transmediale 2025: (near) near but — far
In an era when digital systems choreographed our desire for closeness—from whispered ASMR battles to children imitating Alexa, and from skin-riding robots serving drinks to e-girls selling bathwater—transmediale’s 38th edition, (near) near but — far, turned a spotlight on how algorithms shaped our intimacies and the closeness we lost in the process. By examining these “performances of proximity,” the festival asked how technology might nurture deeper, more adaptive connections, rather than simply replacing human bonds with machine-driven interactions.
The public opening took place on January 30, 2025, at silent green Kulturquartier, and was followed by three days of lectures, conversations, screenings, and performances at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). As a prologue, two days of workshops at silent green required separate registration. The annual Marshall McLuhan Lecture was held at the Embassy of Canada before the festival’s official opening, setting the stage for critical debates on how our devices and digital platforms placed us in uncanny new proximities.
Led by curators Ben Evans James and Elise Misao Hunchuck, transmediale 2025 adopted a renewed curatorial approach that involved a diverse group of programmers—artists and researchers—while expanding on long-standing collaborations. Further details on the extended curatorial team and the full program were announced in subsequent updates.
Transmediale 2025 marked the latest edition of Berlin’s renowned festival exploring art, culture, and digital technologies. Held at the iconic Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), that year’s program continued to push the boundaries of creative innovation and critical discourse, inviting artists, scholars, and technologists from around the globe to reflect on a rapidly evolving digital landscape. From speculative installations to thought-provoking panels, each event prompted visitors to rethink their relationship with technology, challenging conventional ideas of progress and highlighting the social, political, and ecological dimensions of digital culture. Whether drawn by interactive exhibits, performances, or engaging debates on topics like AI ethics, surveillance, and data colonialism, Transmediale 2025 offered a vibrant space of discovery and dialogue. As Berlin’s cultural heart pulsed with interdisciplinary synergy, attendees left with fresh insights on how we might collectively shape the future of our networked world.A tapestry of provocative lectures, performances, and screenings took center stage at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), offering a panoramic view of how technology, archives, dance, and sound intersected to shape our understanding of the world. Over multiple days, speakers and artists wrestled with questions of power, proximity, and reality—highlighting how the digital age complicated the boundaries between knowing and unknowing, belief and disbelief, and memory and forgetting, all while revealing the humanity—or sometimes inhumanity—embedded within contemporary technological and cultural practices.
Laura Kurgan’s presentation, “GPS for the Brain: Cognitive Mapping Revisited,” set a dynamic tone. Drawing inspiration from Fredric Jameson’s idea of cognitive mapping, Kurgan argued that every map, whether a smartphone navigation tool or a sophisticated data visualization, necessarily reflects the social, economic, and political contexts that give rise to it. She pointed out how neural networks, data extraction processes, and AI algorithms influence the ways we perceive movement and space. Whether these algorithms are applied in contexts as mundane as directing rideshare drivers or as consequential as guiding military drones, they have very real effects on people’s lives and freedoms. Kurgan brought attention to the importance of “getting lost” as both a metaphor and a practical practice: in the same way that losing our way can reveal hidden corners of a city, acknowledging the gaps in our data-fueled interpretations can yield profound insights into biases and omissions. Her conversation with Jussi Parikka amplified the urgency of critically examining cartographic tools that now extend far beyond paper, weaving through satellites, servers, and the algorithmic pathways that shape global flows of information. Though we may rarely think of mapping as political, Kurgan underscored that every choice about what appears on—or is excluded from—a map has roots in systems of power.
Laura Kurgan is a professor of architecture and directs the M.S.in Computational Design Practices and the Center for Spatial Research at GSAPP, Columbia University.
Transitioning into the realm of spectatorship and digital intimacy, the event “Passive Proximities and the Choreographed Closeness” showcased the works of Maud Craigie, Alice Lenay, and 2girls1comp (Marco De Mutiis and Alexandra Pfammatter). Maud Craigie opened by illustrating how authenticity itself can be choreographed, turning to playful examples such as Betty Crocker’s cake mixes, which originally failed to capture consumers’ loyalty until manufacturers invited people to add a fresh egg—giving the impression of homemade labor. From these seemingly benign domestic examples, Craigie traced the cultural obsession with “authentic” experiences, whether in branding or in the narratives we construct about ourselves. Meanwhile, 2girls1comp dove into their “counter-play” mod of Grand Theft Auto V, where the digital environment became an expressive canvas for writing messages across the landscape. Their intervention suggested that open-world games, often co-opted by corporate storytelling and algorithmically generated content, can be reclaimed by users to produce new forms of dialogue and community—challenging the entrenched passivity associated with mass entertainment. Alice Lenay then used the concept of “the twisties” to bridge the visceral, physically disorienting experience of gymnasts mid-tumble with the psychological disorientation we can feel when the screens we rely on for proximity (video calls, social media feeds, even dating apps) paradoxically amplify our sense of distance. The cumulative effect of these three presentations was a fascinating reflection on how consumerist culture, game worlds, and our own bodies are choreographed into patterns of seeing and believing—patterns we might disrupt through critical reflection and playful subversion.
