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· The Self in the Global Media Space

"X or 0: Identities in the 21st Century"

The Self in the Global Media Space

Festival of the international media art avant-garde - performances, live radio plays, installations and party with beats and frames

From 22 to 24 March 2002 the Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (ZKM) is the venue for the international media art avant-garde. More than 100 individual artists and groups from 15 countries will be at the Festival intermedium 2 to present productions on the theme of "X or 0: Identities in the 21st Century". Ten public radio stations will be broadcasting the 18-hour Festival programme up to and including 28 March over the whole of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Internet users will be able to follow the happenings in Karlsruhe live at www.intermedium2.de by means of audio and video streaming. For the first time the € 12,000 intermedium Award will be presented.

The Festival's thematic focus will be man's identity at the beginning of the 21st century. Peter Weibel, member of ZKM's management, says: "In view of the social reality, dominated as it is mainly by the fact that the print and electronic media set up a global media space which superimposes itself on the classic reality of the senses, art offers the only possibility for critical discourse in order to penetrate analytically the heterogeneous fabric of the media world." intermedium 2 is intended to help in this by stimulating authors, musicians, audio and video artists to engage in a "meta-discourse between the different media" in common projects.

"There's no other festival backed by such a media network", claims Herbert Kapfer, Head of Radio Drama and Media Art at Bayerischer Rundfunk and Festival initiator. "This gives numerous artists the opportunity to develop and present new works for stage, radio, the Internet or as a standing installation. And they also have a chance to show their work to a wider public outside the actual venue."

A packed three-day programme in the ZKM

On the three days during the Festival the intermedium visitors will experience a packed programme of performances, live radio plays, net art works, installations and discussion sessions. The participating artists include: BAK-Truppen, Peter Courtemanche, Walter Filz, Michael Gleich, Keith Haring, Ottmar Hörl, Christin Lahr, Hermen Maat, Thomas Meinecke, Michaela Melián, Klaus Obermaier, Hans Platzgumer, Kathrin Röggla, Rainer Römer, Jeffrey Shaw, Eran Schaerf, Atau Tanaka, Klaus Theweleit and Dietmar Wiesner.

To kick off on Friday evening Tone Avenstroup and Robert Lippok (Oslo / Berlin) will be presenting an image-sound collage arranged from film sequences, tests, photos and music; it will be simultaneously a live radio play, video stream and net art work. In it the main characters, "Marbel and Matrikel", have undergone a failed operation which robs them of their memory and their sense of place and time, and they set out in search of their original self.

The identities theme is also the subject of a number of discussion sessions involving Norbert Bolz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Hans Nieswandt, Georg M. Oswald, Raoul Schrott, Peter Weibel, Jan Werner, Raimar Stefan Zons etc.

In addition to the stage events there will be an exhibition in the ZKM's Project Room entitled "multiple choices" (curator: Sabine Himmelsbach). It will be open during the course of intermedium 2. Furthermore, installations by renowned international media artists can be seen at various ZKM locations. At the Aventis Foundation Project Web of Life, coordinated by Michael Gleich and Jeffrey Shaw, a "carpet" of images and sounds will unfold on an eight-metre-wide screen and through 70 loudspeakers scattered throughout the room; it can be influenced by scanning in visitors' handline patterns.

For the night from Saturday to Sunday, the DJs Robert Lippok (Berlin), Hans Nieswandt (Cologne), Move D (Heidelberg) and the VJs annahd (Stuttgart), HighFlyer (Munich), Rechenzentrum (Berlin), genericPreset (Weimar) and Elektrofilme (Munich-London) will be inviting visitors to the "Dance of the Signs", a party being held under the title beat frames in collaboration with the youth and Internet radio DasDing. (www.dasding.de)

The Festival will end on Sunday evening with an ironic look back to the era of pre-digital media. The vinyl artists Claus von Bebber (Germany) and Philip Jeck (Great Britain) will be giving their first joint concert, where they will be arranging and manipulating numerous analogue players from the 50s, 60s and 70s so as to form a kind of orchestra of record players.

Then there will be the presentation ceremony for the intermedium Award instituted by Bayerischer Rundfunk. The chair of the jury is Elisabeth Schweeger, dramatic director of the Schauspiel Frankfurt. The jury also includes the music critic Harry Lachner and the cultural philosopher Gerhard Johann Lischka.

Continuation on radio, the Internet and CD

Bayerischer Rundfunk, Hessischer Rundfunk, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Österreichischer Rundfunk, Schweizer Radio DRS, DeutschlandRadio, Südwestrundfunk, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, Saarländischer Rundfunk and Radio Bremen will continue to broadcast highlights from the intermedium programme up to 28 March on their cultural channels - totalling more than 100 hours of radio. The presenters of the joint broadcasting slots are Bernhard Jugel (BR), Peter Kemper (hr), Martina Müller-Wallraf (WDR) Barbara Schäfer (BR) and Christian Scheib (ORF).

The Festival will also be continuing on the net. In addition to live streams of all the events, the website will be presenting video statements by prominent artists and theorists. The web address also provides a portal to international net art projects specially created for intermedium 2 - by Orhan Kipcap, young artists of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and the Italian group 0100101110101101.org.

At the same time the double CD intermedium from one2two will appear on the Festival-linked label intermedium records. This is a sampler with pieces by Andreas Ammer, Klaus Buhlert, Ca Mi Tokujiro, Chrislo, Console, Dead City Radio, DJ Spooky, Loopspool, Sparks etc.

An impulse from the medium of Radio

In contrast to other media events, intermedium is an initiative which originated in the domain of radiophonics, radio drama and audio art. The Festival, conceived as a biennial event, premiered in autumn 1999 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. It is planned to continue this BR-organised series of events in Munich in 2004.

The organisers of intermedium 2 are Bayerischer Rundfunk and the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM). The partner bodies and co-organisers are Hessischer Rundfunk, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Österreichischer Rundfunk, Schweizer Radio DRS, DeutschlandRadio, Südwestrundfunk, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, Saarländischer Rundfunk, Radio Bremen, Schauspiel Frankfurt and the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht.

The 138-page Festival catalogue contains all the information on intermedium 2. This information is also available on the Internet at www.intermedium2.de.

Pictures relating to the individual projects and artists involved can be obtained from BR Radio Drama and Media Art.