History
transmediale was founded in 1988 as VideoFilmFest, a side-project of the Berlin Berlinale’s International Forum of New Cinema with the intention to offer a platform to electronic media productions not accepted at traditional film festivals such as the Berlinale.
Within the following 20 years, the festival steadily evolved: in 1997 it was first renamed transmedia before it was named transmediale in 1998. This change reflected the festival’s expanding programme which now embraced a wide spectrum of multimedia-based art forms. In 2001, transmediale was restructured. The relocation of the festival to the House of World Cultures and a further expanded programme lead to increasing numbers of visitors to the festival. At transmediale.02, for the first time, an extensive exhibition was presented to the audience, allowing attendees to experience media art spatially. In 2006, the subtitle of the festival changed from international media art festival to festival for art and digital culture, opening up the festival to not just pure media art but also to projects where art, technology and the digital age meet the everyday. The opening of the festival is further reflected in the extension of the transmediale Award with the Vilém Flusser Theory Award, as a reaction to a growing number of theoretical and critical works submitted for the competition. In 2008, the 'transmediale parcours' publication series was launched in order to reflect upon research, as well as artistic and critical backgrounds behind each festival’s theme. The transmediale Vilém Flusser Theory Award recognized outstanding research based art works as well as those dealing with media theory between 2008 and 2011. For the 2012 festival the Theory Award will be transformed into a Residency Programme for artistic research. Moreover, there will be no transmediale Award and also no Open Web Award. Instead, we are opting for tight curatorial coherence in the programming as well as more community engagement outside of the festival.
In 1999 club transmediale was founded as an independent parallel event. Focusing primarily on electronic music and club culture, it is organised by a curatorially and financially independent team. Initially called festival for electronic music, since 2006 it is showing current trends of electronic and experimental music culture under the name of a festival for adventurous music and related arts at prominent localities for club culture, such as Maria am Ostbahnhof in Berlin. Since 2011 club transmediale is called CTM.
With the festival in 2012 transmediale will celebrate its 25 year anniversary with a programme looking back to the past while redefining what it could be in the future. This special occasion will be put down on paper into thematic publications as well as a festschrift.
Read more about this topic: Berlin Transmediale International Media Arts Festival
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