REPRESSED V: FREE TO SPEAK - Call for Entries

From our friends at Gallery 5 in Richmond, Virginia comes this call for activist art...

REPRESSED V: FREE TO SPEAK May 2010

Josˆ© Marˆ‚a Heredia - poet: inspired the Cuban people to stand up and fight against Spain.

Seymor Chwast-designer - illustrator: his anti-war poster "End Bad Breath" indirectly encouraged the anti-war movement of the 70's.

John Lenin and Yoko Ono - famous musicians/artists: created the powerful anti-war campaign stating "THE WAR IS OVER...if you want it to be."

What makes statement driven art so emotionally powerful? It being witness to a piece of work that creates a bond between you, the viewer and the creator of the piece. A bond that can change the direction of thought and purpose.

A successfully executed statement driven piece can be the catalyst that inspires the average person into an active agent for change. Art exists in societies to create shared dialogues and experiences. No matter the medium, art and artists can be the spark to establishing a commonality, to allow us to empathize with each other and encourage altruistic pursuits for the greater good.

Dedicated to social awareness, Gallery5 invites visual and performing artists to submit their statement focused work to Repressed V: Free to Speak.

Deadline is March 6th.

More info and an application can be downloaded HERE (PDF).

Crisis Folklore - Groundswell Call for Submissions

Groundswell Collective is creating a brand new print publication and they're looking for essays for the first issue on "crisis folklore":

How we imagine future stories that describe our current time period can give us an alternative glimpse of the cultures we are shaping in the here-and-now. To get outside of the modes of analysis we typically offer, we look for the future storytellers, asking what are the tales of resistance in the post-crash era? Crisis being a daily reality, where do we locate our collective daydreams? Can we accurately envision these future stories for ourselves and for others?

Texts can be expository, analytical, or speculative. We are limited in space, but not in scope, and so we’Äôre seeking (but not limited to) such subjects as:

• Counter-cultural or resistant reworkings of contemporary problems
• Shifts in the language of dissent, movement, and movements
• Sociological mis/understandings of shifts in folklore in response to crisis
• Possibilities for subversion, especially via art
• Imagined criticisms, counter-hegemonic creation myths, forecasted histories, pre-emptive sense-making, etc.

In addition to expanded reviews of events and work covered on the blog the magazine will feature critical essays and artist/activist interviews. We are seeking contributing partners/writers.

More details can be found HERE.

Shopdropping: Call for Entries Reminder

A reminder from Ryan at Shopdropping.net, you have until April 1st to participate in their Greeting Card call for entries:

SHOPDROPPING.NET is now calling on artists, designers, media makers, and creative folks to purchase greeting cards and alter them in any way they see fit. Any form of commercial card, from wedding to graduation to birthday to bereavement, is eligible. But clever and witty will be given preference over easy and distasteful.

Please submit JPEG reproductions of the altered greeting cards to submissions _AT _shopdropping.net with GREETINGS as the subject line.

All files must be sized to 1024 x 768 at 72 dpi. Each altered card must include the text "www.shopdropping.net" somewhere in the new design. It can be discreet, on the back of the card, and unobtrusive but it must be present.When submitting the cover and inside of the same card please indicate this clearly in the file titles (for example "cover.jpg", "page2.jpg").

The deadline for submissions is April 1st 2008.

Once all of the digital reproductions have been submitted, selected artists will be given the address of a fellow participant to swap cards with. The cards will then be shopdropped back into circulation and the digital reproductions will be featured on SHOPDROPPING.NET. Please do not submit digital files if you do not intend to follow through with the act of shopdropping a fellow participant's work. The digital reproductions are a means to select and document the artworks, but do not replace the act of shopdropping the originals into unsuspecting stores.

Shopdropping: Two Calls for Entries

The folks at Shopdropping.net have 2 calls for entries for activist-artists:

Call 1:
SHOPDROPPING.NET is now calling on artists, designers, media makers, and creative folks to purchase greeting cards and alter them in any way they see fit. Any form of commercial card, from wedding to graduation to birthday to bereavement, is eligible. But clever and witty will be given preference over easy and distasteful.

Please submit JPEG reproductions of the altered greeting cards to "submissions" AT "shopdropping.net" with GREETINGS as the subject line.

All files must be sized to 1024 x 768 at 72 dpi. Each altered card must include the text "www.shopdropping.net" somewhere in the new design. It can be discreet, on the back of the card, and unobtrusive but it must be present.When submitting the cover and inside of the same card please indicate this clearly in the file titles (for example "cover.jpg", "page2.jpg").

The deadline for submissions is April 1st 2008.

Once all of the digital reproductions have been submitted, selected artists will be given the address of a fellow participant to swap cards with. The cards will then be shopdropped back into circulation and the digital reproductions will be featured on SHOPDROPPING.NET. Please do not submit digital files if you do not intend to follow through with the act of shopdropping a fellow participant's work. The digital reproductions are a means to select and document the artworks, but do not replace the act of shopdropping the originals into unsuspecting stores.


Call 2:
SHOPDROPPING.NET is currently seeking 20 artists aged 20-29 to feature and interview for an upcoming book. SHOPDROPPING.NET presents 20/20 will profile each artist and their work and copies of the limited edition book will be shopdropped into bookstores throughout the world.

In the spirit of shopdropping, we are seeking artists who are exploring new forms and pushing boundaries within their field. Bands and musicians with hard to define genres, Internet filmmakers and compulsive bloggers, curators and gallerists working out of their homes, post-vinyl dj's and digital vj's, actors and writers working outside of film, theater, and television, artist collectives, culture jammers, and other hard-to-define creative minds are in demand.

To be considered for this project or to nominate someone you feel fits the bill please submit work samples via web link to: "submissions" AT "shopdropping.net" with 20/20 as the subject line.

DO NOT send jpgs, mp3s, or other file types directly. Links only please. There is no deadline for this project as of yet.

Please repost this information and pass it along to anyone who may be interested.

For additional information please see:
http://www.shopdropping.net