transmediale will begin its year-long festival with the launch of its digital platform Almanac for Refusal. The exhibition Rendering Refusal takes place across two venues in Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and Betonhalle, Silent Green Kulturquartier. Public access will be available as soon as government regulations around the pandemic allow. transmediale will facilitate additional access to the exhibition through Remote Visits and extensive documentation.
Opening its year-long programme, transmediale 2021–22 will launch a digital platform on 28 January. transmediale's Almanac for Refusal brings together a collection of browser-based artworks; films, photo-essays, texts, images, podcasts, sound experiments, and more. Inspired by almanac traditions, the collection will update at the end of each lunar cycle and will act as a guide to the festival. Throughout the year, the Almanac for Refusal will include contributions and artworks from artists, designers, researchers, and activists whose practices map out the way refusal unfolds and can circumvent the status quo.
A key highlight in the January release of the Almanac is the 2021 Marshall McLuhan Lecture by Jason Edwards Lewis. Drawing on the work of the Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group, Lewis will discuss how approaching the ‘question of AI’ from a relational rather than instrumental perspective might create new types of computational systems and digital infrastructures.
The January Almanac for Refusal also presents a new collaboration commissioned by transmediale & CTM Festival. rehearsal letter is a recorded studio session, produced as part of the development of a soundtrack for artist Frances Scott’s forthcoming work Wendy, a film fan-letter to composer and musician Wendy Carlos. Musician and instrument designer Tom Richards built the Mini Oramics machine, based on an original 1976 design by composer and inventor Daphne Oram. This musical interface allows the composer to draw graphic scores on overhead projector rolls, which are then read directly by the machine, creating ‘drawn sound synthesis’. Here, the drawn-sound is used as a method of reinterpreting pages from Carlos’ original scores from Timesteps and Theme from A Clockwork Orange (Beethovania) (1971).
rehearsal letter and the McLuhan Lecture will be accessible online in the Almanac for Refusal from 28 January.
Offering partial renders of socio-political realities that misalign with the status quo, Rendering Refusal explores what can emerge when hope and refusal work together. Taking place across two venues in Berlin - Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and Betonhalle, Silent Green - the exhibition runs until 28 March.
Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, public access to the exhibition will be available as soon as government regulations around the pandemic allow. transmediale will facilitate access to the exhibition through Remote Visits. Visitors can connect via video call with an exhibition guide at the venue, and experience the exhibition together with them. Through these Remote Visits, transmediale provides a unique viewing experience, enabled by technology, that widens accessibility to both venues.
Remote Visits can be booked for both venues on the transmediale website from February.
Starting from 15 January, the 10th anniversary edition of Vorspiel will take place online and in-person. Presented by transmediale & CTM, the pre-festival programme will once more offer space for digital art and culture, as well as experimental music and sound art. Curated by the 35 participating venues, the programme aims to facilitate critical discourse on art, technology, politics, and identity, through ongoing exchange and reflection.
Further information on participating venues and events will be listed on the website: https://vorspiel.berlin
The exhibition is supported by the European Union and launches the Artsformation Project.
transmediale is funded as a cultural institution of excellence by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) since 2004. A full list of partners and supporters can be found on the transmediale website .