Festival VI Presents
To Stay Alive /| You Must be Live
OPEN CALL
The sixth Yellow Fish Festival, To Stay Alive /| You Must be Live, uses the specific field of Durational Performance as a means to support methods of staying alive in our present times.
Yellow Fish Durational Performance Art Festival welcomes artists of all mediums who use time as concept and material in actions and ideas to apply for Festival VI. This year we will additionally focus on artists exploring duration in experimental video and film.
Selected artists will comprise a cohort, participating in a collective experience emphasizing and expanding upon Care Methodologies in respect of the times and in response to our festival theme: To Stay Alive /| You Must be Live. Artists will collaborate with curators, introduced below, to design a long-form engagement with the festival in consideration of their durational practice.
Yellow Fish will work with each selected artist over the course of a year to initiate digital experiments, gather & process through a residency period, and present in site-specific live forms. The festival development and programming will coexist across three seasonal phases outlined below.*
PHASES
Phase 1 // URL: FALL
Artists will engage in digital experiments, exploring virtual technologies and analog subversions in tandem with their practice to communicate and share with audiences remotely. Such ideas could be (but not limited to) online studio visits, online performances, a blog, talks, radio stations, reading club, postcards or letters, etc. Artists will work with the curators on an individual basis to build a platform for this experiment alongside selected themes. Additionally, artists will participate in online programming with the cohort.
Phase 2 // RESIDENCY: WINTER
The cohort is invited to participate in a residency period slated for January. The residency length will be determined by the participating artists. A minimum of 4 days and a maximum of 3 weeks is available. The residency will include housing, studio access, and will be located on a rural property. The residency period will act as a moment to gather as a group, reflect the progress of the festival thus far, generate ideas, begin production planning for the spring phase, and participate in a process of individual project development, group critique, and artist driven workshops.
Phase 3 // IRL: SPRING
Participants will actualize their physical performances inside 153 COFFEY, a multidisciplinary, artist-led studio dedicated to exploring the dramatic potential of constructed space through performance, film and design. The studio is located on a cobblestone street in Red Hook, New York. The main floor is a 7000SF open plan with skylights and windows, 15’ ceilings, exposed brick walls, heavy timber columns and beams, plywood finished floor, and an additional full size storage cellar. The performance schedule, audiences, and technical parameters will be determined by considerations such as COVID-19, travel restrictions at that time, and other factors. We will be prepared to also produce more locally with each artist if that is a better option given circumstances and possible restrictions.
* Phases will be subject to adaptation depending on the individual needs of the artists and the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.
CARE METHODOLOGIES
Our vision as a curatorial team inside YF VI is to reinvision the traditional definition of Care by providing the impetus for action and growth; an aliveness of sorts. To initiate the conversation, YF curators have constructed a list of action driven ideas that support our notions of Care and provide a framework for artists to expand and build upon while responding to the theme: To Stay Alive /| You Must be Live. With these specific frameworks in mind, Care will remain a constant thread informing interactions and general engagement throughout the festival, informing on-going discussion, programming, and project development throughout the year.
Generate sustainable protest
Emphasize awareness of self & others
Dismantle colonized instincts and legacies
Transcend boundaries of discipline and medium
Awaken erotic understanding
Protect our environment
Strengthen empathetic interdependence
Invoke play with risk