Open call: Heat Winter Arts Festival 2025 in South Africa

The call is designed for artists working in the following art disciplines: music, performance art, dance, live art, and digital art (games, VR, immersive installations).

Heat is a winter arts festival set in Cape Town’s CBD. The primary mission is to boost visitor numbers to art galleries and complimentary hospitality businesses in this district during a quiet season.

The content of the festival is guided by a curatorial theme. The 2025 theme set by curators Voni Baloyi, Mary Corrigall and Nkgopoleng Moloi is titled Other Worlding and refers to the speculative turn in art, which speaks to the core of imaginative thinking, pushing beyond the present realities, creating alternative worlds and thinking in which the weight of history can be renegotiated.

One-handers or solo performances that speak to the theme would be ideal. It could be dance, theatre or stand-up. It needs to be from 40 to 60 minutes long. It can be a work you have presented before. Performers must have a proven record - have performed for at least two years.

“We are looking for modest live performances by rising or young and well-established practitioners, theatre-makers, digital artists, stand-ups, performance artists, dancers, musicians, singers – that can be accommodated in makeshift and conventional venues,” the organisers said. “This year’s theme embraces the speculative turn in cultural production. It has been an empowering tool for artists, presenting a way to imagine the world differently.”

Read the curatorial statement, application and terms and conditions here.

Interested artists should apply here before 14 February.

View the original call here.