ransmediale.09
DEEP NORTH
28.01. – 01.02.2009
House of World Cultures
Berlin, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
Exhibition
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1. Survival and Utopia: Visions of Balance in Transformation
2. Artists and works of the exhibition
3 Other venues: CHB – Corpora in Si(gh)te, [DAM]Berlin – NON Machines
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1. Survival and Utopia: Visions of Balance in Transformation
transmediale Award exhibition 2009
transmediale.09′s exhibition presents a spectrum of artistic positions,
inquiries and responses to the multi-facetted, and often contradictory scenarios
of climate change. Out of the exhibition’s 26 works five are nominated for the
transmediale Award 2009. The prize winners will be announced at the ceremony on
31.01.2009.
Alluding to the interconnectedness and global reach of actions triggered at the
polar ice cap the exhibition seeks to uncover strategies that counter our
mundane sense of powerlessness in the face of overwhelming change. ‘Survival and
Utopia: Visions of Balance in Transformation’ explores visions and critique to
aim at a new cultural rethink with a series of interdisciplinary art works that
reflect on our digital culture and technological condition. Within the
specially-commissioned festival architecture by Berlin based art and
architecture collective raumtaktik, the exhibition becomes part of DEEP NORTH’s
scenario of fleeting temporality, urgency and strategic sustainability.
Encompassing the House of World Cultures (HKW) as its base, the exhibition
extends to a major site specific generative installation at the Collegium
Hungaricum Berlin (CHB) and an installation of serial software art at
[DAM]Berlin. The exhibition at the HKW is on show during the festival
transmediale.09 only (28.01. – 01.02.2009, daily 10.00 -22.00 hrs), admission is
5 reduced 3 euros.
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2. Artists and works of the exhibition
Perry Bard, Man With A Movie Camera: The Global Remake, us 2007 ongoing
Nominated for the transmediale Award 2009
In this global participatory work, people are invited to interpret the original
script of Vertov’s masterpiece, creating a worldwide montage, in Vertov’s terms
‘decoding of life as it is’. Participants from all over the world can upload
footage on the website next to the corresponding scenes from the original film.
The lengths and images of submitted videos are synchronised with the original
scenes through software, which then rotates the added material every day,
ensuring the film may never be the same twice.
Federico Bonelli, ICE, nl/no 2008
The installation ICE is based on a technology developed by SUb multimedia lab,
an Amsterdam based media arts collective. It transforms images according to a
special generated algorithm. In several monitors the viewer can follow the
transformation of photos taken in the North of Norway, that especially reflect
the characteristics of ice and water.
Petko Dourmana, Post Global Warming Survival Kit, bg 2008
Nominated for the transmediale Award 2009
This interactive multimedia installation consists of a two-channel projection
and shows infrared images of the North Sea as a post-apocalyptic landscape that
the observer can only see by using a night-vision device. The installation aims
to be a believable, technological fiction of a future in which human sensory
experience has adapted. The installation is based on the assumption that in the
nuclear winter scenario, seeing in infrared becomes more useful than seeing in
the visible part of the spectrum.
Urs Dubacher, specialita di silicio, ch 2008
The performative installation deals primarily with a mobile kitchen, similar to
a takeaway vendor’s, where Urs Dubacher melts broken parts of computer hardware
and converts them into realistic-looking culinary meals. His work reflects on
our so-called ‘throwaway society’, commenting on recycling, the exploitation of
electronic products, and technology’s implicitly absurd and rapid development.
Marco Evaristti, Trilogy, 2004-2007
The ‘Trilogy’ comprises three projects that deal mainly with the themes of
territories and states. In 2004 Evaristti realised the ‘Ice Cube Project’ – in a
performative action he coloured an ice cube at the coast of Greenland and
declared it his own state. He accomplished a similar action in 2007, where he
covered parts of the top of the Mont Blanc under a red fabric. He completed the
trilogy with a project in the Sahara.
Christian Guetzer, Grow – Fruits of Kronos, at 2007
The installation reflects on the connection and relationship between machine
and nature. Ccontrolled by a certain algorithm the machine changes the position
of a plant in relation to a static light source. Under normal conditions, the
plant would grow in the direction of the light and against gravity. In Guetzer’s
installation these two variables are placed into a constant flux visualised in
the physical form of the plant’s growth.
Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, Matsuko Yokokoji, Tantalum Memorial, uk 2008
Nominated for the transmediale Award 2009
This telephone ‘exchange’ installation is a memorial to the people who have
died in the wars in Congo over the metal tantalum, which is used in cell phone
components and has become more valuable than gold. The work also references a
‘social telephony’ network used by the Congelese diaspora to remain anonymous
and avoid state censorship.
hehe.org, Nuage Vert, fr 2008
A light installation onto the ultimate icon of industrial pollution – the cloud
generated by a coal burning power plant – alerts the public and can persuade
people to change patterns of consumption. In February 2008 the vapour emissions
from a coal burning power plant in Helsinki were illuminated with a high power
green laser animation. It turned into a city scale neon sign, which grew bigger
as local residents took control and consumed less electricity.
Nan Hoover, Doors, de 1981
The video installation was the result of Nan Hoover’s 1980 stipend from DAAD.
Working primarily with light, time and movement, she said that her images
‘reflect quietness, using slow movement to catch the gradual changes in light,
colour, and form. I attempt to transport one into an area within ourselves where
we can dream and explore our personal worlds.’ Nan Hoover studied painting at
the Corcoran Gallery Art School in Washington D.C. before she started in 1975 to
concentrate on video, performance art and photography. In addition to her
artistic work she held professorships at the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf and at
the Rietveld Akademie in Amsterdam. She died in June 2008 in Berlin.
Sebastjan Leban, Stas Kleindienst, Barons, si 2008
The installation deals with the access to drinking water, which is often
hindered especially for people in underdeveloped countries. ‘Barons’ is the name
of a fictitious brand of drinking water, presented in a realistic way, so that
the viewer’s attention is drawn to the connection between the economic market
for drinking water and the problem of getting access to it in many parts of the
world.
Jana Linke, Click & Glue, de 2007
Four metal walls hanging from the ceiling and defining a space in which a
balloon filled with helium moves and floats through the air. As the balloon
continually moves, it touches the surrounding walls and leaves a small deposit
of glue that functions as an anchor before the balloon continues its movement
through the space. Thread by thread, the installation generates a web that
eventually prevents the balloon from moving.
Alice Miceli, inverse square, by/de 2008
The video installation is part of Miceli’s ongoing ‘Chernobyl Project’. While
the transmediale.08 exhibition presented ‘The Invisible Stain’, her new work is
a conceptual view on the exploded reactor number four and the exponential
dynamics created by radioactive contamination in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Christian Niccoli, planschen, de 2008
The video metaphorically embodies the ‘lost in space’ condition experienced by
young foreigners aged between 25 and 38 living in Berlin. It is characterised by
a lack of stable bindings, like job and family, and is represented through a
mass of people swimming around in the middle of the ocean, each one supported by
their own tyre-tube.
Charly Nijensohn, Beyond the End – The Polar Project, gl 2006/2007
The Project comprises a series of videos and photographs based on material
taken in Greenland. It shows members of the Inuit community, who are standing
alone on ice platforms and drifting away into the open and remote wildness of
the Arctic. The piece reflects on the everyday challenges and efforts of these
individuals, but also on the basic qualities of human beings living in that
region.
Michiko Nitta, Extreme Green Guerillas, uk 2007
Nominated for the transmediale Award 2009
Nitta’s project takes current green trends to the extreme. The ‘Extreme Green
Guerillas’ are a network of amateur self-sustaining people who have shortened
their lifespan through the ultimate green lifestyle. The purpose of these
provocative gestures is to question the role of consumerism within green
activities and to provoke questions regarding green lifestyles.
Fernando Jose Pereira, remoteness, pt 2008
The video installation is based on images taken by a webcam, installed in a
remote village of in the extreme north of Iceland near the Arctic Polar Circle.
With composing and manipulating those images, Pereira created a piece that
reveals questions concerning the necessity of communication, monitoring and the
existence under extreme conditions.
Esther Polak, NomadicMilk, nl/ng 2008
The project compares the distribution and sales strategies of two very
different milkproduct-merchands in Nigeria. With the help of GPS systems, the
driveways of the as nomads living Fulani are reconstructed and compared to those
of an active enterpreneurial milk producer, called ‘PEAK milk’. By using a
specially designed robot, the collected data is converted into fine sand lines,
appearing as some kind of drawn ‘sand map’ on the ground.
Andrea Polli, Sonic Antarctica, us 2008
The live performance and sound/visual installation ‘Sonic Antarctica’ is based
on material that Polli recorded during a research residency in Antarctica. It
features natural and industrial field recordings, geosonifications and
audifications, interviews with weather and climate scientists and soundscape
compositions. The footage was taken south of New Zealand and at the geographic
South Pole.
