Dear rohrpostler, (sorry to write in English, I am sure it is better than my written German though)
As I am one of the responsible persons behind bringing Art Hack Day to transmediale 2014, I would like to offer you a few words of clarification. In principle I agree that the financial structures of cultural funding between artists, curators and institutions are exploitative and that festivals, museums and other institutions should also exert pressure to change that and not leave it to the artists to always end up in the role of "complainers". Therefore, it was also a risky decision to bring Art Hack Day to Berlin and transmediale, since it replicates some of the structures of participatory culture that we know all too well from the so called decentralised and participatory but in reality neoliberal and centralised structures of web 2 and social media culture. However, I also believe that one needs to work with these models and try to push them into situations where they become something else than what corporate culture has co-opted them into, and where collaborative art and research practices can happen outside of the superficial social media mode, creative industries meet ups and their data mined surveillance structures. The decision to bring Art Hack Day as an exhibition format was based on the idea of trying out something else than the curated show in the context of the festival, a living entity in reaction to the festival thematic rather than a predefined collection of the curators best picks in relation to the theme. We were approached by Art Hack Day early last year and decided to try this out although we knew that some of the modalities of how such an event usually works, is not entirely compatible with the institutional context of the festival. For example, no participant or organiser ever got paid in the previous Art Hack Day events, which operates on a similar self-organised basis of any hackathon. That said, Art Hack Day always asks a venue to provide the infrastructure and the institutional framework of the venue has varied from case to case, from the artist run space, hackerspace to the Kunsthalle. In each case, it goes without saying that there have been different financial conditions of the different venues and the different people working there. In the case of transmediale, we are not an institution with our own physical infrastructure or even set of technology and we have to rent and pay for all technical equipment and staff for the entire festival. Some is provided as in kind from Haus der Kulturen der Welt, but most of it is provided through external partners. So this was the basic structure we could offer to Art Hack Day. Additionally to the material resources, we offered accomodation and travel to those participants who needed it - something which Art Hack Day was never able to do before. And of course we provided all the food and drinks that is integral to any hackathon (nothing to brag about since it just has to be done). Further clarification: it is not true that none of the participants were paid. Some of the participants had backup from their institutions such as Universities - since it is part of the cultural scene that transmediale engages in that participants are not necessarily in a completely precarious freelance situation but have jobs in research, other arts organisations PhD's, companies (more unusual though) etc. Other participants got funding through cultural foundations or embassies where transmediale in some cases applied to have their costs covered. And some participants received fees for additionally taking part in the performance or conference programme of transmediale. So in the end, the picture is more complex than a simple statement from the artists that indeed did not get a fee might convey. This does not change the fact that the discussion is very important and that more transparency and scrutiny of such events are needed but this then also reaches beyond transmediale as such and into the model of cultural funding through which we exist and which has its dark sides for sure but through which we paradoxically are also able to offer a unique space for cultural production across disciplines, discourses and formats (far beyond the confinement of "media art") to which I do not think there are many counterparts in the world. I am working for transmediale because I truly believe in that this is a useful meeting place and highly appreciated among its participants and audience. Call it an outdated media art relic, hipster after party or a forum for pseudo-political discussions - I think it is nothing like that and thinking back about the people and events we had here in the past few days, including their enthusastic, critical and engaged feedback, and looking around me at the last day of the festival, find it hard to believe anyone would honestly say that. sincerely Kristoffer Gansing artistic director, transmediale. -- rohrpost - deutschsprachige Liste zur Kultur digitaler Medien und Netze Archiv: http://www.nettime.org/rohrpost http://post.in-mind.de/pipermail/rohrpost/ Ent/Subskribieren: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rohrpost/
