Open Call to visual and performance artists for Event
What’s the use? & Touch: Event Open Call for Visual and Performance Artists
OPEN CALL: Visual & Performance Artists
Simulacrum Magazine invites visual artists and performers working with the themes What’s the use? and Touch to submit a work(plan) for our next launch event, What’s the use? & Touch, which will take place in Amsterdam in the second half of September 2024. (Exact dates & venue t.b.a.)
The What’s the use? & Touch: Event Open Call for Visual and Performance Artists continues an experimental series of open calls released by Simulacrum earlier this year with Borders & Phantoms, uniting visual artists, performers, writers, and visitors in inspiring, multi-disciplinary programmes.
The deadline for this open call is July 18th, 2024.
The concept of "use" intricately weaves itself into our relationship with the world around us. From the everyday tasks of making our beds, going to work, to cutting our vegetables: the utilisation of objects and activities provides us with a tangibility to the sense of their nature - it gives us a relation to things.*
In the traditions of art history, the concern for the visual aspects of art and its semiotics trumps the interest in the tactile intimacies of the material. The sited-ness of the encounter between the body and the object of analysis is often ignored.**
How do we redefine the usefulness of everyday items? How do unexpected uses breathe new life into spaces, objects, and ideas?
What if we think through our fingertips, and grant the tangibility and physicality of the object as much importance as its symbolic meaning? What if in handling the object, we consider what it does to us – and what we do to it?
Artists often challenge established notions of usefulness, and the predefined ways objects should be utilised. This opens a dialogue about the determination of utility—who decides what is useful and for whom?
Numerous qualities determine our experience of touch, such as texture, temperature, and weight. Yet, is the skin the only organ that can evoke these sensations? How do the politics of touch change throughout history? And how can art interrogate the way we touch?
*Extracts from Simulacrum’s Call for Papers What’s the use?
**Extracts from Simulacrum’s Call for Papers Touch
Submission guidelines:
The deadline for this open call is July 18th. Submissions and questions can be sent by email to info@simulacrum.nl. Please indicate on your email whether you would be available to attend the event in person in Amsterdam, and for each category below you would like to contribute:
VISUAL ART: To submit your visual work, please provide at least 2 images and a short description of the link between your work and (one of) the open call theme(s), and indicate how you would like to set up your work.
PERFORMANCE: To submit a performance plan, please provide a short description of the performance (with images, if possible), a short description of the link between your work and (one of) the open call theme(s), and indicate how you would like to set up your work.
More information:
Please note that the event will take place during an afternoon, in Amsterdam. We ask artists to build up and take down their works on the same day, and we encourage a simple set-up. We will assist you with the installation and the build-off.
This is an experimental event, and we are also learning from you. Questions & suggestions? Please reach out to us via info@simulacrum.nl.
