In July 2016, media outlets reported that the Japanese company Funai Electric would that month stop their manufacture of VHS machines, the last enterprise in the world to do so. It’s with fitting irony of the moment then that transmediale almost simultaneously celebrates its thirtieth edition, as a video festival turned digital art and culture event. It’s also a fitting occasion to reflect on how media culture is ever elusive, not only concerning its constant drift towards the next new thing but also the increasing confusion of distinctions pertaining to the material and the immaterial, and how it mobilises physical resources as well as techno-cultural imaginaries

When transmediale was born as VideoFilmFest in 1988, the techno-cultural imaginary in which it was set was not that of digital but of video culture [Videokultur], devoted to a still analogue medium on the brink of digitisation. In the ensuing years, that digital transformation prompted many to ask what video would become in the future. Would it inspire a long-awaited global emancipation and decentralisation of established media, enabling new forms of non-linear storytelling and scaled-down business models? Given the death of VHS as a commercial product, we may declare these hopes defunct, the detritus littering the boulevard of broken media dreams that technological development seems to leave in its wake. But this is only true from a simplified techno-centric perspective, as we can also observe how many of these earlier questions around the digitisation of specific media technologies in the past arise again in relation to changes in society at large.

As our environment becomes digitised and networked, and our interactions within it augmented and optimised through algorithms, we may ask whatever happened to the idea of a medium as a closed-off entity for human communication and representation. We now seem to be confronted with an ongoing mediation, where technology becomes more autonomous and agency is ascribed to machines talking to machines in ever more complex systems, in which the human is but one cog in the wheel—or rather a data unit in process. It is for this contemporary situation that we prepared transmediale 2017 ever elusive, a title that signifies the manner in which the festival is always transforming itself, recalling its shift from a monomedial to a transmedial art event. But it also goes beyond that, asking what the larger shift from media to constant, automated, and autonomous mediation might mean for politics, art, and culture, and what new forms of critical cohabitation might emerge alongside these elusive post-, in- and nonhuman forces.

Eschewing linear approaches, the participants of transmediale 2017 look for answers by intercutting the technology languages of the past, present, and future.

Kristoffer Gansing Artistic Director, transmediale

Welcome to transmediale 2017 ever elusive, celebrating thirty years of transmediale. For frequent transmediale visitors, festival themes might seem to come and go with no direction as to what to hold on to from one edition to the next. However, with 2016’s Conversation Piece, an understanding of the unstable nature of meaning within shifting contexts of practice emerged, which in turn informs ever elusive. The program starts from the middle of the current development of forms of agency beyond the human, tracing the elusive relations between nature, culture, and technology. The programmatic sections are fluid, reflected in the structure of this magazine that provides contextual material relating to the month of activities that marks the thirtieth edition. The extended duration reaps the benefit of the month-long exhibition alien matter, which accompanies the festival as a special project and opens concurrently alongside three “classic” festival days on 2 February at HKW. Three excursions follow: one-day thematic programs at external venues, and at the end of the month we return to HKW with a closing event featuring Laurie Anderson and an exploration of the thirty-year history by special guests, who will activate archival program artifacts.

Kristoffer Gansing Artistic Director, Daphne Dragona Conference Curator, Florian Wüst Film & Video Curator, Inke Arns Exhibition Curator, Inga Seidler Program Coordinator, Sibylle Kerlisch Production, Amelie Buchinger Project Manager, Sabrina Kürzinger Project Manager, Isabelle Busch Project Manager, Katharina Gratzl-Karnitschnig Administration & Finance, Sanga Lenz Administration, Sujmo Akcali Administration Exhibition, Giulia Messia Participant Management, Filippo Gianetta Marketing & Communications, Tabea Hamperl Press, Maria Lechner Marketing, Charlotte Finke Communications, Natalie Schütze Communications, Nina Prigge Accreditation & Tickets, Nicola Angelillis Info Counter, Editors Arielle Bier, Fiona Shipwright, Elvia Wilk, Translators Janet Leyton-Grant, Jennifer Sophia Theodor, Technical Support by serve-u: Phillip Sünderhauf, Andreas Buchholz, Marc Klische, Graphic Design by The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger: Manuel Bürger, Simon Schindele, Alexander Papoli-Barawati, Stefanie Ackermann, Website Development by einskommanull: Laura Oldenbourg, Sebastian Göbel, Michael Scharnagl

Advisory Board Alex Adriaansens, Marie-Luise Angerer, Dieter Daniels, Jan Edler, Micz Flor, Moritz van Dülmen, Hortensia Völckers

Festival Architecture by raumlaborberlin, Francesco Apuzzo with Nina Peters and Ryan Kelso-Lewis

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

Exhibition alien matter: Lotto Stiftung Berlin, Deutsches Architektur Zentrum

Partners: CTM Festival, Aarhus University, Winchester School of Arts, creative industries fund NL, UDK Berlin, Embassy of Canada, Schering Stiftung, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Langenbeck Virchow Haus, Verdi, silent green, Berliner Gazette, ngbk

Sponsors: serve-u technical support, Eventbrite, YUPO

Media partners: radioeins, der Freitag Das Meinungsmedium, Berlin Art Link, Spike Magazine, berliner fenster, neural

Supporters: British Council, Embassy of the United States of America, Österreichisches Kulturforum, Bundeskanzleramt Österreich, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, K3-School of Arts & Communication, Malmö University, design akademie berlin, Critical Media Lab, Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures, Academy of Fine Arts and Design FHNW, Concordia University, Hexagram, Echoo Konferenzdolmetschen, IN-BERLIN, Preussenquelle, Dopper