»There's a pleasant atmosphere.« And indeed: the large hall of the ZKM opened wide to provide both open spaces and smaller locations to cope with all the social pleasures and obligations that a »media-art festival« entails. The festival was to be about »identities in the 21st century,« and these are, after all, produced socially and performatively as well. This phrase seemed to the organisers to be a suitable lowest denominator for giving a variety of different projects, installations and presentations something more in common than just the vague label »media art.« Apparently, however, the latter is barely easier to understand than identity itself: »In the face of a social reality that is heavily influenced by the fact that the print media and electronic media set up a global media space that moulds the traditional reality of the senses, art ... is the only critical, discursive possibility to analytically penetrate the heterogenous network of the media world,« writes Peter Weibel in his foreword to the catalogue. Herbert Kapfer, the director of »intermedium,« decrees - with some cultural pessimism - in his introduction: »Commercial and artistic uses of media technologies can barely be told apart any more.« Now, the director of a festival and his host do not necessarily have to agree with one another on content. However, the gap that opens up between art as a critique of social conditions on the one hand, and its fusion with commercialised reality on the other, not only raises doubts as to whether generalisations like those quoted here do anything more than fill pages, but, in a nutshell, gives some idea of the vagueness of the event.

Although sometimes technically perfect, a number of presentations were rather meagre or contradictory in their content. In the video-dance performance »D.A.V.E.« by Klaus Obermaier and Chris Haring, for example, the precision with which the videos were projected to fit the contours of the excellent dancer's moving body was fascinating. But the performance ended up concentrating more on effects that on the promised »playful transgressions of identity«: in accordance with the composition of the audience, the white, male body remained the measure of all things - even if towards the end a female body (also white) was projected for one brief moment (http://www.aec.at/festival2000/texte/dave_d.htm).

It is not hard to imagine this technology getting a positive commercial response at fashion shows and large-scale parties. The installation and performance »..devolve into II..« by ORF Art Radio, on the other hand, is probably less interesting in a commercial regard: in the gloomy cube of the ZKM, half a dozen loudspeakers played sounds and noises that were either produced on the spot or streamed via the internet, while streamed images appeared on a screen in the slow, slightly jerky rhythm of a webcam. The »Why?« of this installation remained just as obscure as the question of who was doing what where: at any rate, the explanation in the flier - that »'..devolve into II..' is part of an artistic tradition that sees the medium of radio, affected as it has been by the convergence with new broadcasting, recording and surveillance technologies, as a model context for a critical, analytical exploration of the effects of digitisation on processes of cultural commication/production/distribution« - hissed along just as vaguely as the loudspeakers. (http://kunstradio.at/PROJECTS/DEVOLVE_II/index.html).

The »Tonkopf-Duett« [Recording-Head Duet] by Thomas Meinecke and Klaus Theweleit was altogether more pleasant to listen to. The two artists put on records for each other and made comments on them, all the while casually nodding their heads. They demonstrated above all their expert fantasies, in which changes of rhythm and hardness of touch are seen as signs of changing manners of perception. Apart from sometimes rather fatherly pieces of wisdom, it sounded good not least because they avoided senseless questions like the ones put forward in the catalogue text: for example, whether »records act as a soundtrack of identity.« »Peace at last!« sighed Christoph Korn, as he shut the door of the Small Studio behind him, where the »Folk-Song Machine« he developed with Oliver Augst had been temporarily turned off. Here, something that was otherwise largely absent at the »intermedium« was presented in front of a small audience: theory. Using an archive of around 20,000 snippets of speech and sound, the machine decomposed and recomposed the German folk song as a »self-generating audio play,« with Marcel Stötzler providing useful background information in a lecture. He gave an objective analysis of the functions that the folk song as a medium was historically tailored to fit, and that it performs to this day. In passing, he made it clear that, in general, its commercialisation is a smaller problem as regards possible subversions of culture than the perpetual debates about more or less naturalised concepts such as folk, authenticity and identity (http://www.hr-online.de/hf/hr2/volksliedmaschine).

Meanwhile, outside, these continued undiminished, whether as part of an evening podium discussion or in the niches and at the bar; but there was at least one place where, thanks to the staff, the other side of artistic and cultural endeavour could be heard: there, charts and pop from Talk Talk to Destiny's Child were played with complete unconcern.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

---