GlitterBomb

Call for Entries
Queer Cultural Center
National Queer Arts Festival
June 4 – 27th
SOMArts Cultural Center Gallery, San Francisco
DEADLINE: March 1, 2015

All media and forms of social and art practice will be considered for the physical and virtual exhibition space.

CONNECTIONS 2015: GLITTER BOMB

What we are looking for

Glitter Bomb seeks artwork exploring the physical, social, political, historical, affective, and irreverent dimensions of queer alliances and connections. How do queers bond, connect, and create alternative models for social interaction and political transformation? How do we build on past models of queer sociality as well as contemporary modes of media and technology to forge new ways of connecting that reflect the urgency of social justice movements today?

Examples of work that we are looking for: activist art past and present, work from or about artists’ collectives, work about gentrification, work that responds to Ferguson and other examples of rebellion against white-supremacy, work about the trans liberation movement, anti-violence work, work about queer global justice movements, feminist work, think Riot Grrrls, HomoCore, BUTT magazine, all alternative modes of communication and dissemination of queer content, zines, Tumblr sites, radical YouTube videos,Flickr albums, #hashtag categories, blogs, animated GIFs, websites, on-line support networks, queer disability justice, outsider and marginalized work, queer and trans street economies, undocu-queers, queers in prison, queers organizing for prison reform or prison abolition, trans-national queer organizing, work that speaks about the struggles of people of color, anti-racist work of all kinds, representations or documentation of organizing new social space for queers past and present; bath house culture, club culture, political clubs, queer athletic groups, alternative art spaces, affinity groups, new forms of political alliance, work that celebrates gay marriage, work that celebrates relationships outside of gay marriage, radical fairy worlds, queer ecology and queer climate justice organizing, queer worker’s rights groups, organizing for pay equity, union rights and reform, all forms of sexual liberation, drag and gender fuck, work that addresses queer assimilation, anti-censorship work, sex positive work, leather and BDSM work, unapologetic work, work that takes a stand on being out and queer.

All media and forms of social and art practice will be considered for the physical and virtual exhibition space.

Please go to the QCC2 website for the full prospectus and how to submit your work: www.QCC2/GlitterBomb

History

Each year, QCC organizes a large-scale month-long exhibition of cutting-edge queer art at SomArts Cultural Center Gallery in San Francisco that serves as the National Queer Arts Festival’s kick-off event. This annual exhibition is the largest and oldest forum for queer visual art in the U.S. For the past 17 years, the exhibition has featured 30 to 60 emerging and mid-career Queer artists’ work. These works are documented on QCC website, which provides a visual history of queer art making in the U.S. and provides curators and activists with a valuable resource for contemporary queer visual culture.

The exhibition will explore the idea of physical, social, political, affective and historical connections. For those who have been denied acceptance into existing social models and access to traditional political means, or for those who voluntarily reject these structures, queers have created alternative social connections as sites of political transformation or contestation.

Historically, LGBTQ people have made connections with each other across racial, geographic, gender, ability, age, class and cultural borders. These connections have built a strong LGBT community, generated new concepts of queer families, developed innovative health and social service models and made long lasting alliances with other disenfranchised communities and social change movements – interweaving social justice issues into our daily lives.

For the past 40 years LGBT people have constantly forged new ways to connect within and outside of our perceived communities: body-building magazines, lesbian pulp fiction, want ads in straight publications and other 1960s practices gave way to gay newspapers, bars, sex clubs, churches and political organizations in the 1970s. In the 1990s the increasing use of digital technology proliferated the ways LGBT people could communicate and connect. With this rise of technology, we are called upon to respond to a new and increasingly rapid proliferation of political and visual culture and an array of urgent social issues that this technology makes increasingly visible.

How do queer artists and activists make political alliances calling for change in terms of the increasing surveillance and the policing of our lives? How do we advocate for social justice for the black and brown dead‎ killed by bad cops, rogue vigilantes, and armed racists? How do we make alliances and help expand the idea of queerness to include our voices in the struggle for equal pay, union reform, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist movements.

Connections 2015 is looking for all forms of art and art practice that reflect queer visual culture that looks back at ways queers have invented or subverted social structures and looks forward to the ever changing ways queer artists and activists represent a rapidly changing and evolving community and identity.

The exhibition asks: how do we use models from the past with the tools of the present to inform the creation of a new visual language to respond to our present cultural condition of omnipresent urgency and begin to answer the question of whether queer art can be equal to the challenge of the times?

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK

DEADLINE: March 1, 2015

1. Please send visual documentation of previous work or work in progress. You may submit 2 to 5 jpegs, video links to YouTube or Vimeo or web links to images or projects. Please carefully label your images beginning with your last name and image number (example: Lastname_Image1.jpg).

2. Please include a Work Sample list describing each sample.

3. If you are submitting a proposal for an installation please submit a detailed description and plan for your project including rough dimensions and any special hardware or rigging requirements.

4. For all other non-traditional media, please submit a proposal no longer that 2 pages with an appropriate work sample that will help the curators understand your idea. Please feel free to contact the exhibition coordinator if you are uncertain about what to submit. [email protected]

5. A brief resume

6. A brief statement explaining how your work addresses the exhibition’s theme. How does your work reflect or critique the political and cultural climate of our queer times? This is your artist’s statement that will be used to describe your work if selected.

If you need to mail your submission please drop us a line and we’ll give you the proper mailing address for submissions.

Note: Arrangements and expenses for shipping/delivery/retrieval are the responsibility of the artist. All non-installation must arrive/be delivered “ready to hang.” Artworks are insured by the gallery from the time they enter the gallery until they leave.