transmediale 2020

Transmediale has become one of the most prominent festivals for art and digital culture in the world and is one of Germany’s cultural institutions of excellence which the Federal Cultural Foundation has pledged to finance in the long term. The festival has been bringing together international artists, researchers, activists, and thinkers with the goal of developing new outlooks on our technological era.

transmediale 2020 examined the limits of networks

transmediale 2020, the last edition under the artistic direction of Kristoffer Gansing, aimed at a broad reevaluation of networks and their limits. The 33rd festival edition entitled E2E (End to End) focused on both forgotten and potential futures with and without networks from 28 January to 01 March 2020.

A month-long group exhibition presented new artistic works that both refute and reform networks. The history of European critical Internet cultures that emerged in the 1990s served as an important reference point: Together with a series of other global experiments in autonomous networking they consistently provided alternatives to the technological solutionist thinking and centralized business models of Silicon Valley.

During its first week, the festival has expanded on the exhibition through talks, workshops, screenings, and performances where international artists, cultural workers, and theoreticians have searched for a conceivable counter-power as well as alternative technological models and cultural narratives that could construct the network principle of end-to-end communication anew.

Drawing on the legacies of European critical and autonomous network cultures, transmediale 2020 not only wanted to make the limits of Internet-based networks visible but also highlight alternatives to bring about sustainable social change.

transmediale is a project by Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The festival has been funded as a cultural institution of excellence by Kulturstiftung des Bundes since 2004.

Artistic director: Kristoffer Gansing