OPEN CALL FOR ‘DEEP TRASH in The Underworld’

DEADLINE: WEDNESDAY 16 AUGUST 2017

CUNTemporary is now accepting proposals for a new episode of ‘Deep Trash’, the unique multi-disciplinary exhibition and performance club night in London.

Calling for performances, videos and artworks to be shown on Saturday 21 October 2017 at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. We accept proposals by artists of any artistic background and nationality. We are also keen to hear from writers and academics responding to the call either in written form (theory and cross-genre) or through performative lectures, which will be presented during the symposium ‘Performing the Occult: Magick, Rituals and the Monstrous in Live Art’. This will be hosted by the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University on Thursday 19 October 2017, with a keynote talk by Dr. Patricia MacCormack.

This call looks at the dimensions of the occult and the supernatural, witchcraft and magics, pagan rites and shamanism, voodoo practices and transcendence… We welcome proposals that engage with discourses of queerness, feminism, postcolonialism and blackness, and related artistic frameworks.

This event’s applications may include, respond to, be affected by, but not restricted to:
- Queer ethics of monstrosity in demons, vampires and teratological ‘aberrations’.
- Shamanic gender transcendence.
- Tarantism: dancing mania and ‘hysterical’ women.
- Dance and trance in possession or ritualistic ceremonies within Africa and its diaspora.
- Re-configuring the female body in the horror genre – from victim to agent.
- The Babadook effect: the queer art of inventing icons.
- Zombies and other queer mutants between death and life.
- Non-gendered and non-integrating oozing and leaky creatures.
- Afrofuturist perspectives of replicants and bots as liminal figures of sexuality.
- Non-phallic desire and sexual ambiguity in the figure of the Vampire.
- Channelling the afterlife, spirits and unearthly entities through performance, masks and costumes in folklore and occult practices.
- Tattoos, prosthesis and scarifications: subjectivity and the bare skin.
- Pushing the boundaries of anthropocentric views through horned creatures, transpecies, talking beasts, unicorns, pixies and ‘humanimals’.
- Defying bodily integrity: extreme body transformations, apotemnophilia and mutations in ritualistic practices.
- The sticky state of mucosity: viscous connectivity and feminine thresholds.
- Vodou, Voodoo, Hoodoo: critical analyses of contemporary Western appropriations of the religious and spiritual practices of Africa and its diaspora.
- Witches and misogyny: queer-feminist critiques of sexist trolling in the media in relation to representations of female sexual empowerment, anti-normative femininity, ageing wicked bodies and monstrous mothers.
- Queer and feminist takes on tarot readings, divination and astrology.
- Neo-Paganism, ecosex, ‘green witches’ and radical faeries: pansexual communities, menstrual magick, anti-capitalist critique, herbalism and the power of healing with nature.
- From Lilith’s seductions to the Greek she-monsters: the monstrous, raging feminine and its influence on art, literature and cinema.
- Spiritual activism and feminist thought in Latin America: contemporary approaches to the ‘New Mestiza’.

To apply, please email submissions@cuntemporary.org with the heading “DT Underworld Application” by Wednesday 16 August 2017. Please include the following information in your application:

1) Name(s), Surname(s)
2) Artistic name [for press use]
3) Place of Residency [City, Country]
4) Telephone number
5) A written proposal [No more than 400 words]
6) Website of the artist/collective or portfolio
7) Up to 5 images of the work (if available). [Should you be shortlisted, we will require 1-3 high res images for press use].

All your data is confidential and is only used for the purposes of this open call.
We will respond to all applications by the end of August 2017.

The jury will include curator Giulia Casalini, the team at CUNTemporary, previous Deep Trash headline artists, academics from Queen Mary University’s English and Drama department and the Live Art Development Agency (London). The programme is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Application Notes:
Performances should be max 10-15min long for the main stage. However, we welcome other lengths and formats (e.g. one to one, endurance, interactive performances…) for other spaces.

If you are submitting a written contribution, this will be published on our online editorial http://www.cuntemporary.org/category/editorial/. Performance lectures will be assigned to the symposium event.

Because of the nature of the event, exhibition printed copies will be displayed instead of original artworks. Please note that if you want to show an original artwork, these cannot be insured and we will not be liable for any damages.

There is a flat fee for performances and lectures which should include travel costs. The fee ranges from £70-£150 which will depend on the overall project budget. There is no fee for exhibiting artworks or videos. In some cases, we can cover other type of costs for installation purposes. If your participation requires a certain type of reimbursement, please include that in your application.

Only 1 submission per artist/collective is accepted.

About ‘Deep Trash’:
During a time when public and private spaces are narrowing their ability to accommodate the concerns and lives of non-normative and non-binary subjects, events such as Deep Trash are crucial in bringing together a community of people interested in the themes of sexuality, gender, creativity and politics, with an intersectional and transnational approach. Check out the Deep Trash manifesto on our website http://www.cuntemporary.org/deep-trash-manifesto/.

Contact Information:

DEEP TRASH
fb: https://www.facebook.com/DeepTrashClub

CUNTemporary
Arts | Feminism | Queer
email: info@cuntemporary.org
web: http://www.cuntemporary.org
fb: https://www.facebook.com/CVNTEMPORARY
twitter: https://twitter.com/CUNTemporaryLdn


OPEN CALL LINKS
web: http://www.cuntemporary.org/open-call-for-deep-trash-underworld
fb: https://www.facebook.com/events/110739882911653