Bruce Sterling on Atemporality @Transmediale.10

Preview Image: Jonathan Gröger

Transmediale is an international festival for contemporary art and digital culture which includes exhibitions, competitions, conferences, film and video programmes and live performances. This year's subject of the festival, to which Bruce Sterling refers, was "Futurity Now!:

2010. It is a year which has been synonymous with past images of the future. Writers and commentators throughout the 20th century strove to depict 2010 as a shining example of a future framed by technological progress and social harmony.

But as 2010 draws nearer it is clear that global society is neither the utopia nor the dystopia traditionally presented in these fictions, architectures and theories of the future. Rather, it is an increasingly complex web of economic, political and cultural systems dependent on the convergence of rapidly evolving technologies. With the ubiquity of digital practices and social media firmly entrenched as an intrinsic part of our cultural code, we have caught up with our own notions of the future. The future is experiencing an identity crisis.

Futurity is a concept that examines what the 'future' as a conditional and creative enterprise can be. At its heart lays the intricate need to counter political and economic turmoil with visionary futures. With FUTURITY NOW! transmediale.10 explores what roles internet evolution, global network practice, open source methodologies, sustainable design and mobile technology play in forming new cultural, ideological and political templates. transmediale.10 invites artists, scientists, media activists, thinkers and visionaries to ask not what the future has in store for us, but what do we have in store for the future? (source: transmediale.de)