Open call Cortona On The Move 2023

Open call for the selection of a photography exhibition project for the Cortona On The Move 2023 festival

1. Purpose of the call

The Institute of Balearic Studies (IEB), together with the organizers of the international photography festival Cortona On The Move 2023, creates an open call for the selection of a photography exhibition project for the festival, which is held from July 13 to October 1, 2023 in Cortona, Italy.

2. Description and objective of the project

The IEB is a body of the Government of the Balearic Islands dedicated to promoting the language and culture of the archipelago. Through its culture area, its strategic objective is to consolidate the Balearic Islands as a structured cultural market, in addition to promoting the external projection of music, performing arts, literature and the visual arts of this territory.

In order to promote and give visibility to artistic creation in the field of visual arts in the Balearic Islands, the IEB participates in the Cortona On The Move 2023 international photography festival with an individual exhibition by a visual artist or photographer from the Balearic Islands. Balearics.

The international photography festival Cortona On The Move has been held since 2011 in the Tuscan town of Cortona, in the province of Arezzo.

Leading international photographic production, the festival is a benchmark for photographers, curators, authors, critics, as well as for the public. Under the direction of Veronica Nicolardi and the artistic direction of Paolo Woods, the festival makes documentary narrative the center of its interest and focuses on contemporary and socially relevant issues. At a time in history in which photography is the most universal medium for narrating the world we live in, the festival aims to make it accessible and understandable to the general public and turn it into a motor of culture, exchange and growth.

Every year Cortona On The Move carries out research on the evolution of photographic language and increasingly privileges the production and realization of original and unpublished content.

The proposals presented in the call must be photographic projects that deal with the thematic focus "more or less", proposed by the festival for the 2023 edition:

More than ever, the categories of More or Less define the world we live in, our aspirations, our fears, our affiliations. Abundance versus scarcity, the unnecessary versus the essential, the happy few versus the masses, accumulating versus shedding.

More and Less are categories whose value changes over the years and across geographies. They are not only economic categories; they are also ontological ones, a prism through which we view the world. From architecture to music, from fashion to literature, from cuisine to sports, almost everything could be seen as sitting on one side or the other of this emblematic divide.

We feel the time is ripe to investigate how these antipodes, More or Less, shape our world vision, our ideologies and our behavior. They are at the core of the stories we tell, be it king Midas, cursed for always wanting more and starved to death by his own golden touch, or the emperor with his new clothes, as told by Andersen, so obsessed with his desire that others see he had more that he could not even recognize that he actually had on less than anyone else.

More or Less are also themes very dear to photography, with entire genres having developed around the two. At Cortona On The Move 2023 we will explore More, looking at the past and present, and we will dwell Less on the stereotypes, delivering a program rich in ideas for understanding our world and poor in simplifications.

3. Recipients

The call is addressed to visual artists and natural photographers from the Balearic Islands or residents of the archipelago.

In the 2023 edition, creators selected in previous calls cannot participate.

4. Budget and technical coordination

The budget for the exhibition project at the Cortona On The Move festival is €15,000.

The tasks of managing and organizing the exhibition are the responsibility of the festival and include production (printing, framing of the photographs); assembly and disassembly; conditioning of the exhibition space; curated; communication and dissemination; fees, travel, accommodation and accreditation of the visual artist or photographer author of the project.

The fees of the selected visual artist or photographer amount to €1,500 (taxes included), which the festival will pay to the author of the winning project upon presentation of the invoice.

5. Selection of the winning project

The selection of the winning project corresponds to Veronica Nicolardo, director of Cortona On The Move, and Paolo Woods, artistic director of the festival.

The criteria that will guide the selection of the project are:

- quality and artistic interest of the project,

- the fit within the artistic program of the event,

- Adaptation to the proposed thematic focus.

6. Presentation of projects

To register in the prior selection process, it is necessary to send the project proposal and the trajectory of the visual artist or photographer to opencall@iebalearics.org. Files must be in PDF format.

In the subject of the email, you must indicate “Open call Cortona On The Move”. The dossier file must be identified with the name of the photographer and the title of the project (Name_Title). The project must be accompanied by an explanatory text that establishes the thematic relationship with the focus proposed by the festival and shows low-resolution images of the proposed works. Only one project proposal per participant will be accepted. The IEB will confirm receipt of the project.

7. Deadline for receipt of projects

The deadline for receiving projects ends on Friday, April 14, 2023, at 11:00 p.m.

Any application for participation sent after the established deadline will not be considered.

8. Resolution

The author of the selected project will receive an email confirming its selection by the IEB (until, at the latest, April 25, 2023), to which they must respond confirming participation. Once this procedure is resolved, the IEB will inform all participants of the final result by email and will publish the result of the final selection on its website (http://iebalearics.org).

The IEB reserves the right to declare the call void in the event that the festival directors decide that the projects presented do not meet the selection criteria described or do not fit into the scheduled programming.

More information

In case of questions or queries, you can contact Karen Müller, visual arts technician at the IEB (kmueller@iebalearics.org; 971 17 89 96).