The timing of this year’s transmediale could not have been better – or worse, depending on how you look at it – for an institution that presents a critical lens on the role of digital culture, media theory, and the politics of the information age.

Nobody likes going to the dentist. A few months ago, while doing exactly that, I noticed mine had embedded a television into the ceiling above the patient chair. Though muted, the flashing barrage of imagery was still there to drown out the heinous buzzing of instruments just centimetres from my ears. It made me consider the capacity of screen content to placate pain, or even just the perception of reality. The premise is simple enough: suppress unwanted sensory input with visual/audio distraction. Cue the dawn of content and its timely eruption.

Notably timely about transmediale’s you’re doing amazing sweetie and its main exhibition this is perfect perfect perfect at Kunstraum Kreuzberg, is that months before social media and newsfeeds became inundated with round-the-clock coverage of what can only be described as a relentless assault on millions of people held captive on a small strip of land, the 2024 iteration of the festival and its press announcements were dedicated to exhibiting the “horrors of content”.

If only they would have known how horrible it would become.

Timelier still is the conspicuously missing artwork in the exhibition (signalled only by a quietly vacant vitrine and a small plaque), withdrawn by Avril Corroon for political reasons. The exhibition, located in Berlin’s Bethanien quarter, closes this week; the same week that Germany has been taken to trial in the Hague’s International Court of Justice by El Salvador for the purported facilitation of war crimes. It’s like a timely, content-ful but not contended kismet.

The festival website acknowledges both the withdrawal as well as the greater civil implosion of Germany’s cultural sector over the past few months; a string of artists who have experienced what they claimed is censorship, and there have been calls for a boycott of German state funded art institutions. In a way, the absence of the works speaks louder than the artworks ever could.

Regardless of its nature, perhaps the most horrific aspect of content is the algorithm through which it travels, and how that algorithm seeks to end encryption and increase surveilability in order to monitor content creation. Since content is so closely tied to the availability of information, it begs the question: where is the line between algorithmic curation and digital censorship?

Most people today get their information from online or digital sources, which gives unprecedented control to whomever does the programming. Beyond possession or distribution of content and its data, control over the algorithm means unprecedented control over the societal imagination: infinite manipulation regarding how people perceive the news, reality, and behave on a mass scale. If that’s not horrific, what is?

What makes it all feel less horrific is perhaps the comfortable setup from which we consume. Nothing says “content” like being parked on a sofa, phone tilted sideways, wrapped up in a hoodie that resembles a tortilla, and in perfect perfect perfect, the exhibition unfolds into exceedingly comfortable surroundings.

Laura Lulika’s Auto Haunt is staged around what looks to be a medical chair, but is in fact fully upholstered. Draped in hospital gowns, the dressing suggests an absent, debilitated player. Consigned in the programme as #sick, the room catechises the body of the patient: disabled, vulnerable, and at the mercy of a highly financialised healthcare environment with steadily decreasing human engagement, but no shortage of screens.

Clutched by an array of articulated mechanical arms. The elaborate setup paints a picture of the commodification of illness and the rapidly disintegrating distinction between mental health, bodily health, and the perception of wellbeing, something that is constantly sold to us subliminally. While it may look comfy, the chair is also a prophylactic prison that exhibits our entrapment within the digital realm.

Beyond the threshold of The Guru, starring a dapper, life-sized genie of sorts, I collapse into an oversized beanbag chair. Guru wanders back and forth across two walls, waxing poetic about self-confidence, love, age, and desire. The ultimate influencer-cum-adviser, Guru is both thoughtful and shallow.

The projection mapping makes Guru remarkably lifelike, traversing the fourth wall with ease as they effortlessly pass the corner of the room. As the video concludes, Guru recedes, leaving behind the illuminated question: Who gets to perform and who gets to follow?

The Guru leaves with lingering needs, reminding us that the more reliant we become on influencers, the more diminished our cognitive faculty and societal imagination becomes without them. By removing our need of and capacity for our own critical thinking and self-guided perception of the world, be that the physical one or the digital one, the democracy becomes a technocracy and the absolute control of our environment is withdrawn from the inside out.

Kottbusser Str. 10, Mariannenplatz

on view through 14 April at Künstlerhaus Bethanien through 14 April, 2024

10999 Berlin

more info here