RExFORM - International Performance Project

Initiated by / A Partnership 
maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology 
BoCA – Biennial of Contemporary Arts 

Jury
Beatrice Leanza maat, Executive Director
John Romão BoCA, Artistic Director
Chloé Siganos, Centre Pompidou, Performing Arts Director
Catherine Wood, Tate Modern, Performance Senior Curator

RExFORM is a new long-term institutional collaboration born in recognition of the challenges that the outbreak of Covid-19 poses to cultural practitioners at large. Initiated by the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (maat) and the Biennale of Contemporary Arts (BoCA) both Lisbon based, this unprecedented initiative wishes to foster contemporary artistic creation following the evolution of the concept of performance as a collaborative practice and its ramifications embracing novel concepts of theatricality, choreography and mediality.

RExFORM supports the production of works by young practitioners of 35 years of age or younger—this yearly grant will see an international jury awarding a winning project to benefit from funding, debut space and international promotion. For this first edition Beatrice Leanza (maat) and John Romao (BoCA) are joined by Chloé Siganos Performing Arts Director at Centre Pompidou and Catherine Wood Performance Senior Curator at Tate Modern.

While in the future this initiative will be open to international participants from around the world, maat and BoCA have decided to dedicate this inaugural 2020 edition to the support of Portuguese creators.

Interested applicants should register and follow relevant instructions through this portal.

About:
RExFORM is seeking performative, transdisciplinary and collaborative projects which underline the openness and fluidity of the concept of performance. It recognizes the social importance of supporting and fostering experimentation for the younger generations. On the one hand, making artistic creation viable and, on the other, attracting new audiences to a hybrid and performative genre which defies conventional standards and drives the emergence of new languages. It addresses forms of contemporary creation that think performance through different perspectives, while redrawing the confines and understandings of concepts of spectatorship, participation and co-creation.

Open Call & Keywords:
The call is open to a wide range of projects that contribute to deepening and expanding the concept of performance, within the visual and performing arts, dance and music.

Relational projects based on interdisciplinary intersections and interactions are privileged, including visual arts, choreography, theater, new media and multimedia narratives.

Emergency (urgency): An initiative that incorporates in its genesis the urgency to support younger creators, in the emergence of thinking about new models and forms of presentation, as well as the need to provide opportunities and challenges to the next generations.

Transdisciplinarity: A project that values hybridity, crossings, and collaboration among creators from different areas.

Future: An annual grant that begins in the context of exceptional times in the awareness of the importance of starting today to draw tomorrow. Imagine and envision future alternatives, an ecology of novel creative thinking, through collaboration and the communion of languages.

In a moment of uncertainty and instability, we wish to empower methodological reformulations that this pause, this slowdown, can inspire and make possible. How can we envision new avenues of synergy and positive contamination? Both individual practitioners and collectives are invited to propose innovative physical or virtual alternatives that play with the porosity of artistic boundaries, through the realization of a project that challenges the usual exhibition format.

With a jury composed of prestigious national and international members, the intention is to support original writing in new ways—the winning project should include a first phase of research and presentation in the digital context (online), before being launched in the institutional context of maat, and, in a later phase, benefit from national and international touring with BoCA.

maat reopened on June 10 after a prolonged closure and a delayed seasonal inauguration planned on March 27. It features an unprecedented museum-wide architecture intervention titled Beeline commissioned to the New York based studio SO – IL playing host to a series of new exhibitions including Currents – Temporary Architectures by SO – IL and the 6-month long experimental public program maat Mode – Prototyping the Museum. Discover more at www.maat.pt