Kansas City Performing Media Festival National Call for Works

Michael Miller and Eric Souther with Charlotte Street Foundation are seeking audio-visual works to be screened during Kansas City Performing Media Festival (KC PMF). Submissions are due by June 1st, and all winners will be announced by June 15th. KC PMF will take place on September 29th at Charlotte’s Street’s La Esquina Gallery, Kansas City, MO. The event will take place during Open Spaces, Kansas City’s bi-annual outdoor-indoor contemporary art exhibition.

All applicants must consider the material and discursive practices of Object-Oriented Ontology, specifically it’s subsets: Alien phenomenology, Agential Realism, and Posthumanism. Object-Oriented Ontology is a philosophy that maintains objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects. Upon consideration of these three philosophical subsets (described below), each composer or visual artist must choose one, on which to focus their work. Miller and Souther will pair composers and visual artists based on their responses to these philosophies and based on their ideal working method.

Topic One: Based on Ian Bogost’s philosophy of Alien phenomenology, consider the human condition from an alternate perspective. In his theory, he expresses two modes of practice, metaphorism and carpentry. He describes metaphorism as “the authorship of works that speculate about the unknowable, inner lives of objects” and carpentry as “the construction of artifacts that illustrate the perspectives of objects.”

Topic Two: Based on Karen Barad’s theories on Agental Realism, consider how our actions could address or break down an artificial boundary. Within her theory, she coined the term Intra-action, which is described as “the ability to act [which] emerges from within the relationship not outside of it.” She goes on to state that this is important because it redefines “our actions with each other and nature… [because] it reveals the artificial boundaries that we forgot we invented.”

Topic Three: Based on Donna Haraway’s theories on Posthumanism, consider a possible inevitability of our era. She describes three epochs– Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Cthulucene–and speculates their potential outcomes. For example, the Anthropocene states the beginning of our current epoch is the point in which humans, nature, and their subsequent fates became interdependent. However, she ultimately proposes a strategy for not giving up, and creating order out of the current disorder.

To be considered, submit your work, short biography, and a paragraph description of how your work addresses one of the above topics. Pieces must have been completed within the past 5 years, and must not exceed 8 minutes in length.
Any questions should be emailed to erisouth@iusb.edu or mnsquartet@gmail.com.

Find application here:
http://charlottestreet.org/event/kc-performing-media-festival-open-call/

Charlotte Street Foundation identifies the needs and fuels the evolution of an ever-changing multidisciplinary arts ecosystem, acting as its primary provocateur. We cultivate the contemporary, the exceptional, and the unexpected in the practice of artists working in and engaging with the Kansas City art community.