by Carolina Sculti // Jan. 13, 2026
This year’s transmediale, titled ‘By the Mango Belt & Tamarind Road – Compassing, Protocoling, Metaphoring,’ will take place from January 28th to February 1st, 2026 in Berlin. This edition of transmediale examines the re-figuration of systems, cosmologies and technologies through metaphorical coordinates across the tropical belt. Across four full festival days, in addition to the opening night on Wednesday, January 28th and the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Embassy of Canada on January 27th, the festival’s main venue will be silent green Kulturquartier in Wedding, complemented this year by a second venue, CANK, in Neukölln.
Curated by Neema Githere and Juan Pablo García Sossa, the festival invites both a geographical and theoretical shift in the prevalent discourse on technology, media and our understanding of the internet as a world wide web. Moving beyond a speaker–audience spatial format and the presentation of only completed works, visitors can become passengers, contributors and co-navigators of the space.
Montika Kham-on: ‘Afterlives’ 2025, film still image // Courtesy of the artist
The imaginative coordinates, situated within the Tropical Belt, allude to China’s One Belt One Road Initiative—which often frames itself as an alternative to development yet perpetuates dependency structures—examining the underlying frameworks shaping both the material and social dimensions of our systems.
As part of the curatorial process leading up to the festival, Research Netting Groups were formed as lateral, working groups, convening in person across the Tropical Belt. These regional Netting Groups explored themes such as digital sovereignty, community-based networks, environment and technology, local pocket infrastructuring and collective knowledge-making.
Transmediale Research Netting Groups // Courtesy of transmediale
The festival program is structured around Low Tide and High Tide moments. High Tide programming engages larger audiences through performances, lectures, conversations and concerts, while Low Tide features more intimate, ongoing experiences such as film screenings, durational sonic events, workshops and ritualistic interventions.
The Kuppelhalle at silentgreen will be transformed by Kidus Hailesilassie’s large-scale installation ‘6,500 Alphabets Make a Map,’ an atlas drawing on 20 indigenous African knowledge systems. Inviting visitors into an immersive and spatialized language archive, this artwork reimagines “algorithm” as “algo + rhythm”; each data point a drumbeat in a communal, ancestral cadence.
Isola Tong will present ‘LAWALAWA,’ an installation and activated meshwork space that also offers a protocol, in which the basket becomes a symbol of Bayotic Refugia—a term she coined merging “bayot,” the Bisayan language term for queer or femme, with “biota,” referring to the plant and animal life of a particular region—serving as a metaphor for refuge where broken life can rest and regenerate within oppressive environments.
Isola Tong: ‘LAWALAWA’ // Courtesy of the artist
transmediale and CTM will co-present the evening program ‘Transhemispheric Resonances’ on Friday, January 30th at silent green. In this two-part concert, Nursalim Yadi Anugerah and Vica Pacheco will take the stage separately, yet together compose a transhemispheric conversation across forest soundscapes and breath-based technologies.
Nursalim Yadi Anugerah invokes the kadedek, the bamboo mouth-organ of West Kalimantan, Borneo, and through a hypnotic, drone-based approach, brings together humans, instruments and machines to explore the spectral properties of sound and their relationships across different scales of multiplicity and everyday violence, reflecting the social and environmental challenges in Kalimantan. Vica Pacheco’s practice is rooted in experimental music and composition, working syncretically with ceramic instruments and hybrid sonic devices. Her pieces explore themes of breath, organicity and the interplay between ancient and contemporary technologies.
Nursalim Yadi Anugerah: ‘Lawing’ // Photo by Banyu Susanto
Other program highlights include Kathleen Bomani’s ‘Deera World,’ a sculptural vending machine that releases small, compact “Deeras”; Aarati Akkapeddi’s ‘Kolams,’ traditional South Indian floor drawings made with rice flour and turmeric, using mathematically intricate, continuous lines that contain encrypted messages visitors can decode; and Montika Kham-on’s film ‘Afterlives,’ which imagines a post-tropical future where light carries memory, bending and fracturing to hold fragile histories. Alongside additional installations, screenings and exhibitions, each day will begin with ‘Pray-per-view,’ a 15-minute ritual walk led by artist RhaRha Nembhard, one of the festival’s spatial architects, setting the collective tempo for the day.
In line with the process-oriented approach of the 2026 festival, the program will continue to unfold in the days leading up to the festival.
Festival Info
transmediale
‘By the Mango Belt & Tamarind Road: Compassing, Protocoling, Metaphoring’
Opening Reception: Wednesday, Jan. 28; 6–11pm
Festival: Jan. 29-Feb. 1, 2026
transmediale.de
silent green Kulturquartier, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin, click here for map
CANK, Karl-Marx-Straße 95, 12043 Berlin, click here for map
Embassy of Canada
Scott Benesiinaabandan, Lucas LaRochelle: ‘Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2026: AI Sovereignty and Pluriversal Intelligences’
Talk Moderated by Camila Lombana Diaz: Tuesday, Jan. 27; 6:30pm
transmediale.de/marshall-mcluhan-lecture-2026
Leipziger Platz 17, 10117 Berlin, click here for map
