Open Call

OPEN CALL

The Corcoran is hosting an Open Call for poetry to be included in Concurring Experiences: Together, Apart as a zine and featured on our website. This call is free and open to the public. Concurring Experiences: Together, Apart was created virtually by a team of student curators who explored the photography archives in the Corcoran Study Collection. Visual themes and emotional ties from past to present were selected to highlight elements of isolation and community. Calls to action have been highlighted, and while the pandemic caused a removal from society, we now ask how society should be structured in order to come out of this time into a more just and equitable world for all. We are asking for poetry that has been created in the past 12 months in response to elements of unrest, unease, or community action. Poetry will be added to the exhibition as part of the show's historical archive in the Corcoran.

This call will be open between April 1- May 1, 2021 and to be printed over the summer.

Selected participants will recieve special edition zines documenting this historical show.

To submit to our Open Call, please email: [email protected]

QUESTIONS FROM THE CURATORS

A series of questions and a list of words were posed by the class and can be used as jumping off points for inspiration. As you join our conversation, we hope that these questions act as reflections as well as dialogues. The Open Call for Concurring Experiences: Together, Apart will not be restricted to answering these specific questions, but responses should fit into the overall eight themes of the exhibition (ACKNOWLEDGE loss, TOGETHER uplift, RECOGNIZE understand, CONNECT change, AWAKEN adapt, REJOICE revive, RELEARN metamorphosis, POSSIBILITY resilience).

What is our footprint?

Where do we unlearn?

Where do we relearn?

How do we communicate?

How do we collaborate?

How do we share space?

How do we grow?

Where do we overlap?

How do we include?

How do we teach?

How do we uplift voice?

How do we understand?

How do we expand?

How do we experience hope?

How do we save each other?

How do we keep faith?

How can we transform?

How do we see one another?

How do we hold mutual interest?

How do we open and not close?

What is the opposite of a polarity?

What language does not divide us?

How do we come together in isolation?

How are we enveloped by nature?

How are we held by community?

How do we listen to each other?

How do we grow along with each other?

How do we adapt to make a better world?

How do we enter spaces and not harm them?

How do we hold space to care for ourselves?

How do we make and keep discursive space?

How do we respect one another’s authentic self?

How can we realize each other’s potential in shared space?

WORDS FROM THE CURATORS

To understand each other we have to use the same language.

Can we make a "glossary" based on questions rather than pre-scripted answers?

Can we restructure an understanding of what it means to share a language with each other?

As a class, and in regards to Exhibition Design, we discussed the following words, coming to realize through our discussions that we each have slightly different understandings and translations of their definitions. In order to have honest conversations with each other it is important to listen and understand each other, to change our language to support each others' narratives.

A Note On Definition: While definitions must change through shared understandings and conversation, it is important to acknowledge a common understanding of context; of a framework, a shared language, ]a coming together in order to communicate a message. What did I say? What is a definition? Does a definition necessarily have to be a sentence, a fragment, a thought? What if the thought is not yet realized? What if, in the words of Audre Lorde, our ideas have not yet transformed into language and action? We need to be vulnerable in order to share our truth, in order to listen, to grow, to empathize.

WORDS FOR REFLECTION

Abstraction

Accessibility

Actualization

Adapt

Address

Agency

Allegory

Apart

Art

Artist

Articulate

Audience

Autonomy

Awareness

Awe

Become

Believe

Body

Boundary

Breath

Bias

Care