Untitled from The New Town, 2013, Andrew Hammerand
DEADLINE:
May 3, 2015
EXHIBITION DATES:
June 26 – July 23, 2015
LOCATION:
Nave Gallery Annex, 53 Chester St, Somerville, MA
CURATED BY:
Arlinda Shtuni
The Nave Gallery Annex (Somerville, MA) invites artists to participate in the curated exhibition, Survey Without Surveillance.
Survey: To look over the parts, features, or contents of; view broadly.
Surveillance: The act of carefully watching someone or something especially in order to prevent or detect a crime.
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
–Henry David Thoreau
“Mass-Observation develops out of anthropology, psychology, and the sciences which study man, but it plans to work with a mass of observers.” So began an open letter to The Nation by the founders of the Mass-Observation society, a poet, an anthropologist and a filmmaker, who, in 1937, came together to recruit a network of volunteer diarists to survey and record the inner and outer contents of quotidian life in Britain, so as to create “weather-maps of public feeling.”
Cut to present day, where, in growing numbers, we take to social media platforms to record observations– inner and outer contents of our lives–leaving behind debris of “weather-maps of personal feeling.” Except now technology is mediating the sharing. And the layers of sharing are becoming increasingly complicated. The records of our entries are virtually and mysteriously filed away in corporate servers, accessed by public entities like the N.S.A.. While out on the street, drones and cameras capture our quotidian unawareness as if it were raw material for a yet-to-be-constructed film. So, who is the observed and who is observing? Where is the line between the private and the public? And why do we care?
Mass surveillance may be as insidious and persistent as white noise, and the current cultural conditions have conspired to lull us into the hum. However, at the core we intuit that being part of any act of observation, whether observing or being observed, somehow changes us. And depending on the nature of the observation, the effects can be profound. The act of survey has the potential for connection building; the act of surveillance that of intrusion. Yet through each process we wonder: Who is framing our information? Who is telling the story? And to what end?
The Nave Annex seeks submissions that contribute to the contemporary aesthetic, conceptual, and social discourses on the topic and will consider work in the following media: sculpture, photography, digital, mixed media, installation and performance.
Guide the conversation: Take the privacy questionnaire
GUIDELINES:
– $15 entry fee payable through PayPal
– A maximum of five pieces may be entered for consideration
– Submissions will be accepted through May 3, 2015
– The Nave Gallery will retain a 30% commission for work sold
– Artist is responsible for cost of shipping work to and from the gallery
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK:
-Send up to five artwork submissions as .jpg files to info@navegallery.org.
-Each .jpg should be 1200 pixels in the long dimension and named as “NAME_#.jpg” where # is the submission number and NAME is your last name
-Include an image list with your jpeg submission email, indicating submission number, title, size, process and year, as well as a brief artist bio and statement
-There is a $15 submission fee, payable through Paypal. Paypal is available here. Please include “Surveillance” in the note field
– Please indicate where you learned of the call
Accepted pieces should be delivered to the Nave Gallery Annex located in Davis Square (53 Chester St, Somerville, MA) ready to install.
CALENDAR:
Deadline for entries: May 3, 2015
Notification: May 17, 2015
Artwork drop-off: June 21, 2015
Exhibition dates: June 26 – July 23, 2015
Opening reception: June 26, 2015
ABOUT THE CURATOR:
Arlinda Shtuni is a Boston-based curator and editor. She believes real discoveries happen in the in-between space, otherwise known as the margins of disciplines. She practices in various mediums, and most recently as a curator of a salon series that brings together visual artists and writers to engage with germane issues.