Tirana – Durrës, May 4th- 9th 2017 – OPEN CALL

BJCEM and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Albania announce the launch of Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale, an international multidisciplinary event, that takes place in Tirana and Durrës, Albania, from May 4th to May 9th 2017. It will bring together around 230 Euro-Mediterranean artists.

Started in 1985, the Biennale takes place every two years in a different city in the Mediterranean area and focuses on young artists and creators. BJCEM is an international network with more than 60 members and partners from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and thanks to their support, make the event possible ensuring the participation of artists from the territories they represent.
The aims of this international Network are to create opportunities for young artists to enable mobility, exchange, mutual understanding, intercultural dialogue, collaboration and training. The Association supports their creativity processes and puts them in contact with local and international realities in order to help them to grow personally and professionally.
BJCEM is firmly convinced by the role that art and culture can play in society, it enables the values of different culture s to be discovered and learnt whilst enriching our own. Art is a tool that can be used to go beyond borders and conflicts and it doesn’t require the need to speak the same language because it implies a universal code.

The call is open to all creative – visual artists, filmmakers, writers, performers, musicians and designers from 18 to 34 years old (born from January 1st 1982). There are no submission fees and it is open to everyone regardless of gender, religion, social and political behaviours. However, artists that have participated in more than one previous edition cannot apply; priority will be given to artists that have never attended a Biennale before.

Selected artists will be hosted in Tirana – Durrës from May 4th until May 9th 2017 included. During these days their works and performances will be displayed in specific venues of the cities. The exhibitions will remain open to the public until May 28th 2017.

The deadline for applications is January 15th 2017, midnight (CEST Italian time). The names of the selected artists will be published on Bjcem website.

1. GENERAL THEME

History + Conflict + Dream + Failure = HOME

How long would it take to count the elements creating what we call ‘home’? And what about the time it would take to identify the ones that can destroy it?
The ‘home’ of the upcoming Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale will be based on four elements: history, the archive of the unaccountable number of individual stories, recorded or forgotten. Conflict, to consider the way we share homes. Dream as the project of home, as the fundamental human right to be free to choose and desire our real or imaginary home. Failure as the inner resistance of the various attempts, transformed along the way in search for the dream home.
Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale will be hosted for the first time between the cities of Tirana and Durrës, in Albania. Taking place in a country, which is defined by its forced, isolated past, and its turbo-transition from communism to capitalism in only 25 years, the Biennale will focus on a component which is currently, more than ever, put at risk in the politics of present society. In a geopolitical area where history, conflict, dream and failure are navigating the opaque waters of everyday life, home becomes an emergency to be technically reconsidered and collectively re-defined.
The sense of home becomes scattered while the speed of technology and the growing complexity of political, social and economic structures are revealing borders that for a while were made invisible. Today, more than ever, these borders need to be re-discussed. It might be that in the present time of cultural post humanism the challenge that art is facing is to restore comfort in relation to what and where is home, why and how we need it. Art can consider home as a process rather than a single statement, hosting millions of elements within which the self is not lost nor found, but in constant transformation. The search for safeness must take on risks and open up a dialogue amongst ‘homes’ – whether they are physical, virtual, spiritual or imaginary.
Mediterranea 18’s ambition is to present art that dares the past, present and future notions of ‘home’. For once, art should not be made for criticism or provocation, but rather, it should be made with the task of recycling (instead of proposing) new alternatives. In this way, it will find its own home in the errors of the process, in the waiting time of reparation, in the insecurity of the test.
(Driant Zeneli – Artistic Director of Mediterranea 18)

2. PARTICIPANTS FROM MALTA
Literary creation
The House of Commons – Micro Utopias Between Art and Education

We are faced with an ever-changing world, undergoing continuous transformation. In particular, the strong geopolitical drive of Europe’s educational and creative policies merges the former East and the former West into a single tradition of knowledge, thereby erasing decades of pre-existing models. Today’s rapid spread of globalisation challenges militantism in art, the democratic transmission of knowledge, collaborative practices, and the experience of art from a collective point of view. Heading towards a future of personal, creative and autonomous interactions, free from the control of technocrats, means transforming different forms of art in vectors of social change within systems in a delicate balance. As Ivan Illich stated in his book Deschooling Society (1970), “the process of degradation is accelerated when nonmaterial needs are transformed into demands for commodities”. Experiences should then find unexpected reasons, while narratives should find resilience and flexibility.

