The imagination – an essential capacity of the human-self – can open up the world and allow us to see other realities untethered from dominant political and social structures. From the individual mind to the collective consciousness, the imagination can bind us together, establishing common affinities that can advance change and overhaul societal structures. The works presented in the first programme of remote. response. request. ask what place the radical imagination has in how we see and shape the reality around us; bringing action to the present by asking us to live, and not just imagine, a different way of being.

For the Record is a call-and-response exchange between London and Vancouver that resonates from opposing ends of the new transmediale studio space. In the work, filmmaker Rhea Storr and writer Phanuel Antwi reinterpret each other’s practice and sense of place, advancing a form of diasporic archive told through the bonds of Black kinship. A screening of Storr’s film Here is the Imagination of the Black Radical accompanies the pair’s conversation.

Sam Tam Ham’s Te Moana Meridian calls for a relocation of the Prime Meridian from Greenwich, UK, to Te Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean). Based on a real proposal to the United Nations General Assembly, Ham’s work activates the radical imagination as a method to challenge prevailing Western realities of space and time.

Download the programme flyer in English and German