[syndicate] review of transmediale 08 (for french readers only)

[anna balint]

The Signature work of Janez Jansa was reincluded in the transmediale  
exhibition in a wonderful, hanky-panky way, though the curator  
distanced herself from the work - i don't know why the collectively  
realized individual Janes Jansa did not announce this  on the list.

Transmediale this year was significantly different from the pervious  
editions. It was more open, more international, the lectures more  
open-minded, friendly and loosely connected to the topic conspire. I   
noted many idea form the lectures of Einar Thorsteinn, Otto Roessler,  
Loretta Napoleoni, Konrad Becker, and due to the Villem Flusser  
Theory award I met for the first time  my life a theoretician from  
Bangladesh. Naeem Mohaiemen (bd) won a honorary mention for his paper  
Fear of a Muslim Planet: The Islamic Roots of Hip-Hop (available at  
http://www.shobak.org/text/hiphop-full.html).

I liked the most the video program of the festival - many young film- 
makers could present their work all five days during the festival.  
Certainly a strong selection could be made out of the movies that   
the transmediale festival will present tour the world. I hope that  
the Elesyn of Billy Roisz, the Pneuma monoxyd of Thomas Körner, the  
Desert Hot Spring Motel of Sasha Pirker will be part of the  
selection. Also the performances of the Japanese d.v.d. duo and   
ibitsu were precise and deep enough to offer more than  
entertainement. Unfortunately I missed the performance of Marko  
Kosnik, but it must have been great to have a festival director to  
read at the opening Marko's text he has written some while ago.
The less happy I was with the works presented at the exhibition, not  
that it was not good exhibition - perhaps it was - but it did not  
leave any particular impression in me. Well, that is also only partly  
true, as a true fan of Velimir Khlebnikov I admired the way Marko  
Peljhan persuaded Hlebnikov to collaborate with him for a special  
object  (Marko Pelhjan, Velimir Khlebnikov: Ladomir AB 7th Surface,  
Object, si/ru, 2008), also I liked the way the Société Réaliste  
cleared down some religious- utopian-revolution(s) into a minimal   
calendar-master plan, and i liked Wonder Beirut, a reverse-magic  
photographic ritual by Joana Hadjithomas/Hlalil Joreige (lb). That's  
it, a lot of people come every year to transmediale to see what's up,  
later in june scepticists say every year that media art is dead, net  
art is dead, in september new calls come to the infosphere, and so on.
greetings from Berlin,
anna



On Feb 7, 2008, at 6:01 PM, fmadre at free.fr wrote:

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