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01–02/02 › HAU 1 & HKW
This year's festival theme
#LIVE!? puts the spotlight on the practice of media-based audio/visual live performance. Accordingly,
What is Live? – a symposium convened in collaboration with guest curators Sandra Naumann and Jan Thoben – opens the floor to dialogue between artistic practitioners of the discipline and theorists of sound and image-based arts and cultural and media sciences.
It is by no means the first time in media history that the mass dissemination of film, radio and TV has sparked heated discussion of just how "live" and "authentic" mediatized subject matter may be. Yet the ubiquity of digital live technologies and wildfire spread of the Internet have added new urgency to these questions: a medial revolution is again underway, radically altering patterns of consumption and perception, artistic practice, and the value chains of cultural industries.
In considering what 'liveness' entails in the age of media technology, two major aspects may be identified: on the one hand, audiovisual recordings (and reproductions thereof) were what first made it possible to experience a "live" situation in an atemporal and non-site specific manner and, particulary in the context of mass media broadcasts, brought the term "live" into existence as a differentiator that had previously never been needed; and, on the other hand, media artists have experimented with the performative potential of technological media in live settings ever since these were invented, i.e. they tested the limits of film and records, video, tape and the computer. At the same time, the growth in interactive applications of media technologies has lead to new forms of socio-cultural participation and much discussed manifestations of
augmented experience. The question as to whether, in terms of their aesthetic and everyday cultural impact certain media technologies are genuinely suited to "liveness" or to its diametric opposite seems to have not yet been conclusively answered.
The criteria that may be applied to determine whether a situation is "live" have still not been clearly defined. Is the "live" quality defined by the timeframe available for decision-making or by the synchronicity of creation and reception? By real-time processes? Is it the spontaneity of subjective decisions? And does that subsequently assign errors to the function of apparent markers for "liveness"? To what extent do reproductive media in a performative context gain an immediacy or aura?
The symposium will address these and other major issues regarding the implications of contemporary media developments between the poles of practice and theory and hence, galvanise discourse on audiovisual liveness. This discussion will be embedded in multifaceted ways in the festival's various events, demonstrating specific approaches to and modes of artistic work. Among the most noteworthy number the
Opening Concert by Morton Subotnick, Recombinant Media Labs'
CineChamber, the
Pioneers, the
Wellenfeld program co-produced with
the Electronic Studio of the Technical University Berlin, and the audiovisual performances co-presented with
transmediale –
Greg Pope & Gert-Jan Prins,
MoHa! with Idan Hayosh and Anu Vahtra, and the four performances of the series
LIVE:RESPONSE 1 & 2 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
The 2011 themes of CTM and transmediale complement and cross-pollinate, enabling a thematic interweave between the two platforms. The two festivals therefore link and their discourse programs with an Interface-Keynote, which marks the end of CTM.11
What is Live? symposium and the beginning of transmediale's investigation into the questions raised by 2011's theme
RESPONSE:ABILITY.
SCHEDULE
TUE 01/02
12:00 Keynote: Die Scheinbarkeit des Live. Irritationen der Gegenwart(swahrnehmung) durch präsenzerzeugende Medien
Wolfgang Ernst
13:00 Session 1: Back to live?
Lectures & Discussion: Christoph Gurk / Golo Föllmer / Pit Schultz / Andreas Bogk
Chair: Andrea Goetzke
15:00 Session 2: Medium or Instrument – Emergence and Intention
Artist's Presentation: Ei Wada "Braun Tube Jazz Band"
Lectures & Discussion: John Croft / Shintaro Myazaki / Rolf Großmann
Chair: Daniel Gethmann
17:00 Session 3: Spectator or Participant?
Artist's Presentation: Ali Demirel / Rob Fischer
Lectures & Discussion: Steve Dixon / Katja Kwastek / Regine Buschauer
Chair: Frauke Behrendt
WED 02/02
12:00 › Session 4: Immersion and Self Experience
Artist's presentation: Greg Pope
Artist's presentation: Yutaka Makino
Lectures & discussion: Gabriele Klein / Werner Jauk / Beate Peter
Chair: Marie-Luise Angerer
14:30 › Session 5: Media Performance or Peformance Media?
Artist's presentation: Naut Humon – Recombinant Media Labs
Lectures & discussion: Malcolm LeGrice / Yvonne Spielmann / Mick Grierson
Chair: Axel Volmar
17:00 › Session 6: Going Fragile – Points of Resistance and Criticism in Live Musical Practice
Lectures & Discussion: Matthieu Saladin / Jean-Luc Guionnet
THU 03/02
16:00 › CTM/TM Interface Keynote-Lecture: Digital Liveness – Realtime, Desire and Sociability
Lectures & discussion: Philip Auslander / Eric Kluitenberg / Mushon Zer Aviv
Chair: Drew Hemment
