Looking back at the scroll: post-bed rot session at transmediale
photo from the session, feb 1
transmediale is an important festival for new media art and the wider subcultural publics of the internet. this year's curators of the festival Neema Githere and Juan Pablo Garcia Sossa put together a program focusing on the "metaphorical coordinates By the Mango Belt & Tamarind Road." The programme website describes the logic of the theme as "a living recursive carrier net – a hammock of relational technologies in practice that stretch across latitudes, rhythms, and systems." in practical terms, this means a mix of low tempo and high key performances, places to relax and rest, hammocks and charpais, nail salons and vending machines, neon bottles and manhole covers, films about the real and imagined typing instructors of internets past, containers filled with liquid and coins, metaphorical networks of solidarity that become something realer in person. also a bedrotting session.
bedrotting is an ancient practice. in olden times, it was probably reserved for royalty - people who had time to wallow in images and simulated netherworlds. today, we all have access to it in different doses and sessions. the witching hour of 3am is always there for a scroll down memory lane, tossing and turning to whale sounds before having to get up for work. with a stiff body and active mind, one easily slips into the recursive layer of the algorithmicmemeplex with a flick of the thumb joint, only later coming out of the trance not remembering a single thing, just knowing that you have come out the other side - a better, more moral human being. that's all thanks to the platform. be grateful to the platform, always
while we are on the topic of gratefulness: i was invited to contribute to transmediale this year, which i excitedly accepted. this culminated in the 'bedrot with me' DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE which happened on february 1, sunday in transmediale studio. it's difficult to explain how this studio was arranged for the event, but the best way to describe it is that it is a sort of canal that stretches from one end of the space into another, so there were people moving in and out every 20 minutes - flowing to and fro from the studio into other rooms extending out from the canal. oh and there was a big screen and about 30-40 people in there for the duration of the sesh. friendly faces, mutuals, online connections, lurkers, the chronically online and normcore reallifer archetypes - we were all there together, as one, looking at the big screen. it was real
below you will find a proto-post-academic write up of the bedrot session. i'm experimenting with the scientific form. if you want to cite this blogpost in your next journal article, you know how to do it.
we must always be honest with ourselves
