Call for proposals: 2023 Spier Light Art festival in SA

The call is also open to sculptors, installation artists, painters, photographers, choreographers, theatre designers, industrial designers, urban planners and architects. Interested applicants should submit expressions of interest for projects and video-based artworks that engage all age groups.

The selection will be curated around the following five themes:

• The ethereal and the whimsical: use the magic and compelling wonder of illumination to engage in various ways with one of the sites across the farm with a possible focus on interaction and audience experience.
• The conceptual: reflect on and integrate with interests that frame our current political landscape, such as land, appropriation and decoloniality.
• Technology: reflect on our shifting relationship to technology and its disruptive influence, or on climate change and the idea of sentience.
• Resilience, enchantment and exuberance: celebrate human endeavour, our tenacity, and the ability to find joy in challenging times.
• Working wine farm: critically reflect on Spier’s history, its relationship to the region and its farming practices.

Categories of work may include:

• Site-specific work (designed for specific places on Spier Wine Farm).
• Sculptural, object-based work.
• Interactive art.
• Digital works that foreground technology.
• Video art.

Online briefing

The curatorial team will hold an online briefing on 9 August at 17.30pm. Applicants should RSVP to lightart@spier.co.za before 8 August.

Submission requirements and process

Expressions of interest must include:

• Artist/collective/studio biographies of all involved (200 words).
• A short response to at least one of the themes (300 words).
• A concise description of the work, including concept sketches (300 words).
• A description of the audience interaction/engagement with the work if not a video (300 words).
• A provisional but realistic and well-considered budget indicating whether it is to be funded completely or in part by the Spier Arts Trust.
• Web links to and/or images of the proposed work or, if not already developed, examples of previous work.

Interested artists should email an expression of interest to the project manager at lightart@spier.co.za before 22 August. A more thorough proposal may be requested after the shortlist is announced.

The Spier Arts Trust will completely or partially fund installations chosen by the selection committee headed by co-curator Jay Pather.

View the original call here.