Can a small island be a source of inspiration for modern thought?
The 5th Little Islands Festival, starting from Sikinos, invites new media and performing arts artists to submit proposals that engage with ecology, anthropology, and science in the enduring dialogue about the relationship between humanity and nature. The island frontier, which like life itself emerges from the liquid element, becomes the principal space for exploring modern contradictions of human geography through art.
In the Cyclades, Nature’s symbols and archetypal patterns -from habitation and cultivation to the need for connection with the sacred, indicated the human imprint on space. Natural constraints imposed by climate and geomorphology led human creativity to capture the “unpretentious”, the “primary” and the “essential” as a claim to the ”necessary”, composing a landscape that mirrors the islanders’ culture, history and values.
In this traditional rural landscape, which seems like it has remained unchanged, contemporary socio-cultural and economic transformations are reflected today. Hyper Tourism, climate change and globalization, as imprinted on space, emphasize the interdependencies between rural-urban and local-global. Yet, at the same time that they tend to erase legacies of the past, they contribute to their re-emergence.
With the power of art and technology, Little Islands Festival explores these interdependencies to rethink life, work, and cohabitation. The cycle of nature becomes the field of understanding and emergence of an imaginary that connects sense, mind, and knowledge and articulates what seems to be missing: an ecology as a common practice and under common control, multicultural, diverse and transcendent of the “human” world we live in.
Submission deadline: February 19th, 2023
Indicative Search:
- Site specific projects that explore cultural heritage in relation to the natural environment of Sikinos and the Cyclades in general: windmills, threshing floors, rural dwellings, dry stone walls, terraces, sacred and archaeological sites.
- Works inspired by traditions, rituals, myths, customs in conversation with nature.
- Works that explore movements and directions such as: Environmental Sociology, Eco-anarchism, Ecofeminism, Eco-communalism, Deep Ecology.
- Artistic practices with an emphasis on participation.
- Artistic workshops for children and adults on environmental awareness.
Included in the open call is the LIF Residency and Research Program 2023 where participants will be hosted in Sikinos to create works inspired by the natural and cultural landscape of the island.
We address:
Artists from Greece and abroad, art groups, young creatives, performers, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, architects, thinkers, activists, scientists, technologists, curators, educators and other creatives working in the field of hybrid arts/practices.
Proposal Categories:
AudioVisual Performance – Silent Film & Live Soundscapes – Sound Art – music – Installation – Virtual Reality – Augmented Reality – 3D Projection Mapping -Site Specific Art – Workshops – Residency
What we offer:
Participants in the live performance (live acts) and workshop categories will receive support:
- Airfare costs up to 200 euros per person
- Accommodation costs
- Ferry ticket costs
- Coverage of technical equipment.
- In any applications to secure additional funding.
Participants in the LIF Residency 2023 programme will receive support:
- Ferry ticket costs
- Accommodation costs
- Food supplies
- Assistance and general guidance on project set-up.
- In any applications to secure additional funding
Residency duration: 1 week – 2 weeks
Number of artists that can be hosted in the same period: 6
For any clarifications please contact us at littleislandsfestival@gmail.com
Apply on the webpage for Little Islands Festival