This is a call for submissions for an exhibition that will be a collective investigation of what it means, in 2009, to represent the facts, acts and consequences of war. This online exhibition will provide ideas and images around the issues of war and how and for what reasons a war, or wars, are memorialized.
The call for submissions asks that you define the war, the site, and propose a war memorial. This can be your own devising, or can be drawn from a current competition such as the Canadian Navy monument. Alternatively, it can be a reworking of an inadequate existing memorial. It can be a traditional object, a resignification of an existing landscape, the dissemination of a text, or a new media project.
What the submission must contain is:
1. a title
2. the war – which, where, when, issues and causes (500 words maximum)
3. the site – mapped
4. a form – show it in a way that fits a web page (1024×768 pixels minimum, 1600×1200 pixels maximum) plus a thumbnail 400 pixels wide
5. a short biographical note, contact e-mail, and your website if you want your project linked to your site
Maximum submission size is two pages, sent as PDFs to exhibitions@onsitereview.ca, and the deadline for submissions is October 31, 2009.
This exhibition will form a complement to On Site Issue 22: WAR (out in late Fall 2009). This call for submissions is an open call: On Site is most interested in registering how people today feel that war might be effectively marked. What comes after the cenotaph, or Maya Lin’s walls, or wartime memory websites, to honour the participants in war, to validate or invalidate war, to prevent war, to rally to war, to mark war? On Site 22 will be commenting on the leftover landscapes of war, urbicide, monuments, dark tourism, ad hoc memorials, the walls of partition, reconstruction. This electronic exhibition proposes new work, where form rather than text offers the commentary.
Please direct all questions to exhibitions@onsitereview.ca