Always in Opposition?

It was the quest for an »empty space« that led Thomas Köner to make »Suburbs of the Void«, a video work that not only shows the periphery but was, appropriately, presented in the House of World Cultures in a somewhat secluded room. People entering it were offered a view of a snow-covered street canyon where the light conditions seemed to change almost unnoticeably. Lights went on and off, and after a brief time the winter sky disappeared in the darkness again. This work is made up of 2,000 image sequences taken by a surveillance camera situated somewhere in northern Finland. But Köner’s video did not show the person who was to be watched there, and only occasionally did hints of human voices and the noise of vehicles penetrate the background hiss of the soundtrack, disconcerting the viewers. Besides being a reflection on the modern mania for security, »Suburbs of the Void« above all seems to be a sensuous work that uses image and sound to explore time and its perception. It can thus form a counter pole to the overstimulation and rapid pace of the present day.
Such spaces of calm and reflection, however, were otherwise rare at this five-day festival, with its expo-like format and wide-ranging theme. This year’s motto, »BASICS«, was not taken by the transmediale as meaning a return to old principles, for »we know, after all, that the certainties of the Enlightenment would no longer work«, as the festival director, Andreas Broeckmann, explained. Instead, it was understood as a refocusing and further development of the question of the importance of media art and media practice with regard to current social and technological developments.
As became apparent in the conference section, »Basics of Media Art«, media art is at present considered to be undergoing an identity crisis. The panel seemed to agree that this »crisis« has to be seen above all as an opportunity for further development. However, the principles according to which this development could take place remained unclear. Indeed, Gunalan Nadarajan (LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore) asked why there was such a hurry to define this form of art, maintaining that a temporary lack of categories could be very positive when trying to do justice to this hybrid art form.
Even ahead of this year’s transmediale, the debate about the principles underlying a media art that no longer defines itself solely through technical means of expression – a theory that Sally Jane Norman (Culture Lab, Newcastle) found worth discussing in itself – had led to the abolition of the competition categories Software, Image and Interaction. However, this time too, not just one work received an award, but three. Besides »Suburbs of the Void«, the jury was impressed by »Untitled 5«2 by Camille Utterback, a kind of digital painting that reacts to the movements of the viewers, and the installation »Shockbot Corejulio« by 5voltcore (Emanuel Andel and Christian Gützer)3, in which a robot arm produces creativity on a graphic card by means of short circuits. Whereas Christiane Paul (Whitney Museum, New York) criticized the fact that no integration seems to be taking place between »contemporary art« and »New Media Art«, Andreas Broekmann countered by saying that he did not believe in isolation, claiming that works like »Untitled 5« could just as easily be presented in a gallery. But precisely this work also shows what is so problematic about a part of the art exhibited at transmediale. Aesthetic naivety tries to parade as expertise, producing, in Utterback’s work, for example, a glibness that Sally Jane Norman considers completely uninteresting.
But a majority of the works shown were oppositional rather than glib. In consequence, the festival focused mainly on an artistic practice that above all attempted to pose alternatives to current changes brought about by technical advances and new technologies. Many of the participants were concerned with the way state and industry are increasingly encroaching upon the private sphere, and examined questions of consumerism, security and surveillance. In Michelle Teran’s performance »Life: A User’s Manual, >Berlin Walk<«4, she used a scanner to find hidden wireless surveillance cameras in Berlin, and made their images visible for the performance participators on a TV screen. With her work, the artist creates an interface bringing that which normally occurs in buildings and shops onto the street, thus producing a direct connection between inner and outer spaces. Whereas Teran uncovers hidden levels of the urban space, Chris Oakley aims to show the horror of a type of surveillance with a predominantly commercial interest. In his video »The Catalogue«, the value of a person is measured only according to his/her buying power and future needs. Oakley shows customers in a shopping mall who, by means of a surveillance camera, are assigned different markings that provide information on their buying behaviour. Those who have not bought anything so far behave in a particularly suspicious fashion. This work was inspired by the fact that commercial traders would like to put RFID chips (Radio Frequency Identification) on products instead of bar codes.
The Bielefeld »Verein zur Förderung des öffentlichen und bewegten Datenverkehrs e.V.« (Association for the Promotion of Public Mobile and Immobile Data Traffic) not only calls for resistance to this data-collecting frenzy, but also presented the »DatPrivatizer« at the transmediale. This is a device that makes it possible to locate products, admission tickets and store cards that are equipped with »sniffer chips«, to read the data they have stored, and overwrite it. The current project by Makrolab, which is working on the development of a civil counter-reconnaissance system employing UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles)5, also aspires to be a form of dissension. The System-77 Civil Counter Reconnaissance (S-77/CCR) is intended to contribute in this way to the democratisation of surveillance technology.
But transmediale did not only focus on high-tech. In the so-called »Basement« were displayed inventions by prisoners. These showed how one can try to meet human desires and needs using the simplest of materials. In 2001 the group Temporary Services6 managed to invite the imprisoned artist Angelo to create drawings and texts about these original, practical and sometimes bizarre objects, some of which were reconstructed for the exhibition. The report by the Cuban radio announcer Arnaldo Coro Antich, who, broadcasting from Havana, tells all of Latin America how to solve technical problems using very simple means, was highly interesting, as was the »Burma Report«, in which two opposition activists and media artists explained how they worked on the democratisation process from outside Burma/Myanmar.
This made it apparent that transmediale has a »basic instinct« when it is a matter of presenting current themes and projects. While the panel »Re-Thinking Media History« made some important points in the debate on media-art history – for example, Woody Vasulka showed works from the sixties that explored connections between technological developments and the art system -, it would have benefited the entire festival to have shown, as »BASICS«, some historical works as a counterbalance to current media art.