FestivALT is a Jewish-led multidisciplinary cultural organisation that uses contemporary art, performance and activism to engage the complexities of Jewish history, memory, identity, and culture in contemporary Poland. Since 2017, it has produced an annual summer festival of contemporary art and civic engagement in Kraków, Poland, and has now expanded to include year-round programming. The seventh summer edition of the festival will take place 23 June - 2 July 2023.
The festival now invites applications from artists from Poland and around the world in the fields of visual art, music, performance, and activist intervention that engage with contemporary Jewish Poland. The festival has no uniform formula for judging proposals, but has developed a practice of collective deliberation to assemble a programme of projects that are both complementary and synergistically related. By way of general guidelines:
- The festival is very interested in good art about Jewish concerns, and not very interested in ‘Jewish art’ as some ready-made aesthetic or category of activity.
- Submissions need not be specifically about Poland, but should be relevant to or gain new meaning in a Polish / Central-Eastern European context.
- The festival is drawn to projects that experiment with form and content and also investigate or challenge understandings of Jewishness.
- They welcome work at every stage of development; important projects in the past have resulted from collaboration between artists and the festival’s curatorial team.
Selected works receive:
- A presentation of your project during the 2023 FestivALT summer programme in Krakow, Poland.
- Artistic Fee (TBD).
- Accommodation in Kraków for 1-3 nights.
- Travel costs reimbursement (if within Europe) or contribution towards flight (in other cases).
- Materials budget coverage (TBD).
