in/compatible Intervention @ Transmediale 2012

in/compatible Intervention @ Transmediale 2012
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in/compatible Intervention @ Transmediale 2012
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New Transmediale director Kristoffer Gansing censors "offensive AR art." The 2012 Transmediale stood under the theme "in/compatible," celebrating 25 years of art interventions and proclaiming in the curatorial statement that: "Contrary to the fear of the incompatible, so prevalent in the age of cloud-computing, the festival raises the question of what happens when incompatibility is brought to the fore rather than hidden away in the dark underbelly of digital culture?"

The panel discussion: "Videomakers Unite!" was billed as "an open conversation about video art and net culture, media collectives and counter-publics." One of the panelists, internationally renowned media art curator Kathy Rae Huffman, concluded her presentation by showing one of Tamiko Thiel's augmented reality artworks, to bring the discussion up to date in current media practices.

Huffman called on Thiel to make some remarks on her piece in the spirit of the "open conversation" desired for the panel. When Thiel did so, festival director Kristoffer Gansing (who was not on the panel but sitting in the audience) suddenly approched her indicating he wanted her to stop.

Minutes later, as Thiel's website was still on the screen, Gansing demanded, "... if I may "intervene" uh, first maybe we can switch the screen instead of seeing this really, uh, for me offensive AR art, he he, this is a re-intervention into the Transmediale ..."

So the director of the Transmediale censored not only an artist, but an invited panelist, because he did not personally like the artwork - or the genre of artwork - being shown. Is this how he creates open conversation, celebrates the incompatible and 25 years of art interventions???