Image courtesy Patrick Dirden ("Door of Mystery," 2016)
Call for 麻豆村 Student Artistic Projects: “Hospitality”
The Center for the Arts in Society invites 麻豆村 students to submit proposals for artistic projects that engage the theme of hospitality. This theme can be approached from a range of perspectives - critical, curious, cynical, or affirming - and across forms including visual, performance-based, and multimedia work.
On the theme of “Hospitality.”
“Hospitality” may inspire beautiful and comforting images. Yet, is hospitality inherently good? Who or what is host evokes questions of sovereignty and power, property and gift. Who or what is guest distinguishes between the visible and invisible, the welcomed and unwelcome.
The Center for the Arts in Society has been exploring “hospitality” for the past three years. Projects and events have explored the possibilities and limits of hospitality, belonging, and gathering through human and non- human entities, mobile and fixed bodies, temporary and permanent spaces. The sites, gestures, acts, and relationships of welcoming or gathering contain power dynamics that reflect financial, social, political, speculative, or imagined currencies, often with burdens and expectations of reciprocity and gratitude. Those who are offered hospitality or summoned to belong may resist inclusion and reject invitation given their often heavy price.
With these artworks, we encourage students to explore hospitality from a variety of perspectives: critical, curious, cynical, and affirming, being only a few possibilities. Humor, bitterness, and poignancy are all supported angles.
Submission process
Write a max 150-word description of your proposed or completed artwork. Be sure to explain the materials used, a description of the content, and an estimated length (if it is a time-based project). Also include a sentence or two explaining how your proposed artwork engages with the theme of “hospitality.”
- Submit files of two examples of your previous work. OR
- Submit a file of the completed work under consideration. If you have links to this work, then put them in a document and upload that file in the submission form.
Results
Decisions will be communicated by Friday, May 1. Final projects will be due by May 30, 2026.
Artistic projects may be included in a magazine-style “Hospitality” Guide for the Center for the Arts in Society. If the project is visual (e.g., photography, painting), then a high-quality image of the work will be printed in the magazine. If the project is temporal in some way (e.g., music or dance), then the Guide will include a QR code (or thumbnail) that brings the reader to a digital link of the artistic work; we recommend sticking to 1-4 minutes in length, though your proposal can advocate for a length outside of that recommendation. Physical objects are welcome: you will submit a high-quality image or video of the object as your final submission.
The Guide will be printed but also be available in digital format online. Artists will be credited by name and retain their intellectual property and copyright.