Three Plus One in Berlin
Kathryn Smith, Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter, aka The Trinity Session, a Johannesburg-based arts consultancy, recently (February 1 - 5) participated in the third Transmediale festival in Berlin at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). Curated by Andreas Broekmann, and titled 'Play Global!', the event dabbled about in issues of the 'translocal', this according to Kathryn Smith.
In its 16th year, the Transmediale is one of the coveted highlights of the new media festival circuit (which includes the Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria). For the event, the Trinity Session presented Mobile Office: Bureau de Change. Now in its third incarnation (the 'mobile office' concept was previously hosted at Public Eye in Cape Town and the Kunstraum in Linz), according to Kathryn Smith, "this [project] has little to do with the high-end technologies of palmtops and notebooks, and more to do with a critical co-opting of business-related practices for socially implicated cultural work."
Smith further elaborates: "The Mobile Office works on the principle of making our working process transparent and sharing resources wherever possible. Mind maps, organograms, budgets and 'to do' lists of current projects and relationships are displayed and refined in the public arena, with input and engagement from passers-by. As such, the relationships between artistic practice and the social realm are displayed, and strategic survival tactics in communities financially unsympathetic to arts and culture are shared."
Joining the trio was Johannesburg-born, London-based new media wiz Simon Crouch. The latter was touted as the 'diasporan South African guest'. According to Kathryn Smith, "Andreas Broekmann loves the idea of diasporan South Africans" - presumably because we [the South African Diaspora] are now such a global phenomenon. Other luminaries at the event were Peter Greenaway, Coco Fusco, Marko Peljhan and Sarat Maharaj. Prior to their visit to Berlin, The Trinity Session also presented a lecture for Shelley Sack's Social Sculpture students at Brookes University - a satellite campus of Oxford University. They also met with the Tate's new media curator in London.
For further information on Transmediale and The Trinity Session, visit www.transmediale.de and www.onair.co.za.
