The Uroboros festival calls for experimental projects that critically engage with the festival theme Designing in Troubling Times and question what we can design and how to support positive change. We seek projects critically reflecting on social, economic, political and environmental issues that are global in scope and manifested in various personally and locally situated contexts. Specific areas of interest within the festival call include (but are not limited to): experimental design for social and ecological resilience; feral and more-than-human practices; multi-species care; radical inclusivity; decoloniality; circularity and degrowth; creative experiments with AI; synthetic media and emergence of synthetic realities; ethical AI; algorithmic governance and algorithmic feudalisms; critical blockchain; design as disobedience and parody; design as Idiot; pataphysical design; un-design.
We are looking for creative projects that are feasible for online showcase and that actively involve audience participation – from workshops and performative events to creative discussion panels, salons and more. We are open to diverse online collaborative tools, as long as they suit the festival scope and online participative format. The call is open to individuals and groups.
Submission criteria
Please submit your project as a single PDF file (10 pages max), including:
– A description of the project (including the proposed form of audience participation)
– A biography of max. 250 words, including links to relevant websites (groups can submit their collective CV/portfolio OR CV/portfolio of each co-author individually – whatever is suitable)
– Minimum three images to illustrate the project
– A detailed tech rider
– Submit no later than March 21st 2021, 11pm CET by sending an email to opencall@uroboros.design
Selected projects will be supported with a symbolic flat fee of 150 Eur. As a small non-profit collective, we are unable to provide any funding and reimbursements beyond this fee.
Selected projects can be showcased either as one-off events or as an event series (e.g., 3-part workshop spread into 3 festival days). Please note that the recommended maximum length of an event is 2 hours (however, we are open to alternatives).
Key Dates
Open call released: February 17th, 2021
Open call closes: March 21st, 2021
Decisions sent back to authors: April 2nd, 2021
Uroboros festival: May 5th – 18th, 2021
The Uroboros festival is part of the #DATAMAZE project, at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague (CZ). For more details about the festival, feel free to contact us at opencall@uroboros.design.