OPEN CALL: QUEER ARCHIVE ITALY

DEADLINE 14 SEPTEMBER 2013

OPEN CALL FOR
1) QUEER ART PRACTICES: performance, video, installation, sculpture, painting, new media, sound and other
2) ORGANISATIONS, INSTITUTIONS, CURATORS, GALLERIES etc. that have engaged in the past or intend to engage with 'queer' aesthetics, theoretical and/or political endeavours in their exhibition and curatorial process.
 
CUNTemporary, a non-profit London-based organisation that creates and curates artistic and cultural feminist-queer events, has been invited to make a contribution and participate in the ArtVerona contemporary art fair (Italy) as part of the fair's Independents section during the period 10-14 October 2013. As the curator Cristiano Seganfreddo explains, the selected 'Independents' find themselves “out of the schemes that we already know” and as the subjects characterised by “will, passion and vision”. It is with this will, passion, and vision that CUNTemporary intends to give rise to the “Queer Archive Italy”, an alive, dynamic, up-to-date platform on queer Italian artistic, theoretical, and political engagements. The project will live a double reality: a virtual one (in a form of an online, web-based platform) and a physical one, within the space that has been dedicated to us at the Verona art fair.

Although cognisant of numerous challenges that any attempt to define the term 'queer' poses, we draw on the queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman's articulation of “queer” to define it as  “a set of possibilities produced out of temporal and historical difference’”, which as such represents that which "has not entered the historical records, and what is not yet culturally legible ... often encountered in embodied, nonrational forms…” (Freeman, GLQ, 13, 2007: 159). It is indeed The Queer Archive Italy's desire to comprehend and elaborate these non-normative logics and organisations in relation to the concepts of community, sexual identity, embodiment, and activity in space and time (J. Halberstam, In a queer time and place, 2005: 6).
 
The project aims to produce, over the course of four days of the exhibition, spatial and temporal conditions for the possibility of an unconstrained emergence of Italian and queer artistic realities, which will involve (but will not be limited to) a discussion of the current and evolving projects, their on-going potentials as well as struggles. In order to participate in the Italian queer archive making, whether via the online platform or at the fair itself, it is not necessary to have exclusively dealt with queer themes but it is sufficient to have touched them during one’s artistic/curatorial/exhibitive career.
 
Those who will be selected from the open call (together with the ones that will be invited by the organisation) will be part of the Queer Archive Italy, which has an online presence. Then these will also be able to candidate themselves for exhibiting their works during the art fair in order to talk about their projects or to realise performances, workshops and other activities in ArtVerona.

In order to send your application to the Queer Archive Italy please send an e-mail to [log in to unmask] with the following information:
- NAME of the artist/group or organisation/institution/curator/space
- place of birth
- current address
- e-mail
- an IMAGE that represents the artist/work/organisation/institution/curator/space
- website/blog or other online links
- PDF portfolio or a document that illustrates the work or the activity that one wants to present for the Queer Archive Italy (*compulsory in the case there is no online presence)

In order to apply for a project to be held at Independents, in the physical space of ArtVerona, please include, apart from the information above requested, also the following details:
- Project for ArtVerona
- Necessary time (also include the time for rehearsals, if needed)
- Technical necessities
- Provenience of the artist/work

For further information or questions please contact the curator Giulia Casalini [log in to unmask]  

The application is not restricted to the Italian “citizens” but it is open to anyone who lives and works in Italy, as well as to those who have worked there in the past or that have upcoming projects for the Italian territory.

Please send your application by Saturday 14th of September 2013. The results of the selection will be revealed in the following seven days.

Please forward this national Open Call as far as you can!

For more information on Independents visit the website: http://independents.artverona.it 
For further information on CUNTemporary visit our website: http://cuntemporary.org