OPEN CALL
Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance and Protest
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Download the open call description
NiMAC [The Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Associated with the Pierides Foundation] in Cyprus, Valand Academy of the Gothenburg University, Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Sweden and the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan organise the project Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance and Protest.
Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance and Protest is a two-year research project exploring the affective meanings of drone technologies on photography and human rights. The partnership between the three cities –Gothenburg, Nicosia and Lahore– will result in simultaneous exhibitions that will be held in each of the three participating institutions (Hasselblad Center, NiMAC and Zahour Ul Akhlaq Gallery of the National College of Arts) in Spring 2018, curated by Sarah Tuck and Louise Wolthers, Yiannis Toumazis and Imran Ahmad respectively. The exhibitions will present commissioned photo-based artworks that explore drones as motile cameras and as a new camera consciousness that alters the material assemblages through which protest and warfare take place.
Conceived as a mode of relational experience between the curators, commissioned artists and gallery audiences and as a shared sense of responsibility toward distant others,Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance and Protest is an effort to produce a geography of thinking about drones shaped in part by the proximity and physical distance to drone warfare, the political and ethical implications of the asymmetry of seeing without being seen, and the legal restrictions on civilian drone use within each city and region.
In addition to the commissioned artworks, the view from above the cities of Gothenburg, Nicosia and Lahore will be screened in the galleries Hasselblad Center, NiMAC and Zahoor Ul Akhlaq Gallery as part of the shared inquiry on the geopolitics of vertical space. Moreover, audio material from interdisciplinary talks whichtook place in Gothenburg in 2017, which explored the impact of drone technology on the way we see, will be presented in the three exhibition venues.
The three exhibitions will also be brought together as a stand-alone “pop-up” that will be hosted as a permanent learning resource in each of the three galleries, with all artworks captioned in Swedish, English, Greek and Urdu.
NiMAC extends an open call to artists who wish to participate in the exhibition. The three artists who will be selected must produce photo-based artworks focusing on the following themes:
- Colonial and counter-colonial uses of drone technology
- Politics of visibility
- Vertical geographies of power and assistance
- Public vs private
- Proximity vs distance
Criteria of assessment
- Artistic merit of the project
- Processes or methods to be used
- Quality of idea and research
- Relevance to the geopolitics of the southeastern Mediterranean region (including photographic history of region)
The selected artists will receive up to €3,000 each, which should cover all aspects of research and production of the commissioned work.
The organizers reserve the right to not commission from this call in the event that the applications received do not meet the criteria or artistic merit.
Important Dates
Open Call announcement: 5 October 2017
Deadline for submission of applications: 4 December 2017
Announcement of selected participants: 18 December 2017
Proposals should be submitted in Word document or/and PDF format to info@nimac.org.cy