The net jargon acronym BWPWAP – Back When Pluto Was a Planet is an expression used whenever one wants to talk about things in our recent past that have changed quickly. On August 24th, 2006, at the closing ceremony of their general assembly, the International Astronomical Union infamously voted in favor of “demoting” Pluto from its planetary status. transmediale 2013 suggested that this classification crisis, spurred on by new technologies and shifting knowledge paradigms, opens up a rich space of cultural negotiation and artistic intervention.
Between shiny high-tech, e-waste dumps, big data businesses and mass surveillance schemes: Under the title afterglow, the 27th edition of transmediale explored our present post-digital moment as one in which former treasures of our mediatised life are turning into trash. International researchers, artists and activists focused on the ambivalent condition of current digital culture, looking towards a future in which media technologies have become part of daily life, turning into physical and immaterial waste.