transmediale creates a space for critical reflection on cultural transformation from a post-digital perspective. For over thirty years, the annual festival for art and digital culture has been bringing together international artists, researchers, activists, and thinkers with the goal of developing new outlooks on our technological era through the entanglement of different genres and curatorial approaches. In the course of its history, transmediale has grown from its beginnings as VideoFilmFest to one of the most important events for art and digital culture worldwide. Beyond the yearly event, transmediale is a transversal, dynamic platform with a vibrant community and a strong network that facilitates regular publications and year-round activities including commissions and artist residencies.
transmediale – rendering refusal
Refusal renders hope visible. It demands that the conditions for hope emerge and flourish. Wilfully signifying possibilities of deviation, refusal speaks to denied histories and subjectivities.
Hope resides in small spaces, in slivers and in cracks. It is shaped – often under pressure – by desires and ambitions and can negotiate histories, cultures, political spheres, and planetary conditions. Acting as a resource that enables individuals and communities to persist, hope can offer visions of prosperity, security, and redemption to those who seek or need it.
Although appearing divergent, when brought together, hope and refusal can conspire. They can refute the logics of existing orders and function as critical lenses for sustaining collective values, approaches, and actions.
Offering partial renders of socio-political realities that misalign with the status quo, Rendering Refusal explores what can emerge from saying no. In an attempt to broaden perspectives on long-standing political conflicts and to shape futures from contradiction and difference, the works in the exhibition suggest responsibility for plurality and materialise what is often muted, erased, or made fugitive. Working with strategies of non-compliance and negation, the artists present small acts of domestic rebellion, create anti-monuments to myths, imagine failure as progress and manoeuvre between systems of governance. Presenting strategies, proposals and interventions, Rendering Refusal addresses moments of metamorphosis, intimacy, and vulnerability, seeking transformation, regeneration and change.
Check out transmediale website: https://transmediale.de/
