Open Call

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  Open Call | 2016

“You are the project.” Sibylle Kurz (from “Pitch it!”, a guide to effectively presenting a film pitch) All those trying to succeed in today’s world are sooner or later subjected to a selection process of one form or another. Opportunities and financial backing are offered to us on the condition that we proffer a pitch. Often, the only justification for such a contest is the contest itself: we must compete in order to prove that our abilities and skills deserve to be utilized at all. In our collaborative project Open Call, we let the creative approaches themselves go through the terms and conditions of a competition. We leave the familiar medium of fine art and venture on an excursion into the world of film production. We create a situation on the backdrop of an unfinished fantasy film. The exclusive product being offered is, in this case, an experimental scenography method, developed to create fantastical worlds. We borrowed the presentation format from a real-life guide for beginner film professionals, which details how to tackle it successfully. A young creator is applying for a position with a movie. The emphasized uniqueness of his project is combating the purposefulness and the ambition to succeed. In the heat of the moment, individual skills are stretched to the max. We are interested in how the subject matter of creative activity is bent by the current demands set by the fictitious market. It can only grow through the net of the requirements when it takes on the form of unavoidable compromise. It seems to be predetermined which aspects will be allowed to develop and which will remain unhatched. Internal and external pressures affect not only the man but also the project. In the guide for beginner film creators, we read that the applicants’ attitude towards the genre speaks volumes about their individual approach of the theme, which may decide whether the project will be accepted or turned down. In choosing between the willful disrupting or observing of the genre lies a message about the creator’s relationship to the theme. We also find ourselves in a field defined by well established approaches. The name of our exhibition may preempt expectations of relatively straightforward institutional criticism. We dodge it in order to give space to that which doesn’t fit in it.