Conversation Piece references a certain idealized type of conversation depicted in the eponymous genre of group portraits popularized in the 17th and 18th centuries. These paintings show slices of bourgeois family life such as tea parties, picnics, gallery viewings, and salons, where the subjects are engaged in private and informal yet also strongly hierarchic conversations. We should neither pretend that this idealized scene of a unified conversation culture can be achieved today, nor that it is desirable. Conversations are inherently fragmented in what passes for the global public sphere, and within it the privilege of conversation has at least partially been democratized and decentralized. This may seem good on the surface, but rather than bravely facing a radical multiplicity of topics and positions, we are seeing societies return to hierarchical forms of datafied conversation, where meaning is exchanged for mining, and text for context. In this situation, the one thing that seems worth repurposing from the historical conversation piece is the common ground on which arguments and viewpoints can be made. This is no longer the stable common ground of a traditional value system but rather the common articulation of many possible grounds and, importantly, the commoning of the means and resources to recognize these grounds in their difference and multiplicity.

New vocabularies and sensibilities are needed to express and distinguish between the different possible social, economic, and technological models that are now being created in order to deal with the planet's increasingly precarious living conditions. This entails a rebooting of conversation and a facing up to the anxieties of late capitalism. On this website you will read about the four conversation starters along which transmediale 2016 is structured: Anxious to Act, Anxious to Make, Anxious to Share, and Anxious to Secure. As in historical conversation piece paintings, these streams depict different potential ideal scenes, not of bourgeois everyday life but of contemporary cultural practices that have become as compulsive as they are underwritten by an anxious insecurity about their future direction. transmediale/conversationpiece will not finally resolve the contemporary anxiousness to “do something”; we would like to recognize how talking things through has value in and of itself. Through the artistic, multimodal processing of the discursive, sensory, and aesthetic dimensions of these topics, the possible common grounds for conversations will be manifested.

We want to act but not in vain.
We want to make but not without agency.
We want to share but not be exploited.
We want to be secure but not at the expense of others.

CURATORIAL TEAM
Kristoffer Gansing / Artistic Director
Florian Wüst / Film & Video
Oliver Lerone Schultz / Anxious to Act
Teresa Dillon / Anxious to Make
Ben Vickers / Anxious to Share
Theresa Züger / Anxious to Secure
Daphne Dragona / transmediale Co-Curricular

Welcome to a different kind of transmediale. We have decided to call the 29th edition a Conversation Piece. After years of single-themed festivals accompanied by standardized program sections, we are this time revising our approach with a format that aims to create a more fluid space for the exchange of ideas. As a participant and visitor you will, as always, encounter artistic and research practice in talks, performances, screenings, and workshops – but often in surprising new combinations. We have aimed for a program that unfolds not only in conversation with the audience but also with the format of the festival itself, starting with the four thematic streams that serve as conversation starters to structure the events: Anxious to Act, Anxious to Make, Anxious to Share, and Anxious to Secure. These topics refer to our eagerness to stake out new paths with the uncertainty that societies now face.

The manifold program would not have come together without the efforts of my dear co-curators, the tireless transmediale team, our technical partners serve-u, and our administrative body Kulturprojekte Berlin, as well as our many partners and supporters. A heartfelt thanks goes to our main funders, the German Federal Cultural Foundation, who have recently decided to continue their vital funding of transmediale until 2022. I would also like to thank our main venue, Flaus der Kulturen der Welt, for the support and inspirational setting, transmediale would not be the transdisciplinary forum that it is without the Federal Agency for Civic Education (BPB), to whom we again owe thanks for supporting the conference program. We also thank the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, another solid partner of transmediale for its important support of our regional marketing efforts. A great number of further partners, old and new, have helped build this year’s program. Among them we would like to specially thank: the Creative Industries Fund NL, Allianz Kulturstiftung, the Winchester School of Art, the Canadian Embassy, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the University of the Arts, Berlin, Audi, and Aarhus University, who not only provide financial and organizational support but have also been involved in the conversation leading up to transmediale 2016 and many of whom will be involved in the follow-up. This brings us to 2017: the 30-year anniversary of transmediale. What better way to prepare for such a moment than with a Conversation Piece, which through its experimental approach addresses the past, present, and future of the festival form itself?

Kristoffer Gansing
Artistic Director, transmediale

Kristoffer Gansing Artistic Director, Florian Wüst Film & Video Curator, Oliver Lerone Schultz Chair / Anxious to Act, Teresa Dillon Chair / Anxious to Make, Ben Vickers Chair / Anxious to Share, Theresa Züger Chair / Anxious to Secure, Daphne Dragona Curator transmediale Co-Curricular Program, Inga Seidler Program Coordination, Sibylle Kerlisch Production, Melvin Neumann Project Management; Elisabetta Rapetti Project Management; Sarah Theurer Project Management; Katharina Gratzl-Karnitschnig Administration & Finance, Sanga Lenz Administration & Participant Management, Giulia Messia Participant Management, Filippo Gianetta Marketing & Communications, Tabea Hamperl Press, Elvia Wilk Editing, Maria Lechner Marketing, Natalie Schütze Communications & Editing, Ina Bassarak Accreditation, Sophie Joos Info Counter; Technical support serve-u, Phillip Sünderhauf, Andreas Buchholz, Marc Klische; Graphic Design The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger, Manuel Bürger, Hendrike Nagel, Jannis Zell; Stefan Schmied Festival Trailer; Website Development einskommanull, Sebastian Göbel, Laura Oldenbourg, Michael Scharnagl; Translators Janet Leyton-Grant, Sabine Weier; Photo Documentation students of design akademie berlin , led by Prof. Sebastian Denz: Roman Barz, Maya Bohneberg, Max Fortmüller, Manuel Genolet, Dorothea Halbig, Leonie Kircher, Clemens Lintner, Dorian Meyer-Venter, Alissa Verj; Julian Paul Photography

Advisory Board Alex Adriaansens, Marie-Luise Angerer, Dieter Daniels, Jan Edler, Micz Flor

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

Partners: CTM Festival, Aarhus University, Winchester School of Arts, creative industries fund NL, UDK Berlin, Embassy of Canada, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Edith Russ Haus, Donau Festival, Berliner Gazette, Allianz Kulturstiftung, National and Kapodistrias University of Athens, Metal, Barbican

Sponsors: serve-u technical support, Eventbrite, Audi

Media partners: arte creative, radioeins, Motherboard, Wired, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Berlin Art Link, iRights Media, Berliner Fenster, neural

Supporters: Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Université de Montréal, University of San Francisco Open Lab - Newcastle University, ArtSclence Interfaculty of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague and Royal Conservatoire The Hague, Artistic Technology Lab University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Critical Media Lab, Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures, Academy of Fine Art and Design FHNW, Embassy of the United Kingdom, Embassy of Sweden, Ethereum, Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture, Finnland-Institut Deutschland, HI AP, Hybrid City Conference, MAZI Projects, Art Laboratory Berlin, LABoral, Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, ver.di, The Guggenheim, Danish Arts Foundation, In-Berlin, Echoo Konferenzdolmetschen, Anette Lazai Schriftdolmetschen, Aqua Monaco, Flora Mate