on Toshareproject.it - curated by Bruce Sterling
** TRANSMEDIALE 2026
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The ethos of the 2026 edition proposes a recalibrated tempo of gathering: recursive, porous, and durational, combining expansive programming with spaces for re-regulation and conviviality. Framed metaphorically through the architecture of a shell, both the festival’s rhythm and its thematic focus center on rethinking infrastructures, digital ways of life, and the language forms that shape how we inhabit, interact with, and move through these systems.
The festival venues will introduce a series of temporary architectures and installations that are conceived as conversational platforms; a space to spark exchange.
The Kuppelhalle of silent green, our main festival venue, will be transformed by Kidus Hailesilassie’s large-scale installation 6,500 Alphabets Make a Map, a living atlas that draws on 20 indigenous African knowledge systems. Inviting visitors into an immersive and spatialised language archive, this artwork redefines “algorithm” as “algo + rhythm”; each data point a drumbeat in a communal, ancestral cadence. Rooted in her weaving practice, Isola Tong will present LAWALAWA, an installation and activated meshwork space that also offers a protocol, in which the basket becomes a symbol of Bayotic Refugia—a term she coined merging “bayot,” the Bisayan language term for queer or femme, with “biota,” referring to the plant and animal life of a particular region—serving as a metaphor for refuge where broken life can heal and regenerate within oppressive environments. The net structure functions as a physical, offline “web,” both an installation and a space to be held in.
Complementing these spatial practices, each morning, artist RhaRha Nembhard, one of the festival’s spatial architects, will lead Pray-per-view, a 15-minute ritual walk setting the collective tempo for the festival day. Nembhard’s work weaves diasporic, ancestral, and futuristic aesthetics through ritual, art, and embodied practice.
Working with parallel explorations, artist Simon Speiser will present a new installation, Cuerdas del Manglar – Strings from the Mangrove, which draws on the history of the maroon society of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, connecting speculative physics with histories of colonial re-existence expressed through music and syncretic ritual. Using string theory as a framework, he overlays the idea of black holes onto the shipwrecks that enabled Afro-Ecuadorian communities to form early maroon settlements. Composed of scratch holograms engraved into metal sheets, the installation reflects images from Esmeraldenian cultural memory while also echoing the region’s ancestral gold mining practices.
https://t.me/addstickers/transmediale2026
Add our freshly-designed transmediale 2026 Telegram sticker pack here (https://t.me/addstickers/transmediale2026) !
** COOPERATION PROGRAMME
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** 2025 Research Workshop
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Under the title Everything Is A Matter Of Distance, the 2025 Research Workshop (which took place during the festival) and accompanying publication explore how space is produced, shaped, and manipulated in contemporary techno-culture. The programme is a cooperation between the Digital Aesthetics Research Center (DARC) at Aarhus University and transmediale.
Now available online (https://aprja.net/) , the publication features contributions by Megan Phipps, Nico Daleman, Katya Sivers, Christoffer Koch Andersen, Daria Iuriichuk, and Sami P. Itävuori, and is edited by Magda Tyżlik-Carver and Pablo Velasco.
aprja.net
Initiated in 2012 as a collaboration of Aarhus University, transmediale, and varying partner organisations, an overview of each year’s Research Workshop and corresponding peer-reviewed journal publication, is now available on our website (https://transmediale.de/en/programme/phd-research-workshop) .
** OPEN CALLS
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** Open call for volunteers 2026
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https://transmediale.de/en/news/call-for-volunteers-2026
Deadline: 15 December
transmediale is looking for committed and motivated volunteers to help run the 2026 edition of the festival. In return for their support, volunteers receive a festival pass and the opportunity to gain insight into the inner workings of the festival.
Open call: volunteers 2026 (https://transmediale.de/en/news/call-for-volunteers-2026)
** Open call for festival curation 2027
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Reminder: the deadline for the open call for the 2027 festival curation is November 30.
We are inviting applications from one or more persons with previous curatorial experience to critically engage with topics at the intersection of art, technology, science, society, and politics, and to contribute to transmediale’s long history as one of the leading festivals of art and digital culture. 2027 marks the 40th anniversary of transmediale.
Open call: festival curation 2027 (https://transmediale.de/en/news/open-call-for-festival-curation-2027)
Follow us on Telegram (https://t.me/transmediale)
Wir freuen uns, erste Einblicke in das Programm von By the Mango Belt & Tamarind Road (https://transmediale.de/de/2026/tm26) zu geben.
Weitere Programminformationen folgen via Newsletter sowie über Telegram (https://telegram.me/transmediale) und unsere Social-Media (https://bsky.app/profile/transmediale.bsky.social) -Kanäle (https://mstdn.social/@transmediale) . Außerdem ist die Publikation aus dem Research Workshop 2025 (https://transmediale.de/de/news/darc-research-2025) – einer Kooperation zwischen dem Digital Aesthetics Research Center (DARC), Aarhus University, und transmediale – nun online (https://aprja.net/) verfügbar. Für das Festival 2026 werden derzeit Volunteers (https://transmediale.de/de/news/call-for-volunteers-2026) gesucht. Außerdem ist die Bewerbungen für die Stelle der Festivalkuration 2027 (https://transmediale.de/de/news/open-call-for-festival-curation-2027) noch bis Ende November möglich.