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Deadline : 10 January 2021

TOPO, artist-run centre for digital arts, is launching a new call for submissions for projects for its 2021-23 programming. This series of on-site and online exhibitions during TOPO’s next season of activities, beginning in the fall of 2021, will take place under the theme of fluidity.

In an age of heightened changeability, the notion of fluidity will initiate abundant and open ideas about the impermanence of harmonies. Something fluid flows easily, without resistance, but it is also difficult to grasp and define. When events unfold smoothly they are fluid and clear; fluidity is reassuring because it is predictable and controlled, “flowing from the source.” But everything about stability is mere appearance, because stability is subject to a constant flow of dynamic interactions coming from every quarter.

The concept of fluidity has been employed by various disciplines (physics, sociology, economics, etc.) and most often embodies contrasting paradoxes. The Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has long explored the corollary concept of “liquidity” to describe our lives and our cities, caught in constant fast-moving flows of perpetual movement and change. Although this fluidity is a threat to social structures, it is also an opportunity, because it is synonymous with flexibility. Fluid life bends out of shape to adapt to its environment, it is constantly recomposing its networks, it is open onto the outside . . .

Call for Submissions

TOPO is opening this call for submissions under two categories:

1. Interactive media installations for our window display: a 12 sq. m. (125 sq. ft.) located in the hallway on the ground floor of the Pôle de Gaspé, home to commercial, cultural and artistic spaces, including nine artist-run dissemination and production centres. In this environment, the display window captures attention and prompts diverse responses to the way the space is used and how on-site activities are taking place.
2. Web art: TOPO wishes to bridge its web DNA and contemporary artistic production by paying tribute to Internet culture. What, in a “post-everything” context, are the orientations visible in artworks created by, for and with the Internet today? The web artworks selected will be grouped together in series and promoted online on the TOPO website, accompanied by a text by a curator.

For its 2021-23 programming, TOPO is looking for proposals with social discourses and formal and narrative explorations which meet the challenge of integrating, physically or on-screen, text, images and sound. Proposals may include both an installation element and an online dimension to extend the experience in virtual space.

Special attention will be given to projects addressing the imaginaries of the Americas, including those from Indigenous communities.

The gallery and online projects can take different approaches to fluidity as new ways of being, with respect to both society and the individual and in the form of critiques or utopias. Whether they are interactive, generative or contemplative, or intended to shake things up, how do these artworks convey ideas about the features and nuances of fluidity and flow, and of their frontiers?

To give a few examples:

• the Internet and its continuous transmutation;
• new forms of celebrity;
• variable identities;
• mobility as a relational concern: connection or exclusion;
• calling consumerism into question;
• the socio-ecological transition;
• open-source urbanism;
• transformed nature;
• the art of living with uncertainty.

For both the window display and the Web, completed projects or projects underway and demonstrating solid commitment on the part of the artist will be given preference.

The selection criteria take into account the relevance and feasibility of the proposed projects in the context identified. Artists must be in a position to carry out the production of their work and to maintain it throughout the exhibition. Web works must be compatible with the usual dissemination platforms.

In its analysis of submissions, the centre is attentive to the diverse forms of presenting and formulating practices arising out of artistic and cultural diversity.

Artists whose projects are selected will benefit from the following resources:

• payment of a dissemination fee;
• access to the centre’s computer and audiovisual equipment;
• three days of technical support for mounting the project;
• a dissemination event backed up by a promotional campaign.

In the case of artists residing away from Montreal, transportation and lodging costs must come out of a specific agreement or dedicated funding.

 

 

 

Plan of the space

Documents required :

1) Project and statement

— Description of an installation or web art project (2 pages max.)

— Description of the project’s technical needs (1 page max.)

— Artist’s statement (1 page max.)

— Curriculum vitae (3 pages max.)

These documents must be assembled in a single PDF (5 MB max.).

 

2) Visual documentation (maximum 12 documents)

— Images (JPG, GIF, PNG)

— Press clippings, if applicable (4 pages max.)

Visual documentation must be assembled in a single Zip file (15 MB max.).

 

3) Internet links and videos

Provide a maximum of three Internet links and their description in the submission form.

 

Please use the following standard for naming files, avoiding special characters and accents:

• Project and statement : 2021-2023_TXT_ArtistName.pdf
• Visual documentation : 2021-2023_VISUAL_ArtistName.zip

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 10 January 2021

 

Submission Form

If you have any questions or problems, please contact us at tech@agencetopo.qc.ca.

Wait for the confirmation page before leaving the form.

This could take up to 10 minutes.

An email will also be sent to you.