Over the past months Video Sound Art has met dozens of emerging artists and collectives through a wide-ranging programme of campuses and activities in Milan’s municipal districts. This experience prompted a reflection on the very meaning of the Open Call. Traditionally, a public selection is a tool for discovering new research and widening the number of people involved. The work carried out over the year, however, has shown that a different model is possible, one able to recognise and support paths already under way within a relationship of listening, mentoring and exchange.
For this reason, instead of opening a new public selection, the festival intends to devote the resources traditionally reserved for the Open Call to the production and development of new projects that emerged during the campus, tutoring and mentoring activities. The aim is to replace the one-off logic of the application with a longer, shared process, founded on mutual knowledge, on continuity and on the possibility of following the evolution of a body of research over time.
This choice marks an evolution in the festival’s model of support: valuing processes already under way, consolidating relationships built over time and accompanying the growth of projects that have found in this shared path the conditions to develop and to be presented at the festival.
After 16 years of activity, the Festival is evolving its tools while keeping intact its mission of supporting new creativity – through meetings and tutoring activities, but above all through a clearly defined path taken together.