IMPORTANT ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
• The candidatures have to be sent by January 15th 2017 directly to BJCEM member/partner of reference and in copy to the curator responsible for the specific domain in Tirana. THE DOSSIERS HAVE TO BE SENT IN ELECTRONIC FORMAT ONLY (via email, WeTransfer, Dropbox folders etc.). To know the disciplines selected by each BJCEM member/partner, the useful contacts and email addresses to submit the candidature and verify the eligibility please visit: www.bjcem.org/application
• In the object of the email it must be clearly indicated: name and surname of the applicant, discipline, city/region/country
• Please note that each BJCEM member will select a number of productions and disciplines defined by the Network. For more information about the precise number of productions to be selected, please refer to each BJCEM member (the list of members is available on BJCEM website).
• Please notice that no fee will be provided to the selected artists.

4. SELECTION PROCEDURES

The selection of participants will be carried out by local and national juries of experts in different areas. Each jury, in collaboration with each section’s curator, will select the artists on the basis of the presented dossiers. The decisions of each jury are final and not subject to appeal and they will be documented in a report. Quality of work and the bearing on the guidelines will be basic selection criteria.

5. ACCEPTANCE OF THE RULES

The presentation of the candidature automatically implies the complete acceptance of the present regulations and the approval of reproduction of the pictures, visual and video of the selected works in the communication and promotional materials related to the event or the artists.

6. OBLIGATIONS OF THE ORGANISATION

BJCEM network and the local organisers will take care of artists’ participation (flights, board and lodging), artworks shipment, insurance and their set up. No fee will be provided for the participation.

7. RIGHTS OF THE ORGANIZATION

Participants agree to non-exclusive right of BJCEM, only for promotional and non-commercial use, to publish and duplicate images, videos texts and other form of documentation of the selected artists and artworks. These productions will be promoted under the logo of Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale.

The present announcement shall be governed by the law of the country in which the artists send their application.
For general inquiries please write to: infomediterranea18@gmail.com
Visual artists, photographers, sound artists, curators, writers, poets, pedagogues, teachers, students and philosophers are invited to present poems, literary texts and philosophical essays, projects, workshops, collective or individual performances, sound pieces, collective writing and reading, parades, choirs and instructions. They are called to epitomise a sense of idealism and to pursue new ways into the problematic of education and creativity, defying the limitations of bureaucratic pragmatism.
During the lifespan of Mediterranea 18 Young Artist Biennale its key elements – History, Conflict, Dream, Failure, Home – will inspire radical pedagogical practices and alternative means of producing knowledge, including a new vocabulary and new negotiations between institutional and self-organized cultures.
The venue itself will become a living artwork, whose main role will be to create an inspiring learning environment through the shared knowledge of art, literary production, critical practice, education and process philosophy. Each place will embody a different approach to the aforementioned issues to create an educational and inspiring environment, works that involve local communities (i.e. students, retired people, teenagers, kids, etc.) and that will directly involve the public in sharing process of creation and cultural production will be privileged. It will be a common search for other languages and other modalities of knowledge production and diffusion, a pursuit of other modes of entering the problematic of “education”.
ALAgroup members will support and foster the relationship between the applicants and the city of Tirana to empower the projects and workshops dealing with the challenge of ‘inhabiting knowledge’.
(ALAgroup Maria Rosa Sossai – Mediterranea 18 Literary Creation Curator)

3. MODALITIES OF PARTICIPATION

Artists interested to present their candidatures should sent:

• Application form duly filled in English and signed;
• CV, portfolio and motivation letter;
• Maximum 5 high-resolution images (300 dpi), free of rights;
• Literary Creation: Send the text or the concept.

INIZJAMED is the BJCEM representative for Malta. All queries and/or applications should be sent to inizjamedprojects@gmail.com.