OPEN CALL FOR UNCENSORED FESTIVAL
DEADLINE: MONDAY 18 MARCH 2019

UNCENSORED Festival is now accepting proposals for the three-day programme of events that will take place between 17 – 19 May 2019 in London, UK.

UNCENSORED is an interdisciplinary festival on pornography at the intersection of art and activism, bringing together more than 30 artists, sex practitioners and activists from the UK and abroad. The programme consists of workshops, performances, talks, a party, a roundtable discussion, as well as a mixed media exhibition and a film screening event which will be selected through an international open call process.

The festival will reflect on the existing and forthcoming legislation regarding sexually explicit content in the UK. It will address the ever-growing incidences of censorship in web platforms, explore diverse permutations of censorship along with their artistic and political implications and map what is at stake in the regulation of pornography in the 21st century. UNCENSORED celebrates freedom of expression whilst creating a dialogue between art, pornography and queer-feminist politics, in an immersive, sex-positive space for collective reflection, exploration and play.

We are calling for:

  1. Short movies for a film screening event.
  2. Videos, printed works, installations and sculptures for a small-scale mixed-media exhibition.

INFORMATION

    1. Short movies
    • We are calling for audiovisual works that contain implicit or explicit erotic scenes about all kinds and types of sexuality and sexual expression.
    • The movies should be shorter than 30min.
    • To allow the screenings to be accessible we request that all movies are accompanied by English-language subtitles (SubRip format) as well as by an audio description track (AIFF or MP3 format), consisting of a voice which will describe what’s showing on-screen between the dialogues. The subtitles and the audio description track can be made available to us after the selection of the films but no later than April 22nd 2019.
    • The finalists will be selected by a jury composed of members from UNCENSORED’s team, Erotic Film Society, Porny Days – Film Kunst Festival and Fish&Chips Film Festival.
  1. Videos, prints and installations
  • The selected videos will be looped and projected onto a diameter of 2m wide or showcased on separate monitors.
  • The small-scale mixed-media exhibition will be curated by UNCENSORED’s team.
  • The finalists for the mixed media exhibition will be selected by a jury composed of members from UNCENSORED’s team and CUNTemporary co-directors.

GENERAL INFORMATION

  • All successful applicants will be offered complimentary access to some of the events programmed at UNCENSORED.
  • We welcome proposals by artists of any background and level of expertise.
  • Only one submission per artist/collective will be accepted for each category (short movies and artworks for the mixed-media exhibition).
  • Inclusion in UNCENSORED’s programme authorises the Festival to use content related to/parts of the works for press and promotional purposes.
  • We are unable to cover the costs of exhibiting artworks, videos or films but we will cover all printing and installation costs. We are open to discussing other production needs and covering them where possible. If your participation requires a specific type of reimbursement, please include that in your application.
  • We are calling for submissions that approach the topics of pornography, sexualities, sexual practices, sex activism and censorship. All applicants are called to respond to these topics making sure that their work mirrors the overall queer-feminist sex-focused approach of the festival. We welcome submissions that are sexy, playful, provocative, extravagant and subversive.The proposals may converse with, respond to or by inspired by any of the following areas and issues. You are also invited to propose work beyond these issues if you believe that it is in line with the context of the festival.
    1. Between art and pornography: a (her)story of tensions and porous boundaries.
    2. Feminist pornography, queer pornography, post-porn and ethical pornography as counter-practices for producing and depicting sexually explicit content.
    3. Female and queer gazes in pornography.
    4. Embodiment and representation: the sexual self as the image of one’s body in a highly visual culture.
    5. Selfies, self curating and the digital life of the sexual body.
    6. Sexuality and sex-positivity in the context of a hyper-sexualised post-feminist media culture.
    7. Desire and technology under patriarchy: teledildonics, sex robots, new potentials and old problems.
    8. From rape culture to consent culture: towards a feminist paradigm shift and the limitations of narrowly verbal understandings of consent.
    9. “Send nudes”: desire, agency, sexual expression and gaze towards one’s own body.
    10. Censorship in pornography and sexually explicit art: revisiting recent or historically censored texts and artworks.
    11. Online censorship: from internet as an unregulated free utopia to a battleground of state regulation and company policies.
    12. Ambiguity as a way to escape censorship: queer polysemies and their potential limits.
    13. Censoring violences: from censoring video nasties to the censorship of revengeful violent feminist films like ‘Baise-moi’ by Virginie Despentes and Coralie.
    14. Self-censorship as a survival strategy.
    15. ‘Political correctness’ presented as censorship from mainstream sexist, homophobic, transphobic and racist discourses.

HOW TO APPLY

To apply, please fill in the form at the link below by Monday 18 March midnight (UK time):

https://goo.gl/forms/5N3jWfjSzKgDH1BD2

UNCENSORED’s team will respond to all applications by Monday 08 April 2019.

UNCENSORED Information

W: https://uncensoredfest.com
Email: info@uncensoredfest.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/uncensoredfestival/
TW: https://twitter.com/UNCENSOREDFest
IG: https://www.instagram.com/uncensoredfestival/

#UncensoredFestival

Open call Information

W: https://uncensoredfest.com/open-call/#about-uncensored
FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/240775710210664/

UNCENSORED is supported using public funding by Arts Council England and supported by the Goethe-Institut London.