»How relevant to society is the work of the independent art scene beyond big institutions?«, »Do art spaces and artistic initiatives have social and political power?«, »What role do independent cultural associations play for the future of transcultural exchange?«.
Initiated by the Soft Power Palace festival, taking place in Stuttgart November 8–11, the Schlosspost–Soft Power […] issue addresses these questions by sharing artistic perspectives on and strategies for the future of transnational cultural exchange. Like the festival, the issue aims to highlight the relevance of self-organized, independent carriers of culture. We invite artists and researchers from all disciplines to think about Soft Power […] along the five thematic chapters of the issue.
1.) Care Swap searches for ways of dealing with the precarious state of nonprofit initiatives and asks for alternative, flexible, nomadic, ephemeral formats of organizing cultural exchange. How can caring for alternative communities look like under constantly shifting conditions?
2.) Strategies of Self-organization focuses on self-organized structures and administrative work processes of independent cultural initiatives, curators, artists who devotedly organize festivals and run spaces make processes visible, transparent.
3.) Sharing Skills is a chapter that works as a passionate reminder for the specific skills, DIY knowledge and the necessity of learning from and supporting each other to become independent.
4.) Form as a Common Ground focuses on transnationally occurring icons and images within different traditions to question the authenticity of culture and overcome national borders.
5.) Becoming The Other opens the discourse on the relationship between the individual and the society, of the self and the other, engaging, exploring, decomposing, and reconsidering new forms of togetherness toward a potential future.
6.) Digital Softness shows soft power resources for non-state actors, tools, technologies, and techniques to shape the digital sphere as a cocreative, transcultural, and nonexclusive space of experimentation and knowledge production, showing how the Internet transforms the concept of power from hard to soft.
All types of contributions are accepted: essays, reports, portraits, poems, fiction, videos, image galleries, or podcasts etc.
We provide a small author’s fee as well as English proofreading and editorial support.
Application
Submit your project proposal (max. 1,500 characters) here: sumi(at)akademie-solitude.de
Deadline
October 31, 2018.
We look forward to receiving your application!
Your Schlosspost-team