Maud Craigie combines staged and documentary techniques to consider how technologies associated with fiction-making operate within societal and institutional structures.
Alice Lenay is an artist and researcher working as a lecturer in the Visual Arts Department at Paris 8 University where she explores digital intimacy, virtual presence and communication through screens and cameras.
2girls1comp is a modding duo founded in 2023 by Marco De Mutiis and Alexandra Pfammatter. Their work changes the logic of video games as an act of creative counter-play, revealing the social and economic fabric in which they are immersed.
Ali Akbar Mehta’s lecture, “Living in ‘Archival Time’, or at the End of Narrative(s),” delved into the politics of knowledge, memory, and data. Mehta, drawing from his doctoral research at Aalto University, emphasized that archives are no longer static, dusty repositories of documents. Instead, in an era where almost every click, biometric record, and social media post is logged, archives have become fluid, expansive systems that evolve daily with user interactions and algorithmic sorting. Far from being neutral, these data-driven environments are shaped by human biases that have become structural and self-reinforcing. Mehta pointed to the phenomenon of “lifelogs,” the comprehensive digital footprints that record everything from daily commutes to sleeping patterns, arguing that such constant documentation may unravel traditional notions of time and storytelling. If archives once played a role in constructing historical memory, he suggested, they now have the power to shape collective perceptions in real time. Yet the lecture was not without hope: Mehta proposed that if we acknowledge the performative nature of archives and recognize the political forces at work, archives could become ethical spaces where communities co-create and continually reinterpret their histories, rather than merely preserve and replicate dominant narratives.
Ali Akbar Mehta is a transmedia artist, curator, researcher, and writer. His practice investigates narratives from conflict zones and power structures, offering countermeasures to everyday experiences of violence, conflict, and trauma.
Federico Campagna’s talk, “We Are Closer to Them Than Their Jugular Vein: The Metaphysics of Distance and Proximity in a Fictional World,” extended these explorations of meaning-making by suggesting that reality itself might be a construct mediated by language, imagination, and belief. He cited examples from philosophy and spirituality to illustrate how fictional narratives—religious texts, cultural myths, political ideologies—structure not just what we think but how we exist in the world. Campagna noted that when we believe too little, we risk a kind of existential inertia, drifting aimlessly in a vacuum of skepticism. Conversely, an excess of belief can crystallize into dogma, shutting out alternative perspectives. His reflections on contemporary technology—particularly the ways social media and digital networks heighten ideological echo chambers—felt especially pointed. By underscoring that proximity is as much a mental construct as a physical one, Campagna reminded listeners that the distances we perceive, whether political or personal, may be illusions strengthened by the stories we tell. If reality is indeed fiction, then a key ethical challenge is to author new narratives that open, rather than close, our capacity to relate to one another.
Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher based in London. He is the author of Liferafts to Other Worlds: Mediterranean lessons to escape History’s shipwrecks (2025); Prophetic Culture (2021); Technic and Magic (2018).
Bhenji Ra’s “Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon” provided a shift in register, presenting a richly layered exploration of cultural memory through ritual, dance, and myth. Collaborating with her teacher and collaborator, Sitti Airia Sangkula Askalani-Obeso (often referred to as Amal), Ra immersed herself in Pangalay, a dance tradition from the Sulu Archipelago. Centering on the mythical figure of the Biraddali—a celestial being that embodies fluidity and transformation—Ra invited viewers to see dance as a means of bridging temporal and cultural gaps. The film demonstrated how bodies carry archives of precolonial practices, even when these have been fragmented by colonial violence and displacement. The post-screening discussion, featuring Ra alongside composer Tati au Miel and artist Liz Gre, further illuminated the vital role played by embodied knowledge. As they described encountering archival footage of Sulu women performing Pangalay, there was a palpable sense of both discovery and mourning—discovery of cultural histories that survive through bodily memory and mourning for the ruptures inflicted by colonial powers. By reading the Biraddali as a trans-nonhuman presence, Ra underscored the potential of dance to transcend rigid binaries, whether of gender, culture, or even the human and the mythic.
Bhenji Ra is an Australian Filipina artist rooted in trans feminist, inter-generational practice and working at the intersections of dance, video and community activation.
Tati au Miel is an alias of Montreal-born and raised multi-disciplinary artist Tania Daniel, whose practice blends experimentation, abstraction, storytelling, and rituals to forge intimate and personal experiences in their work.
Liz Gre (they/she), is a Black Midwestern American composer, multi-disciplinary artist, researcher, and vocalist exploring genre-less compositions created through endarkened co-composition. Their artistic practice is deeply rooted in storytelling and the visceral realms of the imaginary, exploring the opacity of human experience.
In “Lumi,” artists Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka reframed photography and AI as intertwined forces that process the environment rather than passively record it. Using historical photographic datasets as a training ground for synthetic intelligence, they toyed with time, reversing images to imagine a kind of inverted chronology. Their work spoke to the ways images—once considered definitive, objective records—now exist in endless flux. If a machine can learn patterns from old photographs and then generate future landscapes, what does that say about how we construct narratives of place and time? The film’s poetic montage challenged viewers to see images as constantly computed, refracted, and redeployed. Remote sensing, climate modeling, and cartographic surveillance became central concerns: how do these technologies reshape ecological awareness, particularly at a moment when climate change demands both urgency and accuracy? For many in the audience, “Lumi” was a reminder that the archives of the past can just as easily become the algorithms of the future, carrying both our hopes and our prejudices forward in ways we might not even realize.
