Newsletter: Conference

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Newsletter from 18.12.2008 transmediale.09 DEEP NORTH 28.01. - 01.02.2009 House of World Cultures Berlin, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 Conference

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1. Making/Thinking: The Cultural Tomorrow 2. Hot Spots 3. Opening of the Conference 4. Shift - Break - Control 5. Climate change as paradigm shift 6. Environment 2.0 7. House of Happiness Brunch 8. Action between Art, Industry and Policy

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1. Making/Thinking: The Cultural Tomorrow The process of climate change is a multidimensional phenomenon signalling a paradigmatic and dramatic cultural change. As such we are witnessing a planetary transformation process that alters the social, political and economic condition of cultures in our world. Countering what seems to be an unidentifyable and seemingly uncontrollable enemy requires radical new modes of thinking and agency. Taking its cues from the DEEP NORTH of contemporary and technological Inuit culture the conference examines the global repercussions of actions set into motion at the Earth's northern polar region. The conference begins Wednesday, 28.01. and runs until Saturday, 31.01. A special Brunch event hosted by the Brazilian Descentro network will fuse the festival conference and salon events together on Sunday February 01. Conference sessions take place in the Auditorium of the House of World Cultures. Admission is 9 euros, reduced 7 euros. Tickets may be purchased in advance, starting on 15.01. The conference of transmediale.09 is organised in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

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2. Hot Spots Hot Spots link the conference with the salon programme. Artists will present their work and concepts, according to the thematic frame of the conference and/or salon of that day. Hotspot 1 Marko Peljhan Arctic Perspectives - Third Culture on the Floe Edge Thu, 29.01. 1830 hrs The geocultural territories of the Arctic are poorly understood in the hemispheric centre of our planet. Mirages of vast open frontiers that will enable a renewed lease on global resourcing are colliding with cultures embodying deep memories and reflection of 19th and 20th century devastation and exploitation strategies and astute social, cultural and spatial navigation/survival capabilities. The theatre of the geopolitical North, living in the survivalist, mercantilist and global security and climate change visions that feed its narratives, is juxtaposed to an alliance of geocultures that are aimed at its reflection and deconstruction. Hotspot 2 Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Roennskog) Escalation Fri, 30.01. 1030 hrs The intervention is part of a larger project aimed at tracing the new conditions in the inhabited landscapes in the North, investigating and analysing the phenomena of ESCALATION. Almost following the exponential global temperature increase charts, the news referring about conflictual visions about possible uses of the natural resources in the North, increased risks of ecological mutations, claims of sovereignty, new mineral oil deposits and fields being discovered, conversions of industrial infrastructures, new plans for connecting existing transportation networks are flooding in daily. In a pattern similar to that that characterised the conflict architecture of the Cold War, escalation seems to be the dominant theme of today's transformation processes in the North. While escalation in the thermonuclear arms race during the Cold War was substantially a deterrent strategy, today its consequences are a sort of meltdown of given pre-conceived assumptions about the stability of the region and of the knowledge pools, practices and protocols we activate to describe the contemporary relation between inhabitation and geography.

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3. Opening of the Conference Thu, 29.01. beginning at 1300 hrs Emerging in a global blind spot the consequences of climate change have the potential to unleash a radical capacity for transformation breaking through history, blowing across boundaries, ripping through political sytsems and cultural roots. Political philosopher Carl Schmitt, making the distinction between 'the real enemy' and 'the absolute enemy' hints at the possibility of enacting cultural techniques in confronting the massive scale of the threats we are facing. If climate change represents the 'absolute enemy' of our age, where new realities are born out of revolutions, not out of easy transitions, what are dynamics we can seize upon to reconfigure the biological, cultural and technological system called earth? 1300 hrs: Opening Lecture Claus Leggewie, ClimateCulture - Climate change as cultural change 1400 hrs: Opening of the Conference Rob van Kranenburg, Making/Thinking: The Cultural Tomorrow 1430 hrs: The Making and the Thinking of Culture, with Paul Quassa and Michel Tibon-Cornillot, chaired by Rob van Kranenburg

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4. Shift Break, Control - Cultural Perspectives beyond Policy Fri, 30.01. beginning at 1200 hrs When it comes to climate change, many systems of control designed around national borders break down: internationally restrictive trade processes and systems of enforcement have little or power in the face of desertification, mass flooding, forced migration and other social and environmental disasters. The industrial and heavy technological revolutions in 19th/20th century Europe and US contained a blindness to the consequences of these developments. We now need new strategies to prevent cultural, social and ethical collapse. Can scaling up local initiatives help meet global challenges? What can we learn from models that distribute insecurity as a default; such as those which are improvised and informal in Lagos, New Delhi and Karachi? Part 1 (1200 hrs): Discussion with Claudia Kemfert and Lorenz Petersen, chaired by Harald Welzer Part 2 (1500 hrs): Discussion with Atteqa Malik, Binyawanga Wainaina and Yasir Husain, chaired by Harald Welzer

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5. Climate change as paradigm shift Sat, 31.01. beginning at 1030 hrs Things sometimes happen which change forever the condition of being alive in a particular era. Events, like the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or 9/11, have had both a real and symbolic impact on the Western Imagination and have geopolitical, social and cultural consequences, that change the whole world forever. Why is it, that such events, for all our scenario planning, visualising, mapping and data mining techniques, are so unpredictable? Is there any ethical or moral teleology in the global transformation process called climate change? What does it mean to understand climate change as cultural change? What might the long-term psychological effect of this be? Can we begin to forsee where it all might end? 1030 hrs: Introductory Keynote by Sheila Jasanoff The professor of science and technology studies at Havard University talks about the changes in political culture in the context of global transformation processes. 1300 hrs: Discussion Climate change as paradigm shift with: Endre Kiss, Lutz Dammbeck and Victor Nemchinov, chaired by Rob van Kranenburg

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6. Environment 2.0 Sat, 31.01. 1600 hrs Drawing together the perspectives of environmental scientists, web technologists interested in the interface between digital footprint and environmental footprint, and artists concerned with creating precedents for social change on environmental sustainability. Environment 2.0 seeks to decode the complex relationships between people, nature and technology, at a time when the nature of humankind's relationship to the environment is changing, as the world ceases to be inert raw material and becomes instead navigable, computable and manipulable. A key interest is creative interdisciplinary practice that intervenes in the social processes that shape our relationship to the environment, not through artworks staged in distant beauty spots, but through creative interventions closer to home that can help contribute to social change, or that suggest alternative perspectives on sustainability. With Andrea Polli, Usman Haque and Jochen Richters (tbc), chaired by Drew Hemment

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7. House of Happiness Brunch Sun, 01.02. 1100 hrs What if the North is becoming the South? What if the South is becoming the North? Is the centre becoming the edge? Is the surface becoming the deep? What are you doing? The Houses of Happiness is a real life Brazilian initiative involving a series of dwellings where artists and programmers live, work and develop lifestyles based on an integrated relationship with ecology and cosmology working with the constraints of nature and embedding technologies as antennaes of change. Music, food, drink and serious talk will be the fuel of this collective vision. You are invited to come and join this performative action with the from Brazil. With Saskia Sassen, Francis Kere, Scott Lash, Isaac Mao, Lamis Saidi a.o.

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8. Action between Art, Industry and Policy Panel discussion (in German only), conference special event Wed, 28.01. 1600 hrs With State Secretary Michael Mueller, Bernd Wiemann (Vodafone Germany) and artist Hermann Josef Hack For description in German see above

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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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