OPEN CALL 2022 – new deadline: 29.12.2021
An Open Call for Fotofestiwal Open Program gives you an opportunity to present your works to the audience of the International Festival of Photography held in June 2022 in Łódź (Poland). We are looking for artists with exceptional personalities and projects which present bold visions. The call for entries is open – with no thematic or age limits. We invite specialists from the world’s most important media and photographic institutions to join the jury. From among the submitted projects in this category, the jury will select five which, in cooperation with the curators of Fotofestiwal, will be presented in the form of an exhibition.
OPEN CALL “COMMUNITY”
This year, we decided to add one additional category that relates to the main theme of the festival’s curatorial program. The jury will select one project from this category to present in the form of an exhibition. We are looking for artistic and social projects whose main theme is community, but also utopia, local spirit, cooperation and integration.
“Community” concept: there would be no humanity as a whole if there was no communal thinking. Community gives us a sense of identity and belonging, it makes things meaningful and creates the social foundations. In the fluid modernity of the 21st century, more and more often we look for the roots of human community, the real, primal bonds, ones that are not based solely on the existing, anachronistic values, or post-feudal, capitalist, religious and national structures. What are contemporary communities based on? How do traditional ones evolve? Is technological development an opportunity or a threat to them? What is a utopia and what is a real possibility in the search for an ideal community? What voices are missing in the narratives of our communities? Finally, how to create a community today based on respect for diversity? These and other problems will be the core focus of the exhibitions, projects, discussions prepared by curators, artists, academics and experts invited to co-create the 21st Fotofestiwal in Łódź.
JURY
- Lea Vene, an independent curator and cultural anthropologist. She obtained an MA in Art History, Cultural Anthropology and Fashion Theory at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. In 2019 she completed two post master courses (Critical Images and R-Lab) at Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. For the past seven years she worked as a curator in the gallery Miroslav Kraljević in Zagreb. She was one of the organizers of ETNOFILm (Ethnographic film festival) where she curated film, exhibition and educational programs. Since 2015 she curated several different exhibition and conference programs for International Photography Festival Organ Vida. Lea is also a member of association grey) (area, space for contemporary and media art and a co-leader of projects exploring gender aspects of intangible industrial heritage. She is a lecturer in fashion museology and anthropology at the Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb.
- Krzysztof Candrowicz, curator, artistic director, researcher. Co-founder and member of the Foundation of Visual Education and Lodz Fotofestiwal in Poland. In 2013 Krzysztof became artistic director of the Triennial of Photography in Hamburg in Germany and since 2018 works as a curator for CICLO Biennial in Porto, Portugal. Krzysztof works internationally as a guest curator and visiting lecturer in numerous organizations, museums, schools, festivals and as a jury member of various projects and art prizes, including the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award, Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, Hasselblad Award, Robert Capa Award and many others.
- Void: Myrto Steirou & João Linneu; Void is an independent publishing house dedicated to photography books and education. The project is driven by its founders Myrto Steirou (based in Athens, Greece) and João Linneu (based in Reykjavík, Iceland). Void works with both established and up-and-coming artists, proudly fostering photographers’ debut books. Void has collaborated with many international art institutions since it started, back in October 2016. In its books, you will find powerful stories and innovative design, melded together with fine and experimental material. Last, but not least, Void also runs its own book-making workshops called “Impromptu”, which are an opportunity to share its vision about photography books with new and exciting talents.
- Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, PhD, currently works both as the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Finnish Museum of Photography and as Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki, where she is responsible for the MA-program for curatorial and exhibition studies, Praxis, too. She also is an artistic director and co-founder of The Festival of Political Photography, which seeks to examine what the term “political” means in contemporary extended photographic practices. Rastenberger has extensive experience in exhibition projects, curatorial practices, and the international exhibition scene of the contemporary arts. Currently she co-edits a second volume after the book Why Exhibit? Positions On Exhibiting Photographies, 2018, FW:books, dealing with curating and exhibiting photo-based images. Her special interests are new forms of photography as contemporary art, exhibition as critical practice, feminist curation and running.
- Daria Tuminas (RU, based in NL) is the curator of FOTODOK – exhibition space in Utrecht. Starting from 2017 and until December 2019, Tuminas worked as the head of Unseen Book Market at Unseen Amsterdam. She obtained an MA in Film and Photographic Studies at Leiden University. Daria regularly contributes texts to various media, to name a few materials: in 2017, she guest edited The Photobook Review #12 (Aperture); in 2018, wrote a chapter on East European photobooks to How We See: Photobooks by Women (10 x 10 Photobooks); in 2020, she co-wrote a text Is a Book Worth a Tree? for YET issue 12 and guest edited doc! photography magazine issue 46. She organised a number of events dedicated to photobooks, among them the co-curated exhibition on Dutch photobooks and the process of their making Undercover (silver prize at European Design Awards) and exhibition Reading a Photobook.
WHAT SELECTED AUTHORS RECEIVE
- Exhibition during FOTOFESTIWAL in Łódź (from 9th to 26th of June, over 20.000 viewers) for 6 artists,
- Artistic fee 400 euro,
- Accomodation for main opening weekend of the festival (4 nights),
- Reimbursement of travel costs up to 200 euro,
- Exhibition production budget 450 euro.
You can send your questions on: opencall@fotofestiwal.com
ABOUT FOTOFESTIWAL
Fotofestiwal was established in 2001 as one of the first photography events in Poland. Since then it has grown into one of the most relevant photographic festivals in Europe but its core mission has not changed: presenting photography in its various ways (via exhibitions, films, slideshows, workshops etc.) but also talking about important social issues and introducing the unobvious beauty and unique history of our city to the audience. For such reason we organize thematic exhibitions in various post-industrial spaces, which Łódź is well known for, we put stress on networking parties – (we are quite famous for those), but also every year we try to develop new ways of talking about photography: via events such as Photo-Match: Completely Different Portfolio Review, during which we focus on having equal status granted to the curators as well as artists, with formula of presentation that numerous festivals are applying worldwide now with a success. Since 2016 we work as a collective, with no board of directors, developing a new way of cultural institution management.
Edition 2022 will take place in Łódź from 9th to 26th June.
TIMELINE
Call for entries open – 30th of October 2021
Submission deadline – 29th of December 2021
Winner announcement on fotofestiwal.com – 18th of January 2022
Fotofestiwal opening – 9th of June 2022