Axel Roch, Ambigious Signalscapes, de/uk 2006
In the work ‘Ambiguous Signalscapes’, through the act of looking, viewers
create and then directly interact with a stream of data. The installation tracks
the observer’s eye movements and, in real-time, the participant is able to turn
fragmented signals of non-photorealistic renderings into landscapes, discovering
along the way that shadows really do exist inside clouds.
Reynold Reynolds, Six Apartments, de 2007
Nominated for the transmediale Award 2009
The video installation documents the life of six people in their apartments.
The inhabitants live isolated, unaware of each other, without drama – they eat,
sleep, watch television. Even though their lives are overshadowed by mass media
generated problems of the larger world and the upcoming ecological crisis, they
do not change their behaviour and awareness.
Jan-Peter Sonntag, AMUNDSEN / I-landscape de/no 2003-2008
The interactive video and sound installation is part of Sonntag’s series
‘almost cinema works’. The footage was taken in Norway close to the former house
of polar scientist Amundsen. While watching the screen, the visitor is
confronted with a psychoacoustic paradox, caused by sounds that can be
experienced through headphones as well as a pedestal that generates deep sounds,
which are absorbed by the viewer’s bodies.
Antoine Schmitt, Time Slip, fr 2008
‘Time Slip’ is based on computer software developed by Schmitt that transforms
the news broadcasted by official news agencies. The transformation does not
concern the content, but changes the grammatical tense of the verbs, rewriting
every sentence in the future tense. ‘Time Slip’ is a visual artwork referring to
philosophical questionings on destiny, its potential pre-written nature or its
causal determinism. It is also a work on the motive energy of unpredictability
and risk, more and more central in the contemporary world.
Emma Wieslander, Glacier 60000, uk 2007
The project deals with landscapes and their perception and description.
Wieslander is interested in pictorial traditions concerning the transformation
from three dimensional into picture plane and vice versa. In this context she
deals with visibility and change of landscapes especially mediated by culture
and technology. Her work is an experimental approach on pictorial depictions
using modern technology.
Marina Zurkow, The Poster Children, us 2007
‘The Poster Children’ is a suite of animated, multi-monitor pieces. In this
panoramic animation, two representative groups at the top of the food chain -
humans and polar bears – share a dystopian landscape comprised of slow-moving
icebergs and piles of e-waste. They both exist next to each other as a symbol of
distinct social issues, and both are natural enemies at the same time.
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3 Other venues: .CHB & [DAM]Berlin
.CHB: Corpora in Si(gh)te
doubleNegatives Architecture (2007-2008)
Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, Dorotheenstr. 12
Opening Mon. 26.01. at 19.00, continues daily through Sun. 08.03.2009
doubleNegatives Architecture (dNA) sets up a number of sensors to form a mesh
network throughout the target area – the building of Collegium Hungaricum Berlin
- in order to collect and distribute real-time environmental information such as
temperature, brightness, humidity, wind direction and sound. The data collected
from these sources are processed by a software and in real-time translated into
nodes reflecting the sensor network. The fluid character of this architecture
occurs as a living form, its shifting structure relates to every environmental
change.
The Japanese-Swiss-Hungarian artists’ collective dNA, founded by Sota Ichikawa
in 1998, consists of an interdisciplinary team of architects, designers,
musicians and software developers. dNA defines architecture as spatial measure
machines. The collective is engaged in crossover activities in a new area of
architecture, making use of digital media and information technologies.
[ http://doublenegatives.jp/ ]
[DAM]Berlin: NON Machines
Christoph Korn, de (2008)
[DAM]Berlin, Tucholskystr. 37
Opening on Mon. 26.01. at 17.00
The NON-Machines are software applications, which direct the attention towards
aspects of deceleration, disconnectivity, knowledge deprivation,
agrammaticality, non-functionality. Five machines from the series are being
presented:
Simple machine, which turns off automatically after a duration of 11 days,
without producing anything during that time / Simple NO Machine / A more complex
machine without start button / Machine, which counts up to 5 during 3 days /
Simple machine only consisting of an OFF button
[ http://dam-berlin.de/ ]
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transmediale.09
DEEP NORTH
festival for art and digital culture berlin
[ http://www.transmediale.de ]
[ info@transmediale.de ]
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