2023: Open Call goes on honeymoons.
In 2023 melissandre varin invited performance artist PhD researcher Niya B (UK),performance artist-researcher nomi blum (SA), interdisciplinary artist Taja Lindley (USA), and performance artist Jade Blackstock (Scicilly) to take part in a communal research towards a de-centralised, sustainable, and pleasure oriented Open Call. They decided to take respective performance-artists honeymoons to feed this research. Taja attended Fusebox as an audience member after having performed in a previous edition; melissandre attended Avignon Festival, the first festival they heard of as a high school student; nomi decided to go on the road researching everyday performances outside of arts spaces for nomi blum; Jade attended a performance festival in Italy; and Niya iwas still deciding between visiting artist residency spaces or attending Transform in Leeds and Take me Somewhere in Glasgow at the time this blurp was written.
A lot of things we would not have done without the permission and freedom to connect to our respective centres, our inner children and let them play and decide on what feels good. This is a radical feminist approach to being, nourishing ourselves as practicing artists, but also an experimental manner to resource ourselves and be in solidarity with our peers.
The 5 artist-researchers exchange voice messages at the end of the year to share about their year of learning and preparing the ground for Open Call under new governance* from 2024.
This is melissandre varin, last year orchestrating experiments with Open Call and they could not be more satisfied of this platform which has been a re-distribution vehicle for performance artist-researchers part of Studies in Theatre and Performance journal.
The 5 invitees equally received a £1200 honeymoon budget.
2022: edits a special issue
In 2022, learning from our first year, Open Call re-invited Carmen Wong as a co-curator of Open Call special issue alongside Harriet Curtis (STP editor), and melissandre varin. This year’s work is task specific and the invited artist-researcher has an increased fee of £800. Contributors to the special issue received a £350 fee.
Harriet Curtis, Carmen Wong, and melissandre varin co-edited a special issue: open-call+response with contributions from Fannie Sosa, Lou Sarabadzic, melissandre varin and Carmen Wong, Stelly G, Seán Elder, nomi blum, Izdihar Afyouni, Ash Williams, rAJU rAGE, Clareese Hill and Elly Clarke.
More here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rstp20/42/3
2021: fleshing out what Open Call could feel like
Open Call working group was an open platform to which artist-researchers were invited to take part in discussions on what it takes to build, share, and transform knowledge by any means necessary. Black and Global majority beings to the front as they often are on the frontline of those conversations and practices. Inputs where not restricted to the UK geographical boundaries, and practitioners from different contexts are more than welcome. The working group met seasonally. Members of the working group contributed on a rolling basis for one year that could be renewed once.
working group members received an honorarium of £200 for 3 meetings of 1.5h in 2021 and £250 for 4 meetings in 2022. Childcare support equivalent to £25 per meeting was available to all our members, and we received £10 support to cover a meal before or after our meetings.
Fannie Sosa, Carmen Wong, Annabel Guérédrat, and jackÏ job have been sharp, supportive and inquisitive working group members in 2021. From our final evaluation meeting a couple of points for improvement where listed
(non-exhausive list):
clarity in roles
communication and marketing
increase of fee when roles expand
better languages balance during meetings and on the website
