Club Transmediale.08 – Unpredictable festival for adventurous music and related visual arts :: 25 January - 2 February 2008 :: Club Maria am Ostbahnhof, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and others, Berlin :: Call for work.

Club Transmediale (CTM) is a prominent international festival dedicated to contemporary electronic, digital and experimental music, as well as the diverse range of artistic activities in the context of sound and club culture. CTM presents projects that experiment with new aesthetic parameters and new forms of cooperation, develop possibilities for informational and economic self-determination, and reflect on the role of contemporary music against the backdrop of technological and social transformations.

Now more than ever, music emerges as a laboratory for multiform experiments and as an active agent that allows for new cultural techniques to be tested and proffered to the wider world. CTM puts the focus on direct experience, risk-taking and personal interaction, and thereby emphasises the situational potential of live performance, the interplay of various media – sound and image, in particular – and candid exchange between sub-cultural and academic initiatives.

Characterised by the title Unpredictable, CTM.08 investigates artistic concepts that imply the surprising and unforeseeable, accidents, mistakes and coincidences as a means to alter the dynamics of creative processes and to discover new aesthetic forms. Intentional coincidences produce paradoxical irritations that allow for a re-enchantment and sensualisation of abstract structures – whether applicable to technological systems, social situations, or communicative and collective processes in open project structures. CTM.08 therefore examines play with the unpredictable also as a method of conscious disorientation, of asserting a provocative independence, and as immunisation against the growing desire of public and commercial organisations for security and control.

Together, transmediale and club transmediale invite the submission of works and projects that elaborate on the thematic outlines of the combined festivals and correspond to a contemporary notion of art within digital culture. The joint festival of CTM and transmediale is one of the most comprehensive and outstanding events reflecting the cultural relevance of new technologies and digital culture in Europe and the world.