SoMe Festival Issues Open Call for Video and Multimedia Artists

SoMe Festival, a project initiated by the Marginal Cultural Association, has launched an open call for local and international video and multimedia artists interested in submitting works related to the environment, technology, and interpersonal relationships. Submissions are accepted from August 7 to 17.

The Bucharest City Hall co-funds the project through ARCUB as part of the București acasă 2023 Program.

This festival, which promotes urban exploration and immersive experiences in Bucharest, will select 33 online video works to be displayed in various locations across the city. These works, themed under “Inhabitat,” will be physically linked to specific city locations and presented through augmented reality (AR), offering the audience a treasure hunt-like experience.

Video artists from Romania or abroad are invited to submit video works already published on social media platforms, with a maximum duration of 10 minutes, by completing the online form (https://forms.gle/QhFr1ydkDZsAhGHN6) by August 17.

Applicants will need to choose one of the following categories during registration:

Environment – works grounded in critical thinking about art inspired by nature and natural forms, science implications, environmental issues, and collaborations between artists and scientists.
Technology – video works that question forms of humanization and interaction with technology, exploring themes like art as a mediator between humans and machines or the role of technology in daily life, speculative perspectives on technology as an opportunity versus a threat to humanity.
Interpersonal Relationships – works that mirror contemporary society, providing a means to bridge emotional distance, bringing people closer together, or using art to understand others.

The selection jury includes Sabina Suru, multimedia artist, Suzana Dan, visual artist and cultural manager, and Paul Dogioiu, videographer and cultural manager. The selected titles will be announced on August 30 on the marginal.ro website.

The artistic team of the project consists of Andrei Tudose, curator and cultural manager, artistic director of the project, Augmented Space Agency, developers of the interactive video augmentation platform, along with Tudor C. Popa, Sabina Suru, and Mara Oglakci, visual artists.

“After three years of a pandemic, our relationship with the gadgets in our lives is closer than ever. Simultaneously, the desire for exploration and physical movement has increased proportionally with the time spent indoors. SoMe Festival stems from these ideas—a film festival that takes you out of your home without placing you in a cinema seat, encouraging you to discover the city you live in. It’s a festival anchored in social media as a starting point for artistic (self)promotion,” says Andrei Tudose, initiator and artistic director of SoMe Festival.

SoMe Festival aims to create a transparent and exploratory dialogue between Bucharest’s residents and the national and international artistic community, focusing on art, science, and technology. Through the selected works, participants will have the opportunity to explore well-known or lesser-known locations in the city. Unlike the typical film festival experience limited by schedule and predetermined locations, SoMe Festival allows the audience to view video works anytime between September 22 and October 12 at partner locations.

Organizers are targeting diverse locations that can independently become active points within the festival circuit. SoMe Festival invites representatives from museums, galleries, independent spaces, cultural institutions, schools, theaters, cafes, neighborhood stores, or interested individuals (property owners, associations of owners) to join this initiative by completing the online form available here: https://forms.gle/mDuSfXFcHZ3qPFeo7 if they wish to host a printed material that augments a video work, either indoors or outdoors. All festival locations will be displayed on a digital map explaining the entire experience.

Sabina Suru, multimedia artist, along with Andrei Tudose, cultural manager, and curator, form the core team of Marginal, a non-profit cultural organization that operates as a transdisciplinary collective aiming to support, promote, and expand bridges between artists and various agents from other domains, with a focus on the humanities and the implications of science and technology in socio-cultural structures. Marginal’s goal is to aggregate a collaborative network that reconnects fields not always associated with art, such as science and technology, with the public, through a participatory approach that questions the current paradigm of the audience-spectator.

SoMe Festival will take place from September 22 to October 12 in Bucharest.

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