Global Futures Speaker Series - Kristoffer Gansing Event

"The revolution is over. Welcome to the afterglow." This was the suggestive tagline of the 2014 edition of the transmediale festival for art and digital culture which took place in Berlin between the 29th of January and 2nd February. The festival took its starting point in the deep ambiguity of the digital in a post-Snowden world: at once the shiny high-tech still promising a brave new world and the dark underbelly of data-trash being mined by information hungry corporations and government agencies. Proposing afterglow as a diagnosis of this current post-digital condition where the effects of digitisation are as spectacular as its consequences are opaque, the festival adopted material, speculative and transversal approaches, asking: "Are there means of renewal in the excess, overflow and waste products of the digital afterglow?" The lecture will consist of a thematic introduction to the world of afterglow, followed by examples of various artistic and research-based positions presented and discussed in the festival programme.