»I prefer to be careful,« says Lynn Pook, »for a lot of visitors it’s too massive.« That is why, during the five days of the festival, the Karlsruhe artist always stays near her work »À fleur de Peau – Soundinstallation for one body«. The work consists of a computer, 16 mini-loudspeakers, a doormat, a white cloth hanging from the ceiling that, lit up by a powerful spotlight, forms a half-open booth. Visitors going into Pook’s installation have to take off their shoes, and are then bandaged and wired up on their feet, knees, elbows, backs, chests and foreheads by the artist – their ears are sealed off with soundproof earplugs. Wrapped up like this, you feel a bit as if you are in a Terry Gilliam film fantasy. For the next quarter of an hour you can only move very cautiously. Through the loudspeakers sewn into the bandages, you now feel a composition made up of dribbling, scraping and rasping sounds – small medium-frequency sensations that beat against the backs, hands and foreheads of the visitors.

»À fleur de peau« was the eye candy in the »Workspace« at this year’s transmediale, whose inevitable architecture of writing desks, computers, monitors and a DJ’s control panel in the foyer of the House of the Cultures in Berlin formed a buffer zone to the other festival events (exhibition, numerous discussions, screenings, performances and presentations). The intention here was for visitors and producers to meet up in an open situation and get talking with one another. This is what was envisaged in the conception of the festival directors Andreas Broeckmann and Susanne Jaschko, who have now organized their fourth transmediale together – this year under the motto »Fly Utopia!«

It is no secret that, whenever media technology and cultural production meet, social and technological utopian dreams are also in play. This fact was also apparent in the case of the artists and activists that participated in the Workspace. The TV-collective Candida TV from the Roman squatters’ scene propagates mini-media networks and produced a short schedule that was broadcast daily via its own antenna in the House of the Cultures of the World and on the Berlin Open Channel. MI2 (Multimedia Institute Zagreb), on the other hand, wrote a transmediale web log online1, while presenting »onsite« its software and music projects, which are closely connected with the discourses concerning copyright and open source. The artists from Nomadic III from Karlsruhe worked on the connection between nerd culture and »Wandervogel« culture – and installed a virtual campfire, consisting of three monitors.

The climate of the two-day conference, which focused on the large and small utopias and dystopias of the past and present, also stayed as cool as the virtual campfire. In a dialogue with the Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage, media theorist Geert Lovink pointed out the historical character of the utopia, of the »utopian moment«, which, as soon as it becomes conscious, is already over. He gave the example of the explosion of the rave and techno scenes in the early nineties, a moment when the normal systems were interrupted, a moment of alienation. In such historical situations, he said, collective forms of freedom often arise. Hage, who formerly worked with Pierre Bourdieu, referred to Ernst Bloch and emphasized the everyday nature of utopian thought and its ambivalent character. He asserted that the only remedy against the danger of developing purely intellectual conceptions of a perfect society was a form of utopian thought that saw the social situation as open and full of possibilities. According to him, the so-called »realistic thought« of contemporary neo-conservative theorists is »up to date«, but not »realistic«: reality is always more than that which is. A conservative form of »realpolitik« that aims to make people blind to the possibilities of life, he said, is carrying on »social necrophilia«: the »deader« the population, the more it is loved by the government.

The author, doctor and artist Rebecca Gomperts, who works in the initiative Women on Waves2 (founded in 1999) for the liberalization of abortion laws all over the world, demonstrated how to bring movement into bogged-down social conflicts. Women on Waves developed a mobile abortion clinic (design: Atelier van Lieshout) that can be transported both by truck and ship. There, the abortion pill can be distributed to women safely and legally outside the territorial waters of countries with restrictive abortion laws. Up to now, Women on Waves has dropped anchor off the coasts of Ireland (2001) and Poland (2003), accompanied by great media attention.

A related mixture of art, public relations work and a critique of prevailing conditions is also to be found in the works of Shilpa Gupta, the winner of the transmediale award in the »Interaction« category. In the exhibition, Gupta set up the installation »Your Kidney Supermarket« - a room in which visitors are given the fictive possibility of buying a kidney. With candy-coloured posters and a lively, trendy advertisement, Gupta names the transport routes used by the illegal international organ trade, which can be carried out quickly and efficiently using modern communications technologies: from south to north, from poor to rich, from woman to man. Kidney models on the wall packaged ready for sending complete the corporate identity of the sales room. On the accompanying web site Xeno.Bio.Lab3, the Indian artist extends the range of offers. »Do you want an organ?« asks a dialogue field, offering kidneys, eyes, skin implants and livers as if for sale. Using ironic trategies, Xeno.Bio.Lab criticizes the greed and consumerism of the West with regard to the poorer regions of the world, which lead it to even penetrate the bodies of the people living there without any scruples. Admittedly, however, the place where the »Kidney« installation was set up – a room built of partitions in the transmediale exhibition - deprived the work of the surprise effect that it may have had in another context, for example in a real shop (where it has already been shown).

The Chinese director Zhou Hongxiang won the »Image« award for his film »The Red Flag Flies« - a confusing statement on the present situation of Chinese society. »The Red Flag Flies« combines Maoist propaganda folklore with stylistic elements from Beijing opera and contemporary video-clip aesthetics. Passersby swinging flags, people in uniform, police, schoolchildren, teenagers and elderly people declaim singly or in chorus Chinese political slogans of the past 40 years. »It’s good to have one child!«, »Don’t forget the class struggle!«, »Poor is not socialism!« - say the subtitles. Each slogan is reinforced by a gong beat. Rhythmic cuts and effects keep the pace going. Often, the actors pose as if in the paintings and posters of socialist realism: gaze and gesture point the way into the future that sees the victory of communism, while a whispering voice constantly calls into question what is happening: »What is struggle?«, »What is clear?«

For questions that cannot be tackled using conventional data processing, Wilfried Hou Je Bek, the founder of socialfiction.org, developed the efficient software ».walk«4, which brought him the transmediale award in the »Software« category. ».walk« combines psycho-geographical strategies of urban appropriation with generic algorithms. Even a small group of walkers can solve complicated arithmetical problems in this way by simply moving around the city. And, completely by the by, this programme shows that utopias do not have to fly: you can also walk.

Fly Utopia! transmediale.04 – international media art festival berlin, 31 January to 4 February 2004, House of the Cultures of the World, www.transmediale.de
The festival was accompanied by the German-language publication Bandbreite: Medien zwischen Kunst und Politik, eds. Andreas Broeckmann and Rudolf Frieling. Berlin, Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2004

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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