"Decadence, Indulgence and Dada"

Crowds throng the transmediale, Berlin's media art festival.

The bad news on Tuesday night, opening night of the transmediale.02, was that you couldn't get into the exhibition. The good news? You couldn't get into the exhibition.

Well, of course, you could. If you were up for waiting in line. A very long line. The problem is that only 130 people at a time are allowed into the exhibition hall. And there must have been at least ten times that many milling about and bumping into each other in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the new digs for the international media art festival. One journalist bumping into another suggested 2000 as a nice round figure for the number of people who showed.

They filled the main auditorium of Berlin's old convention hall. They wandered the Media Lounge with that retro orange-bean-bag-chair thing going on that has been the standard new media look for almost as long as there has been such a thing as new media. They sat patiently through a series speakers delivering all the usual opening remarks, the thanking of the sponsors and so on. Then there were the featured speakers, the most featured of all being Randall Packer, Secretary of the US Department of Art and Technology.

Of course, by the time he spoke, word had gotten around: There is no US Department of Art and Technology. Packer was mildly amusing at points, particularly when he announced that he was proud to declare "in this city of decadence, indulgence and dada, 'Ich bin ein Berliner Künstler!'," but his one-joke schtick didn't quite stretch the length of his speech.

His Dutch counterpart from the fictitious Ministry of Information in The Netherlands sparked more laughs with his well-meaning jabs at the only real local celebrity of the evening, Thomas Flierl, the new Senator for Science, Research and Culture for the city-state of Berlin. The gist: Holland is perceived as progressive for the money it lavishes on culture and Flierl, a member of the reformed communist party that has just joined Berlin's governing coalition, would surely love to appear even more progressive -- but has no money.

Poor Flierl. Berlin is broke, worse than broke, billions in debt, so it was all he could do to say that he quite liked the look of the crowd who showed and imply that if there's any money anywhere to be scrounged up, the sort of grants that make festivals like the transmediale possible will keep on coming.

Let's hope so. There were times not all that many years ago when it was tough to get 13 people to attend a panel at the transmediale, much less 130, and ten-fold again would have been beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Hats off to the team that has aroused such public interest. Let's hope it's just as tough to get into the exhibition in the days ahead.

Transmediale 01: Transmediale im Aufwind

The transmediale.02 festival runs through Feb. 10 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. The club is open through Feb. 17, the exhibition through Feb. 24.