Futuresonic 2008 - Call for Submissions

Manchester - early May 2008

http://www.futuresonic.com/08/getinvolved.html

Futuresonic Art Award - Submissions

A commission valued at £5000 is available for a new project responding to the Social Networking Unplugged theme. Support will also be available for a limited number of other projects, and Futuresonic invites submissions of projects that do not require funding from the festival.

Transforming the city into a space of experimentation, making it come alive. Futuresonic's art strand features exhibitions, performances and interventions, including many world firsts, with a focus on social and participatory artworks which re-imagine the city.

Futuresonic transforms lived city spaces, not just occupying spaces temporarily vacated by their commercial owners. In 2007 Futuresonic commissioned 3 artworks responding to the social context of one of the UK's main shopping centres.

There are 3 ways to have a project included in the Futuresonic Art strand:
i) A commission valued at £5000 is available for a new artwork
ii) Futuresonic can offer financial support to a limited number of other projects
iii) Projects can be accepted that do not require financial support from the festival.
All will receive full marketing benefits and management support.
This submission form should be used for all of the above. All proposals submitted will be considered for the commission, and unsuccessful submissions will automatically be considered for other sources of support.

Deadline: 5pm, Tuesday 18 December 2007.

-------
The theme of Futuresonic 2008 and its Art strand is Social Networking Unplugged. It will be "unplugged" in a number of ways. There will be artworks involving offline (or unplugged) collaborative social experience and face to face social interaction. Other projects will look at who is excluded and left out of the loop of Web 2.0, and so "unplugged" in another way. Also there is the sense of pulling out the plug in order to take the new social spaces apart, see how they work, and put them together in new ways.

Projects can involve online, mobile or offline social networking. They can enable people to experiment collaboratively with different kinds of social experience and social interaction. Or they can intervene in the forces, inequities and inequalities that shape society.

Today we can occupy many different social spaces at once. How can we make visible the unspoken rules and etiquette that guide what we do in public places? Who are the social revolutionaries? The misfits? The conformists? Who has been left outside?

Futuresonic will also be working in different ways with communities across Manchester and invites community groups to get involved. Its easy. All you have to do to participate is to reflect on, explore, perform your nature as a social being.

The exhibition will be viral and ambient. It will not always be clear where it begins and ends. How does the meaning and experience of social interaction change when recontextualised as art?
------
Art (12/18/07), Panel or Paper (12/18/07), Music/sound (2/7/08), event (2/7/08)