transmediale unfinished
Over the last 20 years, the festival has evolved from VldeoFilmFest and VideoFest to
transmedia and finally to transmediale, presenting twenty comprehensive programmes
of current art and media productions from all over the world and including thousands
of artists, media practitioners and theorists who engage the power as well as the
cultural and aesthetic potential of new technologies.
This book documents the efforts of these artists, as well as the work of hundreds of
team members who, against all odds, have made the festival possible over the years
- including the organisers of our main partner event, Club Transmediale. All those
involved have shared, together with the many supporters and partners of the festival,
the conviction that a constructive approach to our
contemporary social reality
requires a certain level of critical media competency as well as the transgressive
power of art.
Three years ago, our book Bandbreite (Kadmos Verlag, 2004) attempted to outline
the historical context from which transmediale emerged in the 1980s and 90s. The
present volume of the tm*20 Register complements that effort by offering - we
hope - an inspiring overview of all the people and works that have been part of the
programmes of the festival so far. Not least, this solid cultural aggregate is meant to
support and encourage future work on the transmediale.
We are especially grateful
to those whose enthusiasm and support have once again made it possible to to
realise what may, at first, have seemed to be a crazy idea.
A work like this is produced with the somewhat embarrassing awareness of its
own shortcomings. We have to assume that many entries are missing, others are
inconsistent, incomplete, or misplaced. We therefore
point you to the yet empty
errata pages, which the reader should use for the multiple corrections that people will
no doubt point out to us(e.g.via tmx20@transmediale.de) after the book has gone to
print, and which we will publish continuously at www.transmediale.de/tmx20.
We dedicate this book to Micky Kwella, Hartmut Horst, and the other founders who,
in 1988, have given the festival a foundation which has proven to be both flexible and
durable.
Andreas Broeckmann and Thomas Munz
for the transmediale Team
Berlin,January 9th, 2007