The exhibition“ Mediterranean bodies” is a parallel action of The Underwater Heart of the Mediterranean, a European cultural, educational and environmental project about the Mediterranean and performance arts.

The exhibition investigates and wants to stimulate connections and exchange between young artists and young creative professionals, living in Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, and France. Selected results of artistic collaborations will be presented in a series of exhibitions during 2016 in these countries.

The exhibition departs from the relation between (public) space, body, senses and digital arts.

We call upon emerging artists and young creatives to propose innovative art works, connecting the digital world with the body, within the public space (indoors/outdoors) or by creating own public spaces (physical, virtual, shared or hybrid) focusing on interplay, response, meeting, dialogue and discourse, inspired by artistic gestures, playful stagings and dynamic interventions, leading to new conversations about and revealing the other sides of the Mediterranean.

We encourage artists to engage with those less engaged, to empower those who are disempowered. We are looking for ideas that are extraordinary, surprising, playful, thought-provoking, subversive, celebratory and transformative. Via this open call, artists and creatives are invited to apply with a proposal for a collaboration within the field of space and body, related to digital arts and new media, and relevant to the Mediterranean society.

We’re interested in art that is immersed in local communities, neighborhoods and spaces, exploring and utilizing living experiences and the body in relation to the daily environment of the Mediterranean.

As such, we are proposing to acknowledge senses as a distinct – and a positive matter of creation and of communication and as exploration of space, with digital technology and new media as instruments, and through stimulating awareness, care and an incentive for public spaces in the Mediterranean.

Twenty four artists from France, Greece, Cyprus and Lebanon (six from each country) will be selected to work in couples. The artists will work with their partners in distance, using online communication, The collaboration can be both on a material way or on a conceptual way.

Participants should be prepared to share their idea with an artistic partner of another country and to create a new single work together. Outcome of the collaborations, including as well performances (interactive with digital media), has an emphasis on unusual venues and locations of passage and transition, across the city. 

A separate indoor exhibition venue will present twelve works, or in the case of a temporary site specific work for public space in a documentary form (video / sound) via an installation setting, or in the case of indoor works in their independent form.

A modest production budget or another financial support for the artists may be offered but this can only be confirmed in a next phase, we do provide in curatorial and artistic development, technical support during the exhibition, next to an important media and audience campaign. We also offer an extraordinary chance to build new collaborations and extend your network with other artists, and with academic and cultural institutions around the Mediterranean.

Artists and creative professionals of all fields are welcome to apply (performers, dancers, actors, musicians, sound artists, designers, painters, sculptors, new media artists, digital artists, internet artists, software and app developers, video artists, installation and technology artists, architects, social and community artists, writers, etc.). Artistic collectives, groups and artists with disabilities are strongly encouraged to participate. Participants must be younger than 36 years old. They must have the center of their life in Greece, Cyprus, France or Lebanon. The selection is supervised and realized by the curator of the exhibition, Geert Vermeire. Any further questions can be directed to the e-mail below. 

Applying via an e-mail at opencallmb @ dropsofbreath.com (no spaces) with the following attachments: a motivation letter with name, address, phone, nationality, date of birth and website/blog (350 words), a summary of the idea for collaboration (100 words), a description of the idea for collaboration (600 words), proposed context and space for your work (300 words), a biography (300 words) and examples of earlier work/portfolio, combined in one pdf file, all texts written in English, and with a maximum size of 20 MB. 

Deadline: 15th of July 2015.

See more: www.dropsofbreath.com/actions/open-call-mediterranean-bodies