Stream.fields Symposium

The symposium is focusing on the descriptive analysis of the major problem areas of our time, with a particular accent on Europe and its role in the global processes.
The idea is to describe the phenomena as field traces that are evident in the climatological and flow-technical analysis of contemporary processes.
With regard to political trends and economic developments, traceable and emerging future developments will also be analysed and presented and discussed in a transdisciplinary discourse.

The symposium is the discursive hub of the Stream.fields art laboratory, which combines academic discourse and presentations with the festival’s artistic contributions and, accompanied by public discussions, contextualises the themes of the artistic works within a broader academic and socio-political framework. The symposium is fundamentally transdisciplinary in nature and aims to go beyond merely bringing together scientific and artistic expertise and positions to create synergistic moments that can also be directly translated into small practical experiments in the ART-LAB.
The aim is to bring contemporary trends closer to a broader interested public in multiple senses of the word and to contrast them with artistic positions, with the aim of implementing corresponding projects in practice within the framework of FLUVIALE in the coming years.

(Un)controlled currents

In his short text ‘Postscript on Control Societies’, published in 1990, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze writes, as an analysis of the present at that time, that the age of disciplinary societies described by Foucault no longer describes the hegemonic form of power in Western societies. It was no longer a matter of suppressing movements of the body and mind and disciplining people through imprisonment. According to Deleuze, the new form of power would rather

keep the majority in constant motion, lifelong education, flexible self-employment, etc. Control no longer fixes but controls the waves, ‘the continuous stream’, the movement – in short, it is about controlling the flows. ‘Individuals have become “dividuals” and the masses have become samples, data, markets or “banks”.’ (Deleuze 1995, 258)

The question is therefore which fluxes are enabled, which are amplified and which are prevented, channelled and shut down? New media technologies are a driver of this change, as they enable permanent control of information, granting access to some and denying it to others, amplifying certain voices and drowning out marginalised voices in the babble of the feed.

But control of the streams goes far beyond the question of information and the media, addressing fundamental economic issues as well as material flows. The changes in the Gulf Stream are a direct result of CO2 emissions.

From lava flows to clandestine information flows of social movements, there are always excessive flows, uncontrollable and unnoticed.

The Stream.fields symposium will discuss a variety of currents from a transdisciplinary and artistic perspective. What are the central currents of the present, which currents need to be promoted, and which currents are primarily destructive? These questions require not only a critical analysis of the present, but also discourse between the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities

and artistic approaches; they require new methods of knowledge and new aesthetics. The Stream.fields symposium aims to contribute to this.

Christoph Hubatschke

PROGRAMME

19.11. Wednesday 1 ] INFO . STREAMS
Never before in known human history has so much information been accessible as it is now.
At the same time, we are experiencing an enormous quantitative acceleration in information flows. New media and AI are speeding up these increasingly overwhelming information flows. At the same time we need to ask ourselves what information actually means. Fake news, AI slop and recommender algorithms are accelerating a social polarisation that increasingly relies on completely separate information flows.

Three artists look at these developments from different angles according to the media they use in their work. They take a look at the early days of media art and politically motivated media use in the 1950s and 1960s, in the spirit of optimism after the World War, the significance of writing in and as a medium, and contrast this with the media overkill of the present.

The media-generated predictions of the future will also be questioned, as will the narrative’s increasing manipulation for specific purposes. This intertwining of media and political currents will be discussed togehter with the philosopher Christoph Hubatschke and the audience, from a philosophical, media-theoretical and cultural studies perspective.

moderation: Christoph Hubatschke

18:00 Welcome Thomas J. Jelinek (Artistic director of FLUVIALE)

18:15 Introduction – Key talk Christoph Hubatschke (Symposium Director)

18:45 FLUVIALE and the medium of language Gertrude Moser-Wagner

19:15 Lecture: Imaginary Futures Darko Fritz

19:45 break

20:15 Presentation: Vasulka Kitchen Jennifer Helia DeFelice. The beginnings of contemporary media art

20:40 Discussion. moderation: Christoph Hubatschke

20.11. Tuesday 2 ] CLIMATE . STREAMS
Biosphere Development
Currents of all kinds are of enormous importance to our ecosystems, from river currents to global changes caused by ocean currents. Changes and transformations in these currents are both signs of climate change and accelerators of catastrophic effects.

In order to understand the state of currents in the Anthropocene era, historical perspectives will be brought together ecological and philosophical perspectives are brought together.

moderation: Julia Grillmayr

18:30 Welcome / Introduction Christoph Hubatschke (symposium chair)

19:00 Keynote / Introduction Julia Grillmayr

19:30 Lecture presentation: Latent Waterscapes Ingrid Mayerhofer-Hufnagl

20:15 Project presentation: Liquid Maps/Territories Herwig Turk

20:45 Short break

21:00 Discussion moderation: Julia Grillmayr

21.11. Friday 3] CAPTIAL . STREAMS
The final discussion of the symposium focuses on capital flows, their manifold variations and often extreme effects.
Capital flows occur in various ways, from commodities such as crude oil, direct investments in national economies, data auctions by social media platforms, to high-speed financial transactions, amongst others. What they have in common are the serious, and frequently global, effects that their (de)regulation and acceleration as well as their speculative investments and disinvestments have on other types of flows. Economic interests affect social, ecological, and informational conditions. By advancing different scales of exploitation, they impact some groups more than others. Due to their close interconnections and correlations, a crisis in one market quickly spreads to others, like epidemics that can escalate into pandemics through global trade flows. Despite these facts, it hardly seems possible to contain them politically and economically – the ideology of the free market continues to trump all other forms of freedom. This is precisely why it is important to keep critically examining their influence and identifying their weaknesses from different perspectives to strengthen the resilience and solidarity vital for resistance.

moderation: Gerald Nestler

17:00 Introduction Gerald Nestler

17:25 Lecture Kurt Bayer

17:45 Lecture Ines Doujak

18:10 Lecture: Reflecting Oil Ernst Logar

18:30 Discussion moderation: Gerald Nestler

with Kurt Bayer, Ernst Logar, Ines Doujek

22.11. Saturday 4 ] PERFORMING . STREAMS
18:30 Welcome Thomas J. Jelinek

18:40 Summary of the symposium in conversation with Christoph Hubatschke

19:00 Lecture: ‘30,000 years of interpolation of a possible future’ Karl Bruckschwaiger

19:45 Presentation of the works created by FAMU students during the ART-LAB

20:20 Outlook for FLUVIALE 2026 Thomas Jelinek + Gertrude Moser-Wagner

20:40 Introduction to performance / and exhibitions Thomas Jelinek

20:50 Performance: Lucie Strecker [ DE ] APL [a]ngewandte

21:15 Sound-Performance: Maria Salamon [ AT ]

22:00 Video – sound performance: Feedback X | Michael Fischer + Peter Koger

The journey along the space-time axis draws its trail in the simulation space