A collaboration between IAC & KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces.

Deadline: December 1, 2021

Inter Arts Center (IAC) is happy to announce its first Immersive Call in collaboration with KØS – Museum of Art in Public Spaces in Denmark. This specific call is part of a broader collaboration between IAC and KØS on a three year research and exhibition project called Sites, sounds and screens – new approaches to sites, locality and technology in public art.

Read more about the Sites, sounds and screens project here – koes.dk

For IAC this new open call is part of a greater focus on immersive formats. Alongside the annual call for immersive projects a network and a gathering called Immersive Days has also been established, with its first edition June 2021. In November next year professional artists, curators, researchers, technicians, teachers and students within a broader field of immersive technologies and artistic practices meet up to share their latest work and challenges, and to exchange ideas and give each other feedback.

Read more about the Immersive Days #1

The first Immersive Call aims to investigate, what could be read as a contradiction, public immersion. When we talk about immersion, we tend to imagine an auditive or visual immersion into a world that excludes our surroundings, which is exactly what the public is all about – other people, and the spaces or sites that surrounds and connect us. 

We encourage artists whose practice evolve around public space, extended reality, world building and/or immersive technologies to apply for this open call with new bold projects or adaptions of existing works. We are interested in the inherent contradiction of the term public immersion, and in addition to this in the overall question that Sites, sounds and screens raises about immersive technologies:

How do these technologies change the way we conceive, experience and engage with sites and locations? As artists and audience? Can we reconfigure or negotiate the dominating site-specific approaches through new technologies?

What we can offer:

• the best application receives an artist grant of 3000 EUR. In addition to this the call covers all travel and accommodation, and a basic production budget in line with the proposed project
• a long term residency in a dynamic environment for artistic development and experimentation with the opportunity for both qualified audiences, meetings, discussions and feedback sessions at IAC (the residency can be split up into more than one period)
• technical resources (equipment and assistance), but also guidance in e.g. Unity (game engine), various tools for 3D graphics, ambisonics and arduino etc.
• a highly professional discursive context and framework for investigating new artistic approaches to art, technology and public space
• possibilities of presenting a work-in-progress or the finished project at IAC’s Immersive Days gathering, November 2022, and/or at the concluding exhibition and symposium at KØS in 2024

What we need in your application:

• a motivated application which relates to the open call on public immersion describing either a new work or a suggested adaption of an existing work
• an artist bio/statement and CV (max two pages per application)
• a portfolio presenting your general/overall artistic practice (either as attachment or link)
• examples of referential works for the proposed project (here we need documentation/samples/excerpts (as attachment or links)
• Send the application in a single PDF to info@iac.lu.se
• Title in subject field: IMMERSIVE CALL#1 – Public Immersion

Download the information about the Immersive Call#1 here (PDF, 835 kB, new tab)

Inter Arts Center (IAC) is a platform for artistic research and experimentation, and part of the Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts at Lund University. It acts as a meeting place and a work space for researchers and artists from various disciplines and backgrounds, who use the facilities for short or long term projects. IAC also offers several residency programmes in cooperation with partner institutions.

Read more about other residencies at IAC here.

KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces is dedicated to researching, promoting, and debating public art nationally and internationally. The museum exhibits, produces and promotes art projects by national and international artists, initiates research that boosts the field theoretically, and collects and registers the material and digital traces of public art projects to ensure they are accessible in the present and preserved for posterity.

The research based exhibition project Sites, sounds and screens – new approaches to sites, locality and technology in public art is a collaboration between KØS and a wide range of other international partners. The project is curated by Christian Skovbjerg Jensen in collaboration with KØS and director Ulrikke Neergaard.

Christian Skovbjerg Jensen is the director of Inter Arts Center and a freelance curator. He has organized and curated a wide range of public art projects, such as Sid Ned! (2006) and TUMULT (2010). Later he was one of the curators of the 6th Momentum Biennial (2011) and last year he curated the 2nd edition of Struer Tracks.

For questions about the open call or the project Sites, sounds and screens in general, please contact either Christian Skovbjerg Jensen (curator & director at IAC) on christian@iac.lu.se or Ulrikke Neergaard (director at KØS) on une@koes.dk.

Rimini Protokoll, Copenhagen 2018, photo: KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces