Warsaw | open call for artist's novel proposals

THE BOOK LOVERS: The Novel As Fantasy - an international open call for the production of an artist’s novel from CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. The award will comprise the art project production, presentation and residency at CCA.

Application deadline: 24 January 2016

The Novel As Fantasy open call is an opportunity for visual artists to submit a proposal for the creation of a new artist’s novel. There are many artists who have written novels, but the artist’s novel is something else: it is a medium in the visual arts. It is a contemporary phenomenon in which visual artists employ their novels within their broader projects, as they would employ installation, performance, or video. Here, the creation of a novel doesn’t differ from any other artwork. Both processes, writing and art-making, feed each other as they evolve within the same body of work. In an artist’s novel the reading experience is part of the work, but it does not constitute the entire artistic experience. The narrative expands beyond the space of the page to take place in a body of work that belongs to the same art project.

Proposals should describe an art project in which the creation of a novel occupies a central position. Project proposals that employ this medium in unexpected, creative ways will be given preference. For example, the artist must not necessarily sit down and write her novel on a piece of paper. Instead, she can opt for using artistic tools, such as performance, public events, installation, collaborative strategies, appropriation, and so on, in order to produce the narrative fiction text, to generate innovative conditions of readership, and/or to alter conventional notions of authorship.

The selected project will start in April 2016 and will finish in December 2017, with the final presentation in CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw and the publication of the artist’s novel.

Proposals are encouraged to engage with the process and not only with the final result, and to include a plan to render such a process visible to an audience. The selected artist should develop the project primarily in CCA Warsaw, always in communication with The Book Lovers curators. For this, CCA’s residency program will be available to host the artist during the necessary production periods.

We offer
– Production budget for the art project.
– Final presentation of the art project in CCA Warsaw.
– Assistance and accompaniment through the process, producing intermediate stages: exhibitions, events, partial publications, etc., or whatever is required for the project’s development.
– Publication of the artist’s novel.
– Artist’s fee.
– Temporary residencies in CCA Warsaw throughout the project, with individual living and working space.
– The use of CCA’s facilities upon discussion with the curators (exhibition spaces, ‘black box’ theater/performance space, cinema theater, library, education room, Studio MDM project space, Cysterna project space, etc.).

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