VIDEO STATION — OPEN CALL

On the 2020 orbit, we are surrounded by public speaking in all forms of media we consume. The return to discourse permeates artistic practice after a detour of 30 years, news anchors have been hailing from inside TV sets for decades, while post-social media Internet acts like a stage scaffolding where voicing ideas and opinions becomes a perpetual talent show.

We invite artists, filmmakers, visual anthropologists, journalists, educators, collectives and other explorers with an interest in public speaking and moving image to send us a proposal for a new video work. 3 selected proposals will receive a production grant of up to €1500 each and an artist fee of €500. The works will be showcased on the Video Station online platform between October and December 2020, alongside a curated series of older works by established artists.

Composed of a video library and a production laboratory, Video Station acts as the channel for moving image practice part of Quote—Unquote, a collaborative long-term research platform focusing on public speaking. In case you have any questions please feel free to get in touch at hello@quoteunquoteplatform.com.

WHO CAN APPLY

Public speaking as a performance is an anxious exercise in power, where the voice and the body reinforce one another. Through the lens of artistic practice, Quote—Unquote aims to explore the ramifications of (public) discourse and its capacity to heal, educate, manipulate or deceive, in an open dialogue that transcends disciplines.

This is why Video Station proposes a transdiciplinary approach: as main eligibility criterion, each proposal must integrate a collaboration with a practitioner who mainly works in a different field than that of the applicant. This collaboration can take place throughout the research phase of the work, it can happen in front of the camera or all throughout the project. Proposals must be suited to result in a video work with a runtime between 5 and 30 minutes.

We welcome proposals by artists and practitioners from various disciplines who consider the notions of speech and discourse vital to their personal development and professional practice. We are open to all moving image practices (video art, essay film, short fiction film, hybrid documentary forms, video journalism etc.). Applicants of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds are welcome! The call is open internationally, with at least one Romanian proposal selected.

HOW TO APPLY

To submit your application, please send an email to hello@quoteunquoteplatform.com with the subject “Quote—Unquote: Video Station Application 2020”, containing the following documents compiled into one single .pdf file: 

— Detailed proposal (max. 400 words);
— Short technical sheet (including estimated runtime, filming specs, team, visual references if available and a provisional production budget – this helps us understand the scale of your project);
— A portfolio including a CV and/or bio (if you have previous video works, you can include links here).

Please make sure all attachments are <10mb in total. Applications are accepted in English or Romanian. All proposals must include a transdisciplinary collaboration as outlined above.

Deadline: Applications must be submitted by July 19, 23:59 CET.

Selected participants will be notified at the end of July. Submissions are reviewed by Infinite Conversation (Dan Angelescu, Irina Radu, Cristina Vasilescu), the curatorial unit devising the Quote—Unquote platform.

Working time for the successful proposals (research, pre-production, shooting and post-production) will last 10 weeks, between August and October. Of course, we will not intervene during the production process, but we can offer curatorial guidance in terms of securing collaborations, recommending the work to other curators etc. If health and safety measures will permit it by then, we also intend to organize public screenings of the commissioned works before the online launch.

KEYWORDS

Speech is a point of intersection or tension between multiple nodes. In our quests, we’ve visited echo chambers, histrionic soap operas and melodrama, translating the untranslatable, the therapeutic capacities of the human voice, life coaches and the uses of corporate slang, political debates, mechanical and corporeal intricacies, free-form radio, arcane rituals and deconstructed TED talks, vlogging and ASMR, glossolalia and prosopopoeia, figures of speech, freedom of speech, hate speech and ghostwriting. All of these could be starting points for your potential research, but as the song says, nothing will stand in your way.

Thank you, and good luck! 🙂