Photography News

February 3, 2012 /Photography News/ beyondmemory is an open call for works which invites artists to reflect on contemporary photography and video’s role in perceiving history and collective memory.

Theme:

Memory has been for centuries a community’s natural repository of symbolic and mythical meaning; a combination of true stories and fantastical representations, which mixed, history with poetry, reality with art, artistic conjecture with collective unconscious, the universal with the singular. With the end of dogmas and grand ideological narratives, memory is no longer a producer of myths, rather it survives as the basis for a search of truth, taking up the role of instrument of knowledge, of historical production and verification of information. The idea that memory is repository of a single, absolute truth, has been replaced in our information age by the notion of many memories: micro-truths without universal authenticity which act on the knowledge and production of history. In particular, according to Michel Foucault’s view, photography has given birth to the idea of archive as a repository of memory and a fundamental building-block of the present.

Works submitted to Beyond Memory can contain images as clues for paradigms, textual elements, photographic installations with archive material, sound fragments, the use of photographs which are simply found or tell a common story, are some of the forms adopted by contemporary photography to give images various levels of significance to history and collective memory.

Eligibility:

Artists from anywhere in the world can participate without limits of age, sex or profession.

Each project can contain up to a maximum of 10 works – photographs and/or videos – supported by a textual statement.

Prizes:

First prize: 1,000 €
Second prize: 500 €
Third prize: 500 €

A shortlist of 10 selected projects made by a Selection Committee which includes Giovanna Calvenzi, Daniele De Luigi and George Tatge will be announced on 31 March 2012. The 10 selected projects will be exhibited in the fmsgallery of the Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Florence, Italy.

A catalogue containing images of all selected works, as well as brief artists’ bios, and critical texts with be published.

Copyright:

Artists retain copyright of all works and texts they upload, but give Celeste Network the right to use them for communication and promotion purposes only: to create the prize catalogue or other promotional material associated with the prize, and in Celeste's websites.

Deadline:

Projects can be presented directly online no later than midnight 29 February 2012.

For more details visit http://www.celesteprize.com/beyondmemory/