transmediale and CTM's Vorspiel is a program of distributed partner events in the field of digital art and culture and experimental sound and music, where a variety of partner venues invite local and international audiences to a series of exhibition openings, performances, interventions, artist talks and special events across the city of Berlin.
A citywide program of events before and during the transmediale and CTM festivals.
Image Credit: Andrés Nieto Porras
The dilemma for refusal has never felt quite so urgent. Easily misunderstood as a gesture of inaction and passivity where nothing happens, a refusal instead can be an insistence on an alternative or a demand for reform. From boycotts to strikes to collective or individual withdrawals, the long and paradoxical history of refusal suggests political and social imaginaries that say more than a mere no. As an act that often carries with it both risk and promise, a refusal opens up possibilities for worlds that can and should be.
From the small acts of refusal that reside in the mundane and everyday, to tender forms of resistance that allow us to repair collective infrastructure, transmediale 2021–22 will map out the political agency of refusal, examining its potential to form new socio-political realities grounded in care, hope, and desire.