PRESS RELEASE
Open Call / Subversive Fair
Dear Media Outlet Representatives:We request that you publicize our Open Call to submit projects to the SUVBERSIVE FAIR – A Trade Show for Counterculture and Resistance Technologies. This event is being staged in conjunction with Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture.
About the Subversive Fair
As the world’s first counterculture trade show, the Subversive Fair will spotlight current projects, actions and works that productively undermine relationships of power and forms of hegemony currently prevailing in society, and that appropriate the power to dictate the configuration of the public sphere. The 1st Subversive Fair will be held in Linz in April/May 2009 in conjunction with Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture. Approximately 25 artists/activists (and their associates) will be invited as exhibitors. The fair will run for four days; the structure, organization, ambience and preparations for the Subversive Fair will be modeled on those of a conventional trade show. The artists/activists will present their work in person at their respective booths, and will be available to engage in discussions with those attending the fair. Visitors will also be able to attend do-it-yourself workshops, action tours, speeches, product presentations and film screenings. This makes for low-threshold propagation of specialized knowledge & skills, and offers an attractive, uncomplicated approach to art that is also accessible by audiences other than those that typically attend such cultural events.
About the Open Call
Which inventions facilitate resistance? Which ideas undermine the system? Where are revolutionary currents lurking? What can we do to shake up prevailing circumstances?
This Open Call is an effort to establish contact with those whose work can be presented at the Subversive Fair. Beginning April 29, 2008, it’ll be possible to submit proposals online at www.subversivmesse.net.
We’re seeking tools and subversive practices for everyday life that are emerging for the process of dealing with border regimes, migration and denying entry to outsiders, surveillance, censorship, exclusion from educational or health care systems, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, gender-related issues, homophobia, etc.
Submissions are being accepted in the following categories:
Technical Devices
This category is for technical products including both hardware and software—tools for interventions, networking, discourse and information transfer.
Social Strategies
This category is for forms of social action that undermine/evade invisible forms of power and the social order, call them into question, or open up new possibilities for action.
Visual Phenomena
This category is for visual aesthetics and practices that, above all, disturb our habits of perception and reconfigure conventional practices in the fields of fashion, advertising and architecture.
This call for submissions is addressed in particular to artists and activists in the following fields:
invisible theater and performance, shoplifting, hacking, radical games, fashion, billboard liberation, radical queer, music, streetart, graphic & industrial design, art criticism, (satirical) art and camouflage.
Individuals and collectives are welcome to submit projects. Submitters may remain anonymous if they wish.
Deadline for submissions is July 22, 2008.
Press photos (300dpi, jpg) are available for download.
With questions, please contact:
SOCIAL IMPACT Vienna
Barbara Pitschmann, project director
Neustiftg. 71/1, 1070 Vienna, Austria
Cell: 0043 (0) 699 10 69 38 25
Phone: 0043 (0)1 526 90 25
FAX: 0043 (0)70 77 31 42-35
E-mail: bp@social-impact.at
www.subversivmesse.net
SOCIAL IMPACT Linz
Harald Schmutzhard, overall coordinator
Elisabethstr. 1, 4020 Linz, Austria
Phone: 0043 (0)70 773142-23
FAX: 0043 (0)70 773142-24
E-mail: office@social-impact.at
www.subversivmesse.net
Details:
Jury/Research BoardFAQ
