[b]Isolated Visualisations[/b]

The third transmediale, under the artistic direction of Andreas Broeckmann and Susanne Jaschko, was fronted by the affirmative slogan »Play Global«, which imitated global-player rhetoric in the same way as its predecessors (»Do It Yourself« and »Go Public«). But anyone who has seen the round table-tennis table à la Gabriel Orozco in front of the cloakroom in the House of the Cultures of the World knows what sort of deliberately cultivated ambivalence characterises the appeal given visual form here. In the same way, the software »TelematicMix« by Beatrice Gibson, Sejal Chad and Adrian Ward can be seen as a 1:1 rendering of the festival title. It is a training program based on studies in the flourishing call-centre area of Bombay, and gives users the chance to play through the working day of a global teleworker and thus see the mechanisms of exploitation in the third sector. Similarly, Timm Rautert's photographs of »globalised« spaces on the posters and the programme booklet, which depict symptomatic scenarios such as globalised working conditions and global product spectra, also visualise the theme of the festival.

There were two central conference panels, »Play Global!« (Coco Fusco, Beatrice Gibson, Adrian Ward, Marko Peljhan, Heidrun Holzfeind) and »Global Game Utopia« (Jackie Stevens & Natalie Bookchin, James Der Derian, Birgit Richard & Jutta Zaremba). The first presented artistic strategies, while in the second, geo-political and cultural processes of transformation were explored using computer games.

[b]»the theory of the discursive picnic«[/b]

In his prologue-like, highly stimulating talk, »Art Acts Global«, the art historian and curator Sarat Maharaj, who lectures in London, came up with some sophisticated observations. Going into the question »Is there a role for art in globalisation?«, Maharaj tried to recapitulate the historical demands made on computers in specific media, using the example of Alan Turing in Cambridge in 1937. He quickly moved to a metaphorical level, however. The paradigm of the »decision problem« that Turing worked on led to the issue of historically rooted duality - the duality in which migrant cultures, the »sans papiers«, the »others«, remain excluded. Maharaj sees one of the long-term tasks of digital media to be providing an alternative representation of multi-culture. To make this visible, he maintained, an artwork had to be created that - as Duchamp would say - is no longer art. The works of Multiplicity or Coco Fusco, for example, which do not fit any definite format categories and are therefore not easy to arrogate, function along these lines. This trend also includes media laboratories (such as torolab.com, sarai, net, waag.org) consisting of specialists with an interdisciplinary approach who produce »spaces of consensus« that form a central basis for the development of artistic strategies.

Taken all in all, the speakers in the »Play Global!« panel referred sometimes explicitly and sometimes peripherally to the new technologies. Even though the differing approaches did not produce a discussion - this was partly because of the festival's tight schedule, and partly because of a lack of theories -, Marko Peljhan (Makrolab) gave a detailed talk on the history of the concept of network, and Coco Fusco's project »Dolores from 10 to 10« showed in a role game the conflicts of Mexican female workers, in which the factories become a place that is symbolically open to attack.

In the second panel, »Global Game Utopia«, the chairperson, Claus Pias, gave an introduction to traditional areas where the computer is used as an instrument of control and power. James Der Derian examined the tradition of strategic games as a logical exercise in the military complex. His proposals were »Countergames« - the participatory world game (http://www.calarts.edu/~bookchin/blog) planned by Nathalie Bookchin and Jackie Stevens then provided a concrete example of these. Among other things, its rules stipulate that nationality depends completely on the place of residence, as well as providing for the abolition of private property, and the central redistribution of capital.

So what the conference conveyed was the concept of teamwork as a maxim for artistic work - in the same way that the round table tennis table signalises: this way it's easier to play from all directions!

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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