Situation Critical : Open Call for Proposals - Wirksworth Festival, September 2011 - closing date 5 April 2011

Wirksworth, a market town in Derbyshire, is home to Wirksworth Festival, which over the past two years has concentrated on developing its contemporary visual arts programme, and aspires to become a leading rural Festival of contemporary art in the UK, something we are increasingly being recognised as: 

“The annual Wirksworth Festival seems to be establishing itself as far more creatively worthy that a local rural art fair, with exhibitions and installations stretching through the town’s shops, gardens, halls and surrounding rolling landscapes.”   Robert Clark, Guardian Guide, September 2009 

We are seeking proposals for new and existing work for our curated programme for 2011, and for the Film & Video Salon 2011. We are interested in site-responsive, site-specific and context-specific work addressing the ‘situation’ of Wirksworth, and in the intersection of Art and Architecture.

“There is a kind of complexity that comes from taking an otherwise completely normal, conventional, albeit anonymous situation and defining it, re-translating it into overlapping and multiple readings of conditions past and present.” Gordon Matta-Clark, May 1976. 

We are interested in work that critically interrogates the situation that is Wirksworth: ‘situation’, a set of conditions in time and place - a convergence of site, non-site, place, non-place, locality, public space, context and time. 

We are interested in psychogeography, Situationist strategies, the dérive, in destabilising preconceptions of site and meaning, in intervention, in discovery, surprise, awe and humour, in cartography, maps and charts, in interactivity, and in friction rather than rapprochement. 

Visit www.wirksworthfestival.co.uk for full details.