Artlab33 | contemporary art projects
Artlab33 is an experimental, and exciting curated exhibition program currently in South Florida, one of the most important new cultural arenas in the United States.
No Current Call-for-Entry submissions (submission fee: none – fee applies if accepted):
Previous Call
Forensics: An Aesthetics Approach
While legal and cultural scholars have labeled the third part of the twentieth century—with its particular attention to testimony—as the “era of the witness,” the emergence of forensics in legal forums and popular entertainment signifies a new attention to the communicative capacity, agency, and power of things. This material approach is evident in the ubiquitous role that science and technologies now play in shaping contemporary ways of seeing, knowing, and communicating. Today’s legal and political decisions are often based upon the capacity to display and read DNA samples, 3-D laser scans, nanotechnology, and the enhanced vision of electromagnetic microscopes and satellite surveillance. From mass graves to retinal scans, the topography of the seabed to the remnants of destroyed buildings, forensics is not only about the diagnostics, but also about the rhetoric of persuasion. The aesthetic dimension of forensics includes its means of presentation, the theatrics of its delivery, the forms of image and gesture. The forensic aesthetics of the present carries with it grave political and ethical implications, spreading its impact across socioeconomic, environmental, scientific, and cultural domains.
Etymologically, forensics refers to the “forum,” and to the practice and skill of making an argument before a professional, political, or legal gathering. Forensics has always been part of rhetoric, but its domain includes not only human speech but also that of objects. In forensic rhetoric, objects can address the forum. Because objects do not speak for themselves, there is a need for “translation” or “interpretation”—forensic rhetoric requires a person or a set of technologies to mediate between the object and the forum, to present the object, interpret it, and place it within a larger net of relations.
Submissions guidelines below.
See video on forensic artist in residence
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Previous Call
La modernité, c’est quoi? Modernity, what is it?
Modernity is Europe’s Enlightenment, the break from religious hegemonies and the spread of science, technology, and cosmopolitan ideals of freedom and democracy.
Ilaju ti awon oy-ibo mu wa si ile awon enia dudu, imunisin and imuleru lo da, ati awon orile ede ti ko too rara; orile ede tori jakujaku rederede ranran, opolopo ijoba l’onkuna lotun losi. [Modernity is Europe’s brutal colonialism built on the systematic enslavement of Africans, arbitrary and imposed nation-state boundaries, and the formation of modern African identities amidst the legacies of corruption and failed states.] Translated from Yoruba.
[Modernity is Bengal’s Renaissance, its self-critique and self-realization that emerges in the nineteenth century out of its struggle against British colonialism, not only as Bengalis, but as Indians.] Translated from Bengali.
La modernidad en Latinoamerica es el mestizaje, producto de una mezcla excepcional de culturas colonizadoras y colonizadas; un mestizaje atrapado entre la hegemonía europea y la norteamericana. [Modernity is Latin America’s métissage, its particular mixture of colonizing and colonized cultures, caught between European and North American hegemonies.] Translated from Spanish.
[Modernity is China’s project for the future, moving beyond the backwardness of the past and the humiliations of foreign domination, reasserting the centrality of its five-thousand year civilization as a moral, global force.] Translated from Chinese.
[Modernity is the Arab world’s rebirth of the old informed by religious discourse, Arab humanism, scientific progress, the rationalism of ijtihad, and creative transformation rather than conformity to a stagnant turath (heritage).] Translated from Arabic.
[Modernity is Indian Independence, born of British rule, bathed in the blood of Partition, and growing as the world’s largest democracy and a technological powerhouse.] Translated from Hindi.
Modernity, of course, has no single meaning, not even in one location. This polylogue—constructed collaboratively with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—voices particular views shaped by different planetary positionalities. Globally and locally, modernity appears infinitely expandable. Listening to these diverse voices, reading their scripts, I despair—especially for the new scholar just entering the field of dreams, a Tower of Babel with too many levels to climb; but also for the older scholar, trained in the old modernist studies: vertigo out on a limb, whirled up into a vortex of the new. Susan Stanford Friedman
Submission guidelines:
When submitting to calls-to-artists please email us with the “title” of the specific call, and provide complete information including: proposal statement or artist résumé(s), no more than five (5) image samples (unzipped, max. dimensions of 1000 x 1000 pixels, 72 dpi.), and additional support materials. All submissions will be reviewed a.s.a.p. Do not call about the status of your submission, we will try to respond to everyone via email. If we have interest in exhibiting your art, you will be contacted for an in-person review. SEND SUBMISSIONS HERE.