FESTIVAL OF REGIONS 2007. EXITS AND DEAD ENDS
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Festival of Regions, Marktplatz 12, A-4100 Ottensheim
or
office@fdr.at
Tel: 43(0)7234 85 2 85, Fax: 43(0)7234 85 2 85-4,www.fdr.at
Deadline for submissions: Sunday, 7 May 2006 (postmark)
Duration of Festival: June/July 2007
Transnational mobility, often compulsory, and continued drastic differences in standards of living have changed the thought of progress, at least in Europe, into a stop-and-go movement between security-oriented persistence and protectionism, and a simultaneous intensification of competition and demands for change. Present-day life and projections for the future are mostly caught in polarities. Opening up and sealing off, internationalization and national autonomy, ecology and technical development, sustainability and ever-increasing pressure toward flexibility etc.
As so often in situations with initially contradictory options for action, apart from the propaganda machines operating at top speed, hopelessness and a feeling of inevitability take hold. At the same time, old and new movements endeavour to find options to overcome stagnation and maintain the ability to act. The current social situation draws its nervous, tense volatility from these antagonisms. In zones of apparent calm and satisfaction, a depressive pressure pervades, whereas around them the lines of flight cross. The various resonances begin to become superimposed and much becomes possible: stillness through suspension, sound through interactions and a build-up into unimaginable frequencies with an uncertain course.
With the theme Exits and Dead Ends the Festival of Regions is bracketing its pretension to local reference together with a worldwide relevant issue. With the environs of the Pyhrn expressway (23 communities in the district Kirchdorf upon Krems), a region was chosen as the focal region for the 2007 festival which has had to repeatedly confront the controversy between opposed progressive movements. Between transnational axis, recreational area and transitional zone to central regions, numerous points of reference for developing projects can be expected.
The Festival of Regions has been taking place every two years since 1993 at decentralized venues in the federal state of Upper Austria (capital: Linz) and since then has developed into a major contemporary event for present-day, site-specific art and culture. At the interface between art and everyday life, the festival’s projects involve the region of focus and its general public in the discussion of social, political and artistic questions.
Call for submissions
The Festival of Regions is inviting project proposals from the areas of site-specific art and culture, art in public space, everyday culture, performance and participatory practices for the 2007 festival program.
Who can make a project proposal?
Anyone with an idea on the theme: individual artists or artists collaborating in a team, individuals working in the area of culture and society, scientists, initiatives, associations, NGOs or working groups.
Who will select the projects?
The board and director of the Festival of Regions will make a preliminary selection with the support of an independent international program advisory board. Within this preliminary selection, the festival director will design a program. A decision will be made without the possibility of recourse to legal action. Direct invitations and commissions will round off the program.
Who is organizing the Festival of Regions?
An independent association called the Festival of Regions with support mainly from the State of Upper Austria, the arts section of the Federal Chancellor’s Office of the Republic of Austria, the city of Linz and individual financial sponsors.
The association’s board is composed of Susanne Blaimschein, curator and exhibition organizer, Eva Gütlinger, cultural worker, adviser, adult educator, Gabriele Heidecker, architecture communicator and cultural worker, Dagmar Höss, artist, curator and art communicator, Eva Immervoll, managing director of the KUPF Cultural Platform Upper Austria and cultural worker, and Gerald Priewasser, artist and designer.
Festival director: Martin Fritz
What should the project proposal include?
1 Project description
2 A concise description of the project in no more than 500 characters
3 A visualisation, script or other presentation of the project and its realization that is as vivid as possible
4 Place of realization or spatial-situational requirements
5 Presentation of the project’s authors and initiators
6 Organizational framework
7 Timetable for project development and realization
8 Financial plan
9 Project director including address, telephone number and e-mail address
The project proposal can be submitted in either English or German and should be a maximum of seven pages long.
Regional cultural initiatives
Apart from submitting independent productions, cultural initiatives and associations in the focal region can also submit proposals for co-productions, commissions or focal points for the program as well as ideas for festival venues, etc.
Miscellaneous
The Festival of Regions cannot accept any responsibility for the documents submitted. The rejection of a proposal does not give the authors of the project any claim on the Festival of Regions or any other persons acting on behalf of the Festival. In particular, the Festival is not liable for any expenditure which the authors of projects have incurred with a view to their potential participation in the Festival.
Submission
The project proposal can be sent by mail in 10 copies (Din A4) or by e-mail in the preferred format of a Word or a PDF file up to 2 MB. Additional materials cannot be taken into account.
