Open Call: Wild Bits 2022 in Estonia

The project Wild Bits is an exhibition concept that proposes a temporary art park in the wilderness. The exhibition looks for points of contact between people, technology and nature. The technological art installations consisting of sounds, lights, texts, sculptures or their online counterparts are placed in natural spaces like forests, fields, swamps and lakes.

With this open call Maajaam is seeking proposals for installations, interventions or processes to be installed/performed in landscapes spread out around Maajaam that explore the human condition in a contemporary technological society. The artworks should withstand outdoor conditions.

Maajaam is situated in an old farmhouse, but is nonetheless operated as a media art experimentation residency. It lies on the frontier of these overlapping normalities, extending an invitation to contemplate, question and explore the aspects of a technological society, its influence on our behaviour, perception and thinking as well as on our surrounding environments.

The residency will take place in the summer of 2022. The residency lasts for 3 weeks. The produced works will remain in Maajaam and will be displayed on satellite exhibitions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania until 2025. This is the first of multiple open calls to find works for Wild Bits exhibitions during 2022 - 2025.

Three to five projects will be selected for the 2022 residency period. All artists from around the world are eligible to apply. Selected projects receive an artist fee of €2000 and a travel grant. The average budget per project is €5000. The production will be assisted by organizers by providing production facilities, tools, local manufacturing partners, specialized know-how and a smoke sauna experience.

Selection

Main selection criteria:

• suitability of the idea considering the assignment
• feasibility of the production plan
• environmental impact of the project
• project’s ability to relate to the surrounding landscape

The selected works for this call are partly funded by Tartu 2024 European Capital of Culture and Kaunas 2022 European Capital of Culture. One artist will be selected from Lithuania as the residency is co-funded by Kaunas 2022 European Capital of Culture.

The collaborator from Lithuania will be the landscape design festival Magenta, an official partner of Kaunas 2022. The Magenta festival will present three of the selected works to Lithuanian audiences in September 2022.

Residency production camp will take place between 7 - 28 July 2022 in Maajaam. Deadline for proposals is extended to 26 December 2021.

For more information, visit Wild Bits' website.