Opportunities: Open Call – Dystopia Festival – Sound Art (Berlin, Germany) Deadline July 1, 2020

Open Call – Dystopia Festival – Sound Art (Berlin, Germany)
Deadline July 1, 2020
Apply: Online

The Dystopia Festival brings diverse sound art viewpoints together in an exhibition that deals with current dystopian moments, as well as those of an imagined future.

Dystopias have gained immense importance in recent years. Not only in fiction, but also in reality, the dystopian signals have been increasing, whether by authoritarian-led states, in threats posed by global Internet corporations, by drastic climate developments – or, most recently, by the corona pandemic. The dystopian always carries the germ of the utopian within it however, even if only as a warning to us not to let things go so far- as we have witnessed during the Corona period, when, for example, Venice’s canals became clear again, or, when the sky over Beijing became clear as well.

Berlin – Brazil / Oct. 16 – Nov. 01 2020

Following on from the premiere of the double edition Dystopie Berlin-Istanbul (2018/2019), our guest country this year will be Brazil. In addition to artists from Brazil, we invite sound artists from Europe to submit new or existing works that deal with the topic of “dystopia” in the broadest sense.

Sound art possesses the particular artistic potential, through its creation of atmospheres and it’s resonating in unusual spaces, to make the ambiguity between dystopia and utopia perceptible to the senses: dystopian scenarios of society & state, nature & climate, cognition & communication captured in sound. These can be situations that, depending on the context, appear as dystopian or utopian sketches, reacting to ambiguously interpretable, world-wide processes, including digitalization, globalization, climate change, economic imbalance as well as social, religious and ethnic confrontations and aspects of de/recolonization. The focus on Brazil gives the festival its current, political thrust – the individual works are not meant to be fixed on this however, but rather to operate from within their own context.

With this open call we would like to offer sound artists the opportunity to develop new works that react to these dystopian signals and express them in different sound-artistic perspectives, whereby “sound-artistic” explicitly may include visual, object-like and space-related means in addition to sound. Due to the uncertain situation regarding Corona, please note that we prefer installation works.

The Alte Münze (Old Mint) in Berlin-Mitte serves as the main exhibition venue, with cellars and vaults in very different sizes. The Errant Sound gallery space is available for the additional exhibition of works, and especially the path between these two locations, on the banks of the Spree, offers locations where sound artistic interventions in public space are possible (depending on permission). For Alte Münze and on the banks of river Spree site-specific works are welcome.

A visit of the locations is planned for artists on June 12th, 12 o’clock : Please register by [email protected] (We will meet in front of the Café The Greens / Haus 3 on the Alte Münze public area).

A PDF with photos is available for artists who are unable to visit the location: Open Call -PDF-

Artists living in Brazil will be invited for the festival directly. The open call is for sound artists living in the European region. Climate-friendly travel by train is preferable – if at all possible.

The festival wants to establish a sustainable cooperation with the Brazilian sound art scene and we hope to continue the Dystopie-Festival in Brazil in 2021. Selected works produced for Berlin 2020 will then be shown in Brazil.

Jury Open Call

• Head of Jury: Julia Gerlach (Akademie der Künste Berlin)
• Laura Mello (Artistic director Dystopie Festival 2020)
• Georg Klein (Artistic director Dystopie Festival 2020)
• Prof. Alexandre Fenerich (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
• Prof. Kirsten Reese (Universität der Künste Berlin)
• Mario Asef (Errant Sound Vorstand)

Budget

The festival is organized by Errant Sound – an artist run project space, not an institution. Therefore only a limited budget is available:

• Artist fee for existing works: 500€ .
• Artist fee for new works produced for the festival: 1500€ .
• Production budget: 1500€ on average per project, including costs for materials and special equipment (also rented equipment). If your project will be selected a precise cost calculation will be needed.
• Transportation, travel and accomodation costs will be covered by the festival. Save our climate: if possible please come by train and avoid flights.

How to apply

1. Fill in the online application form (incl. short project proposal) here
2. Send us a long CV and a portfolio with 3 of your recent works as PDF (Max. 10MB) to [email protected], and optional a long project description PDF (Max. 5MB).

Application deadline July 1st 2020 Apply now

The festival is organized by Errant Sound e.V. and kindly funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes and Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.

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