Open call 58th October Salon
Open call 58th October Salon
September – November 2020
Curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin
General information
The Board of the October Salon and the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the organizer, announce the call for 58th October Salon for artists and art groups.
The working title of 58th October Salon is The Dreamers.
“For centuries philosophers have asked to what extent our external world can legitimately be considered real, utilizing the oneiric as an argument to criticize our most common certainties.
Today, the accelerated development of the new technologies seems to have overturned the issue. The possibility of creating and taking part in increasingly refined virtual spaces seems to represent an escape from reality, an escape towards a dimension that is not strictly oneiric, but that is undoubtedly related to our dreams.
The Dreamers intends to question not only the misleading and ambiguous nature of the real, but the space occupied by art, intended as space of freedom able to challenge the certainty of the real world, of acquired knowledge and of our own beliefs. In a world where cultural, religious, and even expressive barriers are increasingly being tightened, artists react to the paradoxical coincidence of antithetic attitudes — openness, permeability, distrust, and rejection — with the construction of a new space. A space where racial, sexual and social freedom and imaginaries can be experimented with, a place where art does not have one form but many, thanks to the constant ‘giving back and forth’ between the virtual and the physical.
The question is: how can we perceive today’s world? What are the conditionings that interfere in the capacity to critically experience reality? How can artists explain the complexity of the human being in our current times? In this multi-faceted world, dreams are an essential need for human beings. The Dreamers become the inhabitants of a metaphorical world where no barriers, no limits, and no borders can limit the access to a land where we can re-think our own time, rules, and attitudes and configure new scenarios and ways. A place where past, present and future are no longer existing categories and a suspended world defines the formation of a new era.
This call is international.
The curators of 58th October Salon reserve the right to select the participants at their own discretion, as well as to choose the artworks relevant for the concept of the exhibition.
The participants can submit their proposals until 1st June 2019, in digital format only, to the e-mail oktobarskisalon@kcb.rs
All the written materials must be submitted in Serbian and English (or just in English), and the complete material necessary for the participation must be sent in one e-mail.
The subject of e-mail applications should state the name of the participant and the name of the call “58th October Salon”.
Submission material should include:
- Personal info: first and last name, address, e-mail, and contact phone
- CV and a PORTFOLIO with documentation of the last production and works (if artists’ website does not exist).
- Short description of the proposed work(s) and/or exhibition project (up to 1800 characters or 300 words)
- Expense estimate for the production and/or post-production in case of the production of a new piece of art, or planned post-production expenses
- Artists who send proposals for video works should provide a link (Vimeo, YouTube…)
Proposals submitted after the deadline, or the incomplete ones, will not be taken into consideration.
The call is open from Monday 22nd April 2019, until 1st June 2019.
The results will have been announced by the end of July 2019.
The board of October Salon and the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the organizer, commit to respecting all the moral rights of all the participants, and to protect the proposed ideas according to Copyright Law.
About October Salon
October Salon is an international exhibition of contemporary art which, in 2014, became biennial. It takes place between September and December, lasts for six weeks and is not tied to any venue in particular; the venue is always chosen anew, according to the disposal of the venues, and the concept of the art director/curator. October Salon was founded in 1960 by the City of Belgrade as an exhibition of the highest achievements in fine arts (as of 1967, it also includes applied arts), according to the model of the Paris Salon exhibitions.
Over the years, the Salon has changed its concepts and modes of organisation and, in 2004, it became international and one of the benchmarks for both Serbian and the regional art scene. The board of October Salon, appointed by the City of Belgrade, makes decisions on the concept, art director/curator, as well as on the members of international jury, which decides on the October Salon Award.
October Salon has its own rules established in 2007, by the means of the Decree about permanent cultural events of importance for the City of Belgrade. Its main intention is to present and promote most relevant new works of art by Serbian and foreign visual artists, and it does not hold the status of a legal entity.
In the previous year, the curators of the international Salon have been: Anda Rottenberg, Darka Radosavljević and Nebojša Vilić, René Block, Lorand Hegyi, Bojana Pejić, Branislava Anđelković, Johan Poussete and Celia Prado, Alenka Gregorič and Galit Eilat, Branislav Dimitrijević and Mika Hannula, curator group Red Min(e)d, Nicolaus Schafhausen, David Elliott, Gunnar and Daniele Kvaran.
www.oktobarskisalon.org
Members of the October Salon Board from February 2019:
Gordana Goncić, president, Svetlana Jovanović, Maja Kolarić, Đorđe Ozbolt and Vladislav Šćepanović
Founder and patron: The City of Belgrade
With the support of: The Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia
Organizer: Cultural Centre of Belgrade
Knez Mihailova Street, 6/I, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
www.kcb.org.rs
For further questions regarding open call please contact:
Katarina Kostandinović
Art historian and assistant curator at Cultural Centre of Belgrade
katarina.kostandinovic@kcb.org.rs