Abelardo Gil-Fournier Abelardo Gil-Fournier is an artist and researcher. His work addresses the materiality of the visible, tackling in particular the relation between the post-digital and the production and ordering of everyday landscapes.Jussi Parikka is Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University where he directs the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARC).Marco Ferrari is the co-founder of Studio Folder, an interdisciplinary design practice based in Milan, working both on commissions in the fields of culture and the arts and on research projects examining the politics and visualization of spatial data.
Hulubalang’s sonic work, “Bunyi Bunyi Tumbal,” addressed a different facet of archival engagement—one that is less about formal records and more about the echoes of war, trauma, and suppressed narratives. As the solo project of Kasimyn (of Gabber Modus Operandi), Hulubalang employed fractured beats, dense soundscapes, and layered samples to evoke a sense of haunting remembrance. Centered on the notion of the “tumbal,” or sacrifice, the performance weaved together elements of Indonesia’s wartime past, casting a spotlight on those individuals and communities that official histories often neglect or erase. The effect was both jarring and meditative, a testament to how sound can be used to conjure communal grief and resilience, forcing listeners to feel the weight of forgotten voices resonating through the present.
ZULI emerged from the edges of Cairo’s underground, tearing through genres like a storm, with his hard-edged textures and razor-sharp experiments too writhing to pin down.
Hulubalang is the solo venture of Kasimyn – one-half of Gabber Modus Operandi and hard-hitting producer, DJ, and label owner – and delves into a more conceptual, narrative-driven realm.
Closing out the series I took part of was ZULI’s “Lambda,” an electrifying audio-visual odyssey staged by the Cairo-based producer and DJ. Known for his willingness to push sonic boundaries, ZULI built a constantly mutating landscape of guttural drones, ghostly vocal fragments, and pulverized strings. The accompanying visuals, crafted by Tomasz Skibicki and Sander Houtkruijer and framed by Andre Vanderwert’s lighting design, transformed the performance space into a pulsating field of energy. Just as Campagna had pointed to the fictional nature of reality, ZULI’s set seemed to blur the line between chaos and structure, suggesting that unpredictability itself is a vital creative force. The audience was left to navigate sonic textures that dissolved standard rhythmic anchors, encountering moments where repetition gave way to distortion, and distortion gave way to an almost meditative hush. This refusal to adhere to a stable, comforting pattern resonated with the broader themes of the festival—namely, that technology, archives, and the body are in a constant state of negotiation and flux.
By the end of the program, it had become evident that what tied these diverse presentations together was a shared preoccupation with how we construct the worlds we inhabit, whether through maps, archives, myths, algorithms, or sonic experiences. Each speaker and performer underscored that the frameworks we rely on to orient ourselves—cognitive maps, choreographed intimacies, data-driven realities—are never apolitical or solely utilitarian; they are infused with cultural values, power relations, and ethical choices. Whether referencing the historical erasures confronted by Hulubalang, the critical and generative potential of rethinking archives as proposed by Mehta, or the enchanting mythic genealogies revived by Bhenji Ra, each piece offered a window into how creative acts can reveal and disrupt the narratives we take for granted. The overarching message was that even in a world dizzy with digital acceleration, we retain the ability, and perhaps the responsibility, to remap our sense of place, memory, and possibility. The festival’s parting invitation was to engage—critically, imaginatively, and ethically—with the technologies, stories, and performances that constantly pull us toward new horizons.
Digital systems create a performance of proximity, choreographing our interactions, labor, and politics through algorithm-driven interfaces. From ASMR battles to e-girls selling bathwater and AI-driven interactions, technology reshapes human connection, replacing true closeness with artificial intimacies.
For its 38th edition, transmediale (near) near but — far explores how algorithms redefine proximity and what we lose in the process. Instead of opposing closeness and distance, the festival asks how technology can foster more meaningful relationships amid contemporary discontent.
The main programme at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) features lectures, screenings, performances, and interventions from Friday to Sunday. A prologue of workshops and working sessions at silent green Kulturquartier will require separate registration, with the festival’s public opening there on January 30, 2025. The annual Marshall McLuhan Lecture will take place at the Embassy of Canada before the opening.
Curated by Ben Evans James and Elise Misao Hunchuck, transmediale 2025 introduces a new approach, with an expanded team of programmers and collaborators shaping both theme and programming. More details will be announced soon.
About transmediale
transmediale is an annual festival and a critical space for the development of new experimental approaches in art and digital culture. Beyond the yearly event, transmediale is a transversal, dynamic platform that facilitates year-round activities including a residency programme and journal. Each festival edition focuses on a specific theme in the spectrum of art and digital culture that is reflected through a great variety of programmes like exhibitions, discourse formats, performances, screenings, and workshops.
