With Massimo Canevacci, Lioudmila Voropai, Fredrik Svensk
 

The guests on this montage-style interdisciplinary panel each offer reflections on transmediale 2013 in relation to the notion of the Imaginary Museum. With file_under:transmediale is initiating a new metaframework that spotlights influential cultural concepts that shape contemporary cultural production in significant ways. With this framework, we want to develop long-term arguments for the imaginary space created by the festival as a temporary multiform of ideas and practices. For 2013, we rethink the BWPWAP notion of French writer André Malraux’s Imaginary Museum originally proposed in the 1940s as a way to discuss the recontextualization of culture taking place through new technologies. This discussion has been informing curatorial development of the transmediale program and instigated critical re-engagement with Malraux’s Imaginary Museum as one of the most influential paradigms for 20th century, technologically informed, cultural production. In the past year, a veritable Malraux hype has taken off with cultural events and commentators once again appropriating his terminology. At transmediale 2013 and beyond, this discussion of the Imaginary Museum is used to interrogate the past, present and future processes of decontextualization and re-contextualization taking place in contemporary culture as demonstrated, for example, through the four BWPWAP thematic threads: Users, Networks, Paper and Desire.