GLOBALE: Background

Globalization and digitalization are continually changing the world in an ever-increasing way. They are the most important prerequisites for our present and our future. The new art format, the GLOBALE – An Art Event – which begins with the 300-year anniversary of the city of Karlsruhe in June 2015 and will run for 300 days until mid-April 2016, will broach the cultural effects of globalization and digitalization.

Polyphonic, multipolar manifestations such as exhibitions, concerts, performances, lectures, conferences and symposiums show the decisive trends of the 21st century.
For a long time, art, philosophy and religion were considered the dominating but rival systems of world explanation. But in the modern era, natural science, technology and politics have been added as reference systems. They don’t just interpret the world. They have also created a new tool culture, with which they change the world.

At the start of the Anthropocene era, in which mankind and its civilization is becoming the largest force of nature to threaten the earth, the reformulation of terms such as work, tool, handling, mechanics, technology, knowledge, effect, responsibility and sustainability is necessary. With the Renaissance 2.0, the GLOBALE focuses on an art term expanded to include the natural sciences, which links to the scientification of art in the Renaissance period. Art of the 21st century is no longer just about expression or self-expression. Instead, it reports on scientific and social systems and media, which are changing the world. The technical innovations, among which the global internet is decisive, formed important prerequisites for the scientific, political and social developments, which are combined under the keyword of globalization.

In this context, the digital revolution has introduced the new era of the infosphere. As well as the atmosphere, which is inevitable for the life of mankind on this earth as a biological being, an infosphere is also necessary for the cohabitation of 7 billion people as social beings: A network of wireless radio links via electromagnetic waves (radio, television, telephone, satellites, internet, etc.), which encompasses the world. This guarantees global data exchange and the organization of goods through data communication. Alongside the natural evolution, the man-made exo-evolution is emerging in the infosphere era, in which millions of pieces of data circulate the globe every second.