Open Prompt: OPR

The Picture Show and the Organism for Poetic Research have come together for a collaborative project:

Light-Soluble Mediums

We’ll start off simply by saying that we’d like to think that the image and the word share some potent ancestry.

We note the way each can be lifted from its two dimensionality (the word from the printed page, the image from the screen which receives its light) to point to the thing which occurs outside its medium. Our premise is that by responding to a piece of writing in another format (film, photographs, illustration, performance, or writing that’s unlike the original), we come closer to realizing that what we are looking for is always outside the language we try to speak.

To partake in the project:

1. Receive a piece of writing from us. We’ll call this “the letter,” as distinguished from “hello email.” To receive the letter, please respond to “hello email” with your postal address, or you can circumvent the mail by visiting: www.organismforpoeticresearch/category/events/light-soluble-mediums/.

2. Respond to the letter with a short film, or an artwork incorporating film, or a work made to accompany film, or a work that can otherwise be “screened.” In brief, we ask that you consider our “letter” and respond with a “movie,” keeping in mind that we are interested in all manner of response so long as it involves, in some capacity, a projected image or something you might persuade us to consider as such.

3. Though not necessary, we encourage you to include as part of your response/submission a short text drawn from or accompanying the “movie.” Examples of this might include notes, sketches, diagrams, directions, dialogue or other textual or graphic elements from, or related, or composed in response to the “movie.”

4. Selected films and performances will screen at an evening in February at The Picture Show, and written works and visual illustrations will be printed in an OPR publication.

We encourage artists to work in a medium that isn’t their primary one. We encourage writers to perform, filmmakers to write, performance artists to make a film, or painters to take photographic images. Whatever the format of the response, there will be a mode of presentation to accommodate it. We want the response to not have any one center of gravity, but to reverberate in multiple events and formats.

Tech specifications:

The Picture Show can accommodate 16mm, 8mm, digital, DVD and Blu-ray films, and has ample space for a performance. The OPR publishes in print and on the web. Specifications for publication and performance can be discussed with the OPR and The Picture Show.

Dates to keep in mind:

Right now - Respond to this promt with your postal address and a request for the letter, or find the letter on the web at: www.organismforpoeticresearch/category/events/light-soluble-mediums/

October 1 - Send us a “head’s up” email with your brief proposal, so we know to expect your final submission in December.

December 15 - Send us your project in its final form.

February 2015, exact date T.B.D. - The works will be compiled, shown, seen, performed, and lifted from gestation.

Thanks,

OPR + The Picture Show