfaced and feelings of separation, their performance was a theoretico-spiritual travel into complex semantics of love 2.0. Involving an active re-working of our definition of love and conflict, Shaka introduced novel ideas like intimacies of learning, conflict as non-abusive, but also modes of actions involving self-online-spreadout, writing in-between the codes, exploring the negative spaces of the net and more. It is challenging to report both performances as they genuinely felt more than theoretical memories. I can only recommend to look at the records, as sharing youtube link is a form of collective caring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzeo6ndPGxc

“Being interfaces is like being inhabited”

Hither is a non-exhaustive selection of relevant projects introduced throughout the event, their description is taken from Transmediale’s website and referenced at the end of this post:
Hadi Al Khatib — Syrian Archive
Hadi Al Khatib has been working since 2011 on collecting, verifying, and investigating citizen-generated data as evidence of human rights violations in order to expose and draw attention to human rights violations committed by all sides in the Syrian conflict, and to make sure that activists, journalists, and lawyers are able to use the verified data for their investigations and criminal case building. Hadi has previously worked with Tactical Technology Collective for the last 5 years to support journalists and news agencies in securing their data, devices, and communications online. Hadi worked as a part-time open source investigator with Human Rights Watch and Bellingcat. Hadi is also a fellow at the Centre for Internet and Human Rights, and he is currently teaching a Masters of Arts course for the Raumstrategien program at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee. (Description by transmediale)
Beyond the Nation State I Want to Dream // Phoenix’s last song — Dorine van Meel
film/video 2018 de 19'
Beyond the Nation State I Want to Dream deals with the construct of the European nation state, examining the binaries and mechanisms of exclusion at work in the constitution of a “we.” Consisting of slowly decomposing and recomposing computer-generated images, the video juxtaposes apparently innocuous representations of national identity with places marked by the intersection of nationhood, colonialism and imperial conquest. Such imagery is accompanied by a dream-like monologue in which the narrator tries in vain to escape from a present that perpetuates the historical violence of the nation state in the most mundane aspects of everyday life.
(Description by transmediale)
Phoenix’s Last Song (Exhibited at CTM)
My child, my child, you will be born, 
out of the powder that is my ashes. 
And you shall be, child of your mother, 
you will not turn away your face. 
I will teach you how to smile, but not in service of men. 
Show you to be strong, but not in order to dominate.
And if you play the trumpet, it will not be for the battlefield. 
Déploiements
Stéphanie Lagarde film/video // 2018 fr 16'
Déploiements (Deployments) highlights the state’s practice of control and the effect it has on the human body and its ability to move. In a contemporary era in which the present is dictated by a potential future, the video draws a parallel between two types of simulations: on the one side, the Patrouille de France—the aerobatic demonstration team of the French Air Force—rehearsing the choreography of an air show through a series of hand gestures and a precise scripted language, on the other side, a protest scenario simulated by crowd control software created for police training purposes in fictional urban environments. (Description by transmediale)

REFERENCES
https://2019.transmediale.de/content/d-ploiements
https://2019.transmediale.de/content/knitting-and-knotting-love
http://dorinevanmeel.com/
https://www.lagardestephanie.com/Deploiements-Deployments
https://2019.transmediale.de/content/beyond-the-nation-state-i-want-to-dream
https://2019.transmediale.de/content/carceral-temporalities-and-the-politics-of-dreaming
https://2019.transmediale.de/content/creating-commons-affects-collectives-aesthetics
https://2019.transmediale.de/content/structures-of-feeling-transmediale-2019-opening
https://2019.transmediale.de/content/affects-ex-machina-unboxing-social-data-algorithms