abandon all hope ye who enter here

In 2022, transmediale festival presents the exhibition abandon all hope ye who enter here and the symposium “This is Not Anarchy, This is Chaos” as part of its year-long festival.

Exhibition: abandon all hope ye who enter here
January 26–February 18, 2022
Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Location Hanseatenweg)

Challenging ideas of technology as smooth and seamless, transmediale’s new exhibition abandon all hope ye who enter here explores the toxicity of computationally constructed damage in our everyday lives. It brings together nine artists and collectives whose work examines how dysfunction and its instrumentalisation is central to the logic and operation of technology. From mineral extraction, heat generating desires, anxiety-inducing doom scrolls, false technological promises, dark patterns and the persistence of colonial labels, the exhibition asks; what possibilities of refusal exist for confronting the broken realities of technology? Playing with Dante’s notion of the Inferno, the exhibition questions the organising principles of computation and the algorithmic values of classification, isolation, and reasoning. 

Featuring work by Annex, Ibiye Camp, Cihad Caner, Tianzhuo Chen, Stine Deja, Constant Dullaart, Lo-Def Film Factory, Alaa Mansour, and The Underground Division.

Inspired and informed by Proxy Protest, abandon all hope ye who enter here will also be digitally accessible through transmediale’s exhibition visiting programme Proxy Visits. Here, visitors can directly connect via video calls with Proxy hosts at Akademie der Künste. Through direct interaction with the host, Proxy visitors will explore the exhibition as a unique viewing experience.

Symposium: “This is Not Anarchy, This is Chaos”
January 28–29, 2022
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and online on transmediale.de

Alongside the exhibition, transmediale presents the symposium “This is Not Anarchy, This is Chaos” on January 28 and 29, 2022. The two-day programme navigates refusal through positions of belief and compromise and will take place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, as well as live-streamed on transmediale.de. A non-stop binge-watch, the symposium features conversation, talks, film and performance. Participants will examine relationships between desire and extraction, the terms and conditions of political negotiation and participation, the leveraging of economic value to generate compromise, and look at possibilities for calculating otherwise. See the full list of participants on transmediale’s website.

A year-long festival: transmediale 2021–22 for refusal
The exhibition and the symposium are part of transmediale’s 2021–22 festival edition for refusal, which has unfolded over the course of a year. The festival has taken place across multiple venues, including its first public space, transmediale studio, and its curatorial online platform Almanac for Refusal.

transmediale is funded as a cultural institution of excellence by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) since 2004.

Additional funding by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and The German Federal Agency for Civic Education. The exhibition is supported by the European Union and is part of the Artsformation Project. A full list of partners and supporters can be found on the transmediale website.