Looking for performance works by artists, writers, theorists and culture workers for a publication exploring the idea of creative living.
Open Call link: OPAxIBA
‘Creative Living’ refers to a methodological practice of using ‘performance’ to explore alternative ways of engaging with the world.
In practice, it is the process of actively and creatively considering different possibilities for any given action, activity, relation, or acquisition, hence pushing your self-manifestation further than its learnt behaviour. How might your ‘self’ perform differently if you permitted it with different rules? How easily can seemingly fundamental laws be disrupted with simple changes to a lifestyle?
Oftentimes we follow rules that we did not impose; align ourselves to moral codes and social norms of which the origins are foreign to us; accept standardized forms of order without considering their complex genealogies. Methods of creative living have the potential to illustrate the fragility of these regimes and thus inspire enquiry into the possibilities of living in other ways
The publication will emerge as an instruction manual of sorts, in which each artist may provide a cohesive walk through of their engagement with creative living in a step by step guide. The idea here is that someone could, in theory, follow the instructions through to commit the same form of experimentation / disruption. These instructions can be as surreal or absurd as the artist wishes, and need not be entirely realizable.
With this publication OPA and IBA are joining forces to understand how creativity manifests itself in today’s society. We aim to unfold how art plays a vital role in defining dystopian tendencies. Is there still a place for diversity and alternative forms of living? Can poetry play a vital role in disrupting smooth functionalities of the every day? Using ‘error’ as a visual tool in publication we work between mass media and personal manifestations to find meaning in an over cooked world.
The publication will involve different artists, theorists, and cultural workers both England and Dutch based. It will be based around a creative living as a manifesto with their work.
For questions coming from entries in the Netherlands, please contact ronald@o-p.academy for relevant inquiries. For the UK, please email april@iba.art.
Creative living is a publication of the Dutch Open Performance Academy (OPA) and the UK based International Body of the Arts (IBA).
DEADLINE 15 FEBRUARY 2